- Should you be doing a two-beat kick?
(funky music)
That might have come out wrong.
- Are you listening?
(funky music)
- Morning, Trainiacs.
Welcome to another taper on workout bay.
Just 1100 glorious meters this morning.
I tell ya, between a taper and
just giving myself a full body shave,
I am smooth and flying in the pool.
In that order?
That might have come out wrong.
I'm gonna run with it.
Let's have a little chat about the kick.
Specifically, should you be doing a two beat kick,
a four beat kick, a six beat kick,
or dragging along the bottom side of the pool?
Alright, so there's a lot of what I would call
swimming propaganda out there in the world
about how a two beat kick is the answer
to all of your swimming prayers.
That ain't the case.
Fact of the matter is, for the vast majority
of us triathletes out there who don't come from
a swimming background, we don't have a very strong kick.
And having just one kick per leg
throughout the course of an entire swim stroke cycle,
that's not enough kick propulsion,
thrust, balance, buoyancy, rotation,
whatever you want to call it, to be able
to get our body into a good enough position.
No, no, no, before you jump all over me
and you say Taren, I've tried a two beat kick,
it's the best thing ever, I was there myself.
I drank that Kool-Aid myself.
Yeah, yeah, I did.
Years ago.
I was like two beat kickin' right over there.
But what I found is that because I needed
such a strong kick to be able to get enough propulsion
because I didn't have a very strong kick,
it was actually doing me damage
because I was snapping my legs really hard.
The exact opposite thing that you want to do with a kick.
Let me finish stretching here
and we'll go into the office and
I'll draw this out or something.
(funky music)
(creaks)
Made it.
So many fun things in the office, Trainiacs.
Number one, little bobblehead Taren here
is gonna help us learn how to swim.
Indistinguishable.
And number two, look what Mel got.
Little poop emoji ball.
They know me so well.
- My mom's your biggest fan.
- Oh, it was your mom.
Mel's mom got me this.
She's a Trainiac.
Hi Mel's mom.
So the purpose of your kick in swimming is to do two things.
As I always mention, it's to get you
horizontal in the water with your feet
up close to the surface of the water
and not like this, dragging and causing drag
because it's gotta push its way through the water.
So you want your feet up close to the water
and how you do that is by activating your core
and kicking enough that your feet float
up close to the water and your heels
just make their way out of the surface of the water.
Second, the kick is to help turn your body side to side.
Now, where the two beat kick falls apart
and it did this for me because I'm like most triathletes,
I didn't come from a swimming background,
I don't have a really strong kick.
Triathletes also run so that causes ankle inflexibility
so our kick just by nature isn't going to be very strong.
With that two beat kick, for me to get my feet
up close to the water and to
get my body turning side to side,
I had to give my leg,
each time I did the two beat kick it was like a (grunts).
It had to be really strong.
So what ended up happening is because
I was tensing up and I was focusing really hard
on a hard kick, I wasn't actually able
to focus on a proper body roll with the rest of my body
because all the energy was going into that kick down here.
Kinda defeats the purpose of having a two beat kick
which in theory is supposed to make swimming easier.
And if what you're doing is every time you do a kick
because you're not doing that many kicks
it has to be really strong, really forceful,
really flip you around, what's gonna happen is
you're actually gonna tire yourself out a little bit
and the second thing that I found more important
is because I was basically pausing
and waiting for that two beat kick to happen,
my entire upper body was basically pausing,
so I'd be like (grunts) with one kick,
pause, pause, pause, (grunts) with another kick,
pause, pause, pause, (grunts)
and that pause is basically pushing me forward
and then I'm decelerating.
Pushing me forward and then I'm decelerating.
And all of that energy of the push forward
is just basically getting you started again
as opposed to keeping you going
and having your momentum do a lot of the work for you.
So what I ended up finding worked out a lot better
is a light six beat kick.
So instead of having to get each one of those two kicks
do all the work that the kick is going to do,
I now have a six beat kick where I'm just
keeping a light flutter and it's enough
to turn my body and keep my feet
up close to the surface of the water.
I'm actually, even though I'm kicking more,
I'm putting less work into kicking.
And this is why you'll hear me say things in the vlog
where I'm like, you know what?
Don't focus on making your kick that much better
because its not gonna make you that much faster,
but we still go and do a bunch of kick sets
in all of our swim sets.
It's because your kick needs to be strong enough
to build the foundation of your swim stroke,
getting up close to the surface of the water
and rotating your body, but in my opinion
it doesn't need to be any stronger.
So it needs to be strong enough,
not so super strong.
Because odds are, as most tri-athletes,
we're not gonna get it to the point of being
so super strong if we didn't
come from a swimming background.
There you go.
Bobblehead Taren and I have to go and present
well out of town, so I got to motor.
(funky music)
So we are heading into this random air field
way out of town in Winnipeg to do a speech to
about 12 business owners.
This is not necessarily triathlon Taren focus.
What I do is I talk about triathlon Taren
and how social media allows you to connect
with people all over the world,
build authentic relationships and it doesn't have to be
about buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff.
So triathalon Taren is the backdrop that allows me to do it
but chatting about social media in general.
It's fun.
Certified cameraman here?
- Okay, yes.
(chatter)
- So Taren, welcome, and over to you.
- Thank you.
Thanks for having me.
(funky music)
Woo doggy.
Done.
That was I think a two hour presentation.
At the end they said, do you have any
parting words about social media and I said yes.
The best thing about social media advertising
is that when you do a wealth, it's not advertising at all.
It's creating actual one on one connections,
friendships, people that you chat with,
you help out.
Like I've said about the Trainiacs.
Many times before, the best part about doing this
is that I feel like I've got friends all around the world.
And if you approach your social media tactics
as a business from the standpoint of
how do I help the most people and
how do I connect with the most people,
then it doesn't feel like advertising
and coaxing people into doing business with you.
You're kind of just going through life together
with your followers, and that's how I feel about you guys.
And gals.
And kids.
And dogs, we love dogs.
And goats.
Alright, I gotta get to another meeting in a city
about more social advertising, so alright.
I'll see you all later, Trainiacs.
Have a good one.