(rumbling)
- Goodness.
Morning Trainiacs.
We have been in a deep freeze over the holidays.
Here we are, it's minus 25 celsius,
so that's minus 13 Fahrenheit.
(grunting)
Something that happened over the holidays was
I witnessed a swim coach giving some excellent swimmers
advice but not great advice for triathletes;
totally different.
We're gonna get into what happened and
why you need some different training as a triathlete
than a swimmer.
(footsteps)
I don't know if we can actually do it in this place
because it's the holidays and it's a different pool.
I don't know if they'll be cool with me and you
in there with the camera.
Let's see.
(upbeat techno music)
This is an interesting little facility here.
I could go for a slide.
Okay, so what happened that I witnessed over the week
of the holidays, was this.
There's an ex-swimmer, ex elite swimmer
that was helping age group triathletes learn how to swim
and they were saying, why are my legs sinking
and what this elite swimmer said, well okay,
here's what you do.
Let's see if I can go over there and show you.
You stick your head out of the water
and you get your heels up to the surface of the water
and just by holding yourself up
you should be able to balance and float on the water
even with your head out of the water.
That ain't gonna happen for the average triathlon swimmer.
It just--it no, no, no.
It can't happen.
We don't have the ankle flexibility because we run
and beat up our ankles.
We don't have the upper body flexibility because
most of us are sitting at a desk all day.
We're not loose and limber kids that are like,
as flexible as Gumby.
We don't have the body awareness
because we didn't grow up with years and years
of tens of thousands of yards and meters of swimming.
It just isn't going to happen, meanwhile,
these guys are being told to do some drills
and aspects of swim balance, that they physically
are incapable of doing because that elite swimmer
just assumed that because she could do it
and all of the elite swimmers around her could do it,
age group triathletes could do it.
So these guys are going to end up having sinking legs
because they can't actually perform the drills
until somebody tells them differently.
That's age group triathletes we require
a different approach that is actually a fair bit more
simple than what you would expect for an elite swimmer.
So that makes it easy on us, but you need
the right approach.
We're gonna talk about that after I do this little,
it's a water run.
It's not much to it.
(upbeat pop music)
Well it's just a 36 minute kinda high zoned two run.
I like salt water pools, I'll tell you that.
So even just as I was doing the like, showing,
what that other coach was doing,
I had a hard time doing it.
I'll explain why it's so hard for us to do
what actual swimmers do back home.
I got talked to about the camera, rightfully so.
Jumpin' jahoosafit.
It is cold out there Trainiacs.
Okay, so swimming.
There is a lot of info out there about triathlon swimming.
Why?
Because it's probably the hardest thing
that most triathletes have to learn
when they get into the sport.
So that means that every publication out there in the world
can just put out swimming this, swimming that,
swimming this, and people will gobble it up
because everyone's looking for the answer
for how to swim better.
Dampening is, that all of this information
tends to confuse people because there's so much
out there and you'll see articles that are like,
the Nine Steps of the Perfect Triathlon Swim Catch.
Like, nine steps?
Nine steps of something that takes half a second.
How is anyone going to remember nine things
when they're doing that and there's waves crashing
around them and there's 2000 of their closest friends
around them.
It isn't that hard.
Why are there nine steps?
Well there's nine steps because when you start getting into
the elite aspect of swimming;
a speed swimmer in high school, college swimmers,
Olympians, there are all of these little nuances
that are going to make the difference between winning
and being a hundredth of a second behind
and not winning a race.
So you have to have every aspect
of those nine steps correct.
We're triathletes however, we don't need to be Olympians
and worry about hundredths of a second
over a 50 meter length.
We just need to get the basics right
and by getting the basics right, that alone
puts us miles ahead of most triathletes out there.
So let's talk about what those basics are.
I think I gotta stand for this.
Okay, so if you've listened to Gerry Rodrigues Tower26,
you know about tautness, alignment, propulsion.
It's what his swim coaching platform is based off of,
hence, it's what my swim coaching platform
on Team Trainiac is completely based off of.
And the concept is that you need to be taught,
aligned, and have good propulsion
and everything beyond that is minutia
that is not going to make a huge difference to you
as a triathlon swimmer.
Tautness: are you firm in the water?
Are you stiff or are you wiggly and moving around?
Think about trying to push a 3000 pound log
across the surface of the water very quick, right?
Now think about trying to push a half pound pool noodle
across the water.
Very wiggly, very slow, right?
So we wanna build into our body,
the ability to be tight like that log.
Boom, nice and stiff; not wiggling side to side,
not flexing up and down, not kicking really big
and loose and wiggly.
How you do that is by, I have eight drills
that I've recommended to the virtual camp athletes
that take you through a kick progression where you start
kicking with fins, a snorkel and a kick board;
arms extended, head looking straight down at the bottom
of the pool, very light kick, feet within a channel
that is above a foot-and-a-half wide,
back of the head, butt cheeks, heels at the surface
of the water.
Graduate out of that to no kick board
and then no fins, and then you move from that
to vertical kicking and then you move from that
to a little bit of side kicking.
All along the way, you're getting yourself closer
and closer to having that really tight body
but closer and closer to actual swimming: nice and tight.
Alignment: alignment can be explained like this.
If you are trying to swim but your feet are
coming out to the side one way or another,
or they are dropping down, or your arms are coming outside
of that channel and flailing any which way,
the sides are just dead straight.
If you're to look at elite youth swimmers
as they're swimming from the feet on,
it's gonna look like they are just perfectly straight.
So we have to build that ability to be nice and aligned
and we do that by a bunch of snorkel and pull work
and we make that harder with the band
because it tends to kick out our legs.
So we make it harder so that we can amplify
the counter balance to that, so we are aware
of what being properly aligned is actually like.
As far as the hands go, Tower26, we learn that
your hand enters in between the edge of your head,
edge of the shoulder in that line, and just goes
straight down in that line not in and then out,
not out and around.
Hand enters in that line straight down.
Boom push back.
It's simple as that.
When it comes to propulsion it is as simple as
get your hand in, in that line that we just talked about.
Keep the shoulder higher than the elbow
which is higher than the wrist, which is higher
than the fingertips.
Practice going like this.
Don't have to worry about the crazy, flexible
early vertical form, which we can't do
because of our upper body.
Just get that hand a little bit bent
so that we've got some surface to push off of,
keep that hand firm, push back.
That's it.
So you might be saying, well Taren, you know,
I already I kinda feel aligned.
I feel taut.
I think I've got good propulsion.
Well, these are the same drills that are done by
pro triathletes Rachel McBride, Kerry Lester,
Scott DeFilippis, Lionel Sanders, Sarah Piampiano.
All of these phenomenal pro triathletes
still go through the same program
because they don't need to become Olympians
and we all benefit from doing these simple things
right over and over and over.
Okay, so how do you actually move forward with this?
Few things: if you are still at the point
of not feeling comfortable in the water,
that means you can't yet swim a 400 meter or yard
continuous without stops, effort,
and without feeling out of breath at the end of it,
you need to develop comfort in the water
and for that, go to triathlontaren.com/swimdrillprogram
If you are already able to do that 400 meter or yard test
and you want to improve your swimming,
Tower26 is great.
Our Team Trainiac platform which is going to be live,
if not when you watch this, but very shortly after,
you can go to triathlontaren.com/teamweightless
and just be emailed when it is live
because all of our stuff is largely based off of
that Tower26 stuff.
So we go Trainiacs if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
If you are subscribed it's gonna be a new 2019;
lots of big things, lots of awesome things
with Team Trainiac.
Stay tuned for it all.
And uh, I gotta start getting this place ready
to do, to head out to (mumbles).
Later.