Fred Doucette's Half-Iron and Ironman Focused Group! -CLOSED! (Page 32)

I went to see another PT today that was highly recommended by a good BT friend, long wait to get into and far from home. He works with some tri coaches and most of patients he sees are triathletes.

I'm almost 8 months post my knee scope and my knee/leg continues to have issues as I've mentioned.  I have gone to PT 3 different groups of visits and things get better but don't stay better. I kept asking why is this reoccurring and no one had an answer. I felt we kept working on the issue but not finding out why I kept having injury issues.

He did a complete evaluation of balance, strength and how my body moves.

I have a number of issues

1. My left  knee ROM and strength in scoped knee needs work. I can't fully lock my knee which means I'm always unstable when in upright position and sets me up for further injury.

2. My left ankle isn't flexible and needs improved ROM and effect my ability to run up and down hills as we need our knee to be able to extend 4" over toes to be able to have proper run form on hills.

3. My pelvis is weak and tilted so my back arches and my bum sticks out.  My hip/glute strength is better than 90% of the triathletes he sees, but my pelvis is on other end of muscle so have no stability and appears hip/glute weakness is really pelvis instability probably due to having twins, c section, back surgery and being overweight for many years.

He has a plan for me to gain flexibility, work on stability and mobility, then try to teach my body with gains to move properly and break old movement patterns.

I can run with pain as indicator of when to stop but no increasing run volume. Goal is keep me running enough when balanced and stronger I will be easier than if I stopped running.

Bike as much as I want. Swim especially kicking is good for knee extension.

He encourages all triathletes especially those who do longer races to get a strength, balance, body movement assessment in order to prevent injuries before they happen.

Todd, congratulations on a great race. I hope you got pictures!

Kathy, glad your PT visit went well.

I haven't really had time to post on BT lately. I read the posts when I can. This group moves quickly and it is difficult to keep up!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!

It sounds like you've found a good person to help you get back on track Kathy.  Injuries sure are frustrating.

Kathy, glad to see you have some things that you can work on to help get you back to where you want to be.  Hopefully it works as intended, and I can appreciate how frustrating this all must be.

I do have a question for you - and the rest of the group - can you provide some good strength exercises (or links) to help with developing and strengthening some fo the muscles we don't use on a day to day basis as triathletes.  As in your case I think we can become inherently weak in other parts of our body because we focus so much on s/b/r.

James - it depends on what the 200's are for, and usually mine are on an interval, rather than a set recovery. Seems to keep me a little more consistent/honest on the effort. I did an endurance pace set a couple of days ago, 5x3 200's with an interval that gave me about 15 seconds rest, with a 50 of sculling and head-up freestyle sandwiched in between each 3x - the 50 set has a 20 second recovery on each side.

On the other hand, on a ladder set designed for LT training, I go 400 on 8 minutes, 300 on 6 minutes, 200 on 4 minutes, 100 on 2 minutes, and then 50 on 1 minute. Easy peasy. Then you go back up the ladder, 50 on 1 minute, 100 on  2 minutes, 200 on 4 minutes, 300 on 6 minutes, and finally 400 on 8 minutes. Going back up gets pretty compressed, but the incentive is on going hard as it is the only way to extend the rest interval.

Neil - I am no expert, but this is definitely something that I am working on myself. I have done 2.5 months of  strength acclimation, then 2 weeks of light plyometrics. I have just started plyometrics for real, but still short sessions - and low reps. The vertical stuff is doable, but I have to tell you , the lateral stuff is VERY tough. It is really illuminating some serious strength asymmetries that were not evident in the regular strength workouts. This makes sense in that most of the stuff we do for triathlon is geared toward going forward, not left, right or backwards. There is a lot of plyometric info on the Google, but I really would encourage you to do a good bit of acclimation stuff first.

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I have no comment on 200s...except to say that it depends.  I've found that 99% of the time with an open ended question the correct answer is "it depends", so I'm banking on that. 

I got to sleep in an extra couple hours this morning with the freezing rain in Baltimore and my post opening delayed until 9.  Gonna try the roads out for my usual lunch time run, it may be a little messy today.  I don't even think I could do a treadmill these days.  Even since a flash rain storm and the demise of my iPod shuffle 2 years ago, I've never run with music and have loved it, but only outside.  Very "zen" like, being alone with your breathing, thoughts, etc (which may not always be a good thing).  Biking outside is similar (when not "in the zone" training or something).  I do like the trainer to do exact, uninterrupted intervals, so i can imagine the treadmill is similar if you can't find a good outdoor place (though both are as much taxing on the mind as the legs).  The one thing I've noticed is that you do need an incline to help mimic outside.  Running level is like running downhill the whole time.  Honestly, I haven't run on one in over a year (maybe 2), so I can't comment too much, except to say that I used to do a lot of winter running on them and I got faster.



Edited by jsiegs 2011-01-18 9:33 AM

Made a new purchase yesterday - ordered a disc cover from Wheel Builder.  My folks are in Arizona for a couple of months so I had it shipped to them, and they'll bring it back across the border.  It's silly how much more it costs to ship it North so I figure I could save a few dollars.

Next up I'm going to look for a front wheel.  A used Hed 3 would be nice but my budget is very tight, so I'm thinking I may give the new Flo Cycling front clincher a try when it becomes available.  I'm assuming they'll have a good warranty program since it's a new product, but we'll wait and see.

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I don't.  Like I said above, I think that because we focus on s/b/r we can lose strength and fitness in other muscles, and as a whole I think that if we are "stronger" we can benefit from it - especially in endurance sorts.  As to CFE and it's ability to replace "true" endurance and the specific areas that s/b/r focuses on, I don't think it can do what it claims.

People can and do, complete an ironman under trained, which is where I believe CFE would lead you, but I don't see how it can make you better/faster than true endurance training. 

Edited by GoFaster 2011-01-18 1:25 PM

I joined a Cross Fit gym and went from November 2009-April 2010. I enjoyed the workouts, the atmosphere where others work hard, and the vibe at the gym.

The coaches wanted me to do CrossFit Endurance and asked me multiple times each month about trying it. Logically it didn't make sense and I didn't think my body would hold up well to always doing high intensity on my tri workouts. Doesn't make sense that doing all short hard workouts would prepare me for long race. Other issue is frequency only 2 swims, bikes and runs a week. I know my body and I couldn't see it working.

The coaches had a line that went like this, how do you know it won't work unless you try it. Some new great training methods someone has to try out to see how well they work.

Let someone else be the guinea pig not me.

Personally I didn't want to risk another season, doing something that went against what I had known works for me. I'm not fast enough in IM to screw up my training and still finish so I wasn't going to try it.

Folks who were at the CF gym who had been runners and added CF and dropped running volume most all PBed their 5K time. I didn't have that happen my 5K was slower over the period I did CF so in my very limited experiment it didn't work. Add in going to CF would take 2.5 hours and limit my tri training schedule at times as well as I would be sore from CF workouts and unable to do tri training workouts to the best of my ability not a positive.  Coaches wouldn't tell me what workouts were ahead to figure out which ones would fit best into my training. They post the workouts about 8-9 pm the night before so no possible way to make it work well. I did get some minor injuries doing CF that hurt tri training for a time as well.

I like Cross Fit. My husband and daughter still go and love it. Great overall fitness building and much better than typical lame classes at most Ys as you really work hard and you get results. But do I want to be a generalist...nope I want to be the best triathlete I can be. It's expensive but really didn't work well for me. I go to their parties and with my daughter at times and they are encouraging me to come back.

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Cross Fit Endurance is a certification that Cross Fit coaches or other folks can take. The way Cross Fit makes money is having athletes get certified to become coaches. Certification is about $1000 for weekend course for first certification and bit less for subsequent one.  The coaches often work at their gym and in time go to open new CF gyms.

From CFE website that has WOD workout of the day on it. Very similar conceptually to CF workouts in very intense and mostly short workout but instead of doing strength type work you translate it to your sport be it s/b/r or rowing or whatever.

This is the workouts listed on the CFE website today. So if you swam you'd do 1000 yards, bike 8 miles up hills and 8 miles down hill, ect. They want you to do the normal CF workout of the day WOD at least 3 hours before you do your s/b/r workout.

3+ Hours After CFE Strength & Conditioning WOD

Choose ONE of the Following Sports:

Swim: 10 x 100m/y holding fastest possible pace without deviating more than 5 sec… 15 sec recoveries

Bike: 4 x 2 mile hill repeats, holding fastest possible pace and not deviating more than 1 min per repeat. Recoveries are, how long it takes you to come down the hill. If you do not have a hill then use tension on a trainer or ergometer with steady/ heavy tension.

Run: 2 x 3/4 – 1 mile hill repeats holding fastest possible pace without deviating more then 1 minute and recovering 1 min before descending hill easy. Repeat after 1 min recovery at bottom of hill… treadmill use 7% grade, recover 2 min and repeat

C2: 3 x 1k repeats not deviating more then 10 seconds. 2 min recoveries.

Cool Neil. Interested to hear what you think of your cover, especially the hassle/non-hassle of putting the cover on/off.  Also very interested to hear about the Flo wheels if you go that route. 

I know some people that have gotten pretty good deals on HED 3's on ebay. I think they got them for around $400 shipped.

Stirring the pot!  

I think CF/CFE is taking advantage of a tendency of some AG endurance athletes to fall into the habit of doing almost all of their workouts in lower zones.  I don't know where this tendency comes from, but I think it's good that CFE is helping people be more efficient with limited training time.  

Apart from that (helping people recognize that in many cases intensity >> time), I don't see that CFE provides anything we didn't know 20 yrs ago when I first got interested in endurance training:  If you can can go faster over short distances, you can usually go faster over long distances too! 

ETA: I tend to think that the non-specific aspects of CFE are somewhat bogus, but as I get older I'm starting to reconsider that.

Edited by wiky 2011-01-18 6:57 PM

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I liked your thoughts in the other thread Fred.

Reality is if we don't like training, why do IM or any triathlon?  Yes most of us have time limitations with our lives so using our time as effectively as possible is a goal.

There is a lot of time, mental dedication and money involved in the sport, so it should bring us joy and be something we look forward to on a day to day basis.

Those that want short cuts or not want to put the time in, are they really trying to accomplish something to check off their bucket list or different goal than most of us.

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