- Woohoo, that was spicy.
Wow.
So I just ended up putting on
the new Garmin Rally XC Pedal
so I can get Power Meter on the gravel bike here
and I just held myself accountable to that power
with some low cadence, four times, four minutes
260 watts at 60 RPM, that's grinding.
Something that a lot of people ask
is like, do I have to have power?
Do, you absolutely don't have to have power.
I actually recommend that most people start with heart rate
but it is beneficial.
Question is like, is it mandatory?
I look at things in triathlon
from the standpoint of, there's probably 5% of the things
that you hear about out there
that contribute to 95% of your results.
But there is 95% of the things that you hear about
might only contribute to that last 5% of the results.
So people end up putting more emphasis on things
that don't give as good a result.
What I want to go through today
are the things that I obsess about
that a lot of people probably aren't,
and that you probably aren't
that I think make a really big difference
in all of your endurance performance.
So all right, the first thing that I get really,
really obsessed about, is bike fit.
And you might say like, whoa, whoa, whoa Taren.
Like, I've had a bike fit, yeah, I'm cool, I do it.
Well I wanna show you something here.
These here are the SOLESTAR carbon fiber cycling insoles.
I tried these about two, three years ago
and I put them in every single one of my shoes.
What I ended up finding
is that peak power was way, way higher
when I would try to sprint
using these insoles versus even, structured insoles
let alone just the standard insoles that you get.
(groaning) I've got to show you something here.
On a triathlon bike, we have four
really just three points of contact
and interaction with the bike.
We have the pedals, we have the seat,
we have the handlebars.
And everything that we do with our body
is completely meant to transfer the power
that we're putting out from our body
into the bike.
And if you have your bike position dialed in
as well as you possibly can,
you're A, gonna transfer more power into the pedals
and less is gonna leak side to side
and move around.
You're gonna be able to stay in that aero position longer
with less shifting around
which is gonna make a huge difference
because about 85% of the aerodynamic drag
that we have to push through the air
is actually made by our bodies.
So the more aero we can make that, the better.
And the more comfortable we can be
in that position, the better we're going to be able to run.
So in my case, I don't just get a bike fit,
I obsess over a bike fit.
I do things like I make sure
that I have the most structured,
stable insoles in my shoes that I possibly can
so that my contact with the pedals is good.
I will go through a saddle fit process
where I've tested as many as 12 saddles
and then we'll go back and forth
with tiny little millimeter increments here.
Before Canyon had a super adjustable cockpit
I spent hundreds of dollars of my own money
to get an adjustable cockpit
and then even customized it beyond that
to make sure that all of my contact points
were dialed in.
It's not just about getting a bike fit
it's about making sure that you are as comfortable
in the aero position, as you are in the road position.
The next thing that I am obsessed over
is heart rate monitoring
and making sure that my low heart rate workouts
are actually low heart rate workouts.
There's a couple of things that I do
that I find is different than most people.
First, most people aren't using
a wrist based heart rate monitor, which is good.
If you are using a wrist based heart rate monitor
it's not gonna be super accurate for running.
I find in my testing, that it's perfectly fine
for steady state stuff like being around the house or biking
but when you start jostling this thing on your wrist a lot
the accuracy can be off by as much as 30 or 40 beats.
So I absolutely have this heart rate monitor on
almost all the time, for every single workout that I do
besides swimming, that's a topic for another video.
Now, some of the things that I do
that are difficult than other people
is number one, I don't really obsess.
You might not think this, but I tend not to worry
about getting that 80/20 just right.
More than anything, I tend to make sure
that during times of the year
when I'm not training for anything
the vast majority of my training is low intensity.
And this is going to ensure that when I start adding in
more race specific preparation
that I've built up a ton of time
at low intensity, so that I can absorb it.
And as a general rule of thumb
what I do, is I make my long bikes, my long runs,
recovery bikes, my recovery runs,
all low intensity, and that alone
is going to be probably 80% of the sessions
that I've got in my training plan
and that is going to ensure
that I get roughly around that 80/20.
But here's the big thing that I do that is different
from most people.
I am militant about making sure
that I stay under my heart rate cap.
I use the Karvonen method to calculate
my zone two heart rate cap.
And if the group wants to run away from me,
well, I guess I'm running by myself.
I find people who are at a similar pace
with similar low intensities.
I don't adapt my training
to other people's intensities
and that's what most people do.
Most people go and find training groups
and go like, all right well you know,
it is kind of a, a low intensity ride
and what happens in most groups is one person surges
and if the group is large enough
and not everyone is on board with keeping it low intensity
somebody else is gonna surge
and then another person is gonna surge
and then before you know it, you are in zone three.
Zone three.
And this is going to accumulate tons of lactic acid,
tons of cortisol,
you're gonna be more susceptible to injury.
You are going to be less able
to do those super high intensities
when you need to do the high intensity efforts
that actually go ahead and make you faster.
You're not gonna be teaching your body
how you be metabolically flexible
by burning carbohydrates as well as fat.
There's so many things that happen
when you get out of that low intensity training
for the vast majority of your training.
So when I do low intensity training,
it is low intensity training, no ifs, ands, or buts about it
and that is not what most people do.
The next thing that I really, really focus on
is related to a little bit of me time.
A lot of people have seen me talk about yoga recently.
Now, this isn't because I think yoga itself
is a performance enhancer.
Over the last few years, what I have tried
is Wim Hof breath work, I've tried meditation,
I have tried yoga specifically.
And is breath work one of those things that is 95%
or is yoga one of those things that amounts
to 95% of results?
Or is meditation? The jury is out for me.
But what I've personally found
is that about five, six years ago
when life started getting a little bit busier,
when I became a little bit more of a grownup
I started feeling this sense of busyness
and a little bit of buzz.
And what I found is that when I came into workouts
I was not as fresh, I wasn't as focused,
I wasn't as calm and focused on executing the workout
the way that it needed to be executed.
So I missed a lot more workouts,
I was sore a lot more.
My sleep was sort of battling with the training load.
As I would train more, I would get a little more anxious
accumulate a little more cortisol
and then I would not sleep as well.
So then I wasn't absorbing the training as well.
What I ended up finding is that
as long as I take about 10 minutes of me time
every single day, whether it be breath work
whether it be just strict meditation
or whether you do what I'm doing now
which is kind of combining meditation
with a little bit of yoga and activation
so that I'm waking up,
I'm having that 10 minutes of me time,
my cortisol is coming down, my parasympathetic,
my relaxation in the body is increasing
which is then going to allow me to stay healthy
and thus, absorb the training
and execute it really well because I'm less buzzy.
I think that triathletes really, really need to focus
on this offset of training load.
We tend not to struggle with this
but we also then need to balance that out
with training recovery.
And having a little bit of me time
and a little bit of quiet time
is a really big part of that.
Also, look at this.
I can do this, I can actually sit cross legged now.
The next major issue that I see triathletes getting wrong
is, as it relates to swimming.
When I first started trying to really improve my swim
I did what most people do
and I joined a master swim program.
And it got me a little bit more comfortable
with doing workouts,
but it didn't really improve my swim much, if at all
because I would go to these workouts
and I would do one drill one day
and then one drill another day
and then I'd be doing 50's one day
and then I'd be doing 400's the next day.
And there was really no sort of cohesive plan
or any sort of sequence of, all right,
we're going to take the entire group
and we're gonna focus on building from one drill
to the next drill, to the next drill,
to the next drill, and you might say well,
doesn't everyone have unique different issues
that they're working with?
Well, yeah, sort of
but when we're talking about amateur triathletes
the vast majority of us
don't even have basic technique.
Even like, the front pack triathletes
in a lot of cases, don't have basic technique down right.
I finally started making improvements
when I joined the Tower 26 Swim Program
which is very sequential, all year round.
It's this program of one skill building on the next,
building on the next, building on the next
and it's what we did in our book
which, as opposed to like, really structured
performance level swimming
which is what Tower 26 is, this is like,
a structured program for proficiency.
Getting you to the point of being able
to do a Tower 26 program
or execute really intense key master swims
or triathlon group swims.
And the big thing that I find
is that whether it is a triathlon training group,
whether it is a master swim club,
whether you're doing something on your own
the drills, the sequences, the distances of the swim
the intensities of the swim
they just bounce all around
and instead of creating a swim training plan
the coaches are creating swim workouts.
And the workouts don't really relate
to each other whatsoever.
And what happens is you hear a lot of athletes
that are like, oh, I'm working on this
or oh, I think I've got it figured out this year.
Or oh, well you know what?
I'm always a 37 minute, Half Ironman swimmer
and always have been.
That's because people aren't working on a program
that is literally taking them,
no ifs, ands, or buts about it
from one skill to the next skill
to make improvements.
The next thing that I do, but this is really only
during periods where I'm focusing on a race buildup
and I'm accumulating really big training loads
is that before I was sponsored by Garmin,
you all saw me trying things like the Oura Ring
and like, the WHOOP Strap
and talking a lot about HRV.
Those companies are competitors to Garmin
because Garmin has the body battery system
so I just don't talk about them anymore
but I still do use HRV during times of really big training.
Most people don't use HRV
or they might use one of the those,
what I think are really over complicated methods
they take HRV, and they take your training
and then they take your body temperature
and then they take your amount of sleep
and then they also take your resting heart rate
and then they take a whole bunch of things
and then they give you a readiness factor every single day.
I'm really not into all of that
because I think it over complicates things
and gives people so much information
that you get paralysis by analysis.
So what I like to do,
when I'm doing really big blocks of training
to make sure I'm not going too deep into the well
is we have a calculator that I'll give you at the end
of this video, that, it takes your seven day average HRV
and compares it to your 30 day average HRV
and if that seven day average dips under the 30 day average
it's an indication that what's happening
in the last few days,
the last three to seven days
is a little bit too much for you.
You take anywhere from between one and three days
of easy training, as a little bit of a rest.
Your HRV will likely come back
over that 30 day average,
and then you pick back up again.
This is getting ahead of some of those issues
that are really common to over training.
That was actually the very first indication
that I started getting, way back at the beginning of 2020
that I had some health issues
that no matter how much we dropped down
the training that I was doing
my HRV was still just going down.
And that's where we said, you know what
it's time to just focus on health again
because you're not absorbing the training
by grinding yourself into the ground.
And I think that's how I've been able to come back
and be kinda sorta healthier again.
Like, I mean it took a long time
to get back around to it
but things are starting to come back around.
As opposed to being one of those athletes
that gets over trained
and this is boom, out of the sport indefinitely.
Like, forever.
There's lots of friends that have just lost
because they're consistently injured
and never coming back.
The last thing that I want to point out
regardless of whether you're doing your training yourself
or whether you're using a one-on-one coach
or whether you're using TrainingPeaks
or whether you are using even our app
or however you are getting your training.
And you are sitting here on your computer
just plugging away
or you're just receiving the training from a coach,
what I see athletes doing, even if they're using
all of the data, and tracking everything
and putting it in to TrainingPeaks
or they're using a one-on-one coach
they look at every single workout as a workout.
I have to design a workout.
As opposed to looking at it as
I am designing an overall training plan.
And the thing that I obsess about
when I'm looking at designing a training plan
and I look at implementing training
for our athletes in our app
is every single session has to have a purpose.
Sometimes that purpose is FTP building,
sometimes it's V02 Max building,
sometimes it's neuromuscular power building.
Sometimes it's just simply recovery
and getting some blood flow into the muscles.
Others, it's fat burning and endurance building.
Others, it's comfort at race pace
and lactate tolerance.
And there is a different time for each of these
and more than anything, what I see
from athletes and from one-on-one coaches
regardless of what data you're using
is that they just look at a single workout
and they say all right, I am going to build workouts.
As opposed to looking at a situation where like,
all right, most athletes in December
are at a certain level, and physiologically
what do we need them to be able to do
come July, let's say, for the race
and what are the building blocks
that we need to build in the athlete's body
along the way, which includes rest, neuromuscular power
and they all have specific times.
One of the reasons that we didn't build
a one-to-one coaching business with me
or with a whole bunch of coaches
even though there lots of good coaches out there,
and we built a training app
is because we can control with algorithms
making sure that everyone is doing the right purpose
at the right time, with the right training load
and making sure that that structure is provided to you.
Come on guys, let's wrap up the video.
So I promise you, there's gonna be
a link in the description below
to a spot that you can download the HRV spreadsheet.
That's for free, you just put your email address in.
If you don't want the full training plan
but you want some structure to your swimming
and you're just getting started
go check out our swim book at triathlonswimfoundations.com
link is in the description below to that.
And if you say, you know what
I'm ready to do a full training plan
and I want all of this structure for the swim,
for the heart rate, for the overall purpose
of every single workout
set out for you, again, link in the description below
to our training app
which you can get at app.mymottiv.com.
Now that these guys are done peeing
and ruining the grass
I will say later trainiacs
and if you aren't already subscribed
hit the subscribe button below.