- Oh, to pull and snorkel and kick and bend.
Just loaded with tips here today.
If you go there right now, it's ugly.
Morning, trainiacs!
Yesterday was the first road ride outside,
and that was my happy place.
I was out with Coach Pat,
which means that obviously Coach Pat is back.
He wasn't in bad shape yesterday, so, ooh, so many options.
Frightened to see what the swim is gonna be like today.
There is pull, snorkel, kick, and bend,
to pull and snorkel and kick and bend.
(lighthearted music)
A tasty little 3,900-meter set.
Let's talk about this right here.
I've never talked about it.
We're gonna talk about it.
Alright, this is Taren Gesell coming to you live
from my cycling place.
So I've mentioned this a lot of times,
but I don't think I actually talked
about how exactly you use it.
The purpose in this, I would say, two main things:
number one, it's a snorkel.
It's a swimmer's snorkel meant for freestyle,
and you don't have to turn your head.
It's not as easy as it looks,
because you actually get a little bit
of carbon dioxide, monoxide, dioxide?
Whatever you breathe out you get a little bit in here,
and then when you suck it in,
you're not getting full, pure air,
so it's actually a little bit tougher
than you'd expect the first few times that you use it.
Small tip, you're gonna get water up your nose.
Breathe out like either halfway down the pool
or at every turn.
Just loaded with tips here today.
First way that this really helps you out
is it calms your head down
because if you're getting into triathlon,
you don't have a swim background,
you're going to want to lift your head to breathe.
Natural to want to lift your entire upper body
to get your head out of the water
and get a nice, big gulp of oxygen,
but what happens is when you lift your head really hard,
you're actually gonna make your legs sink,
you're gonna drag more, you're gonna go slower,
you're gonna sink, so having this allows you
to not have to lift your head very at all,
and it gets you in the habit of keeping your head steady.
Next thing that it helps you do
is it takes away some of the movement that you have to do.
If you don't have to worry about moving side-to-side
nearly as much at the same time as lifting your head,
at same time as kicking,
at the same time as turning your arms over,
you can focus on fewer things, and the number one thing
that you're able to focus on a lot better
is catch at the front of your stroke,
and those two things, having a head that doesn't lift
out of the water and just sits in place
and moves to the side as you're breathing,
that allows you to have a nice, streamlined,
torpedo-like frontal (mumbling),
feels like it'd be the right thing to say.
In the water reducing drag, and it allows you
to just focus on having your chest go side-to-side
if you're not good lifting your head,
so it gives you a little bit better body (mumbling),
body positioning in general,
but as far as that head lift goes, it's not fool-proof,
because when you do take the snorkel off,
and you go back to having to breathe on your side,
you still are gonna have a fair bit of head movement.
What you wanna do is kind of engrain in your mind
how steady your head is when you got this,
and then translate that to your normal stroke,
and just think about calming the movement of your head
from side to side and up and down and all around,
and you just want to move to the side
and grab a little pocket of air.
Easy as that.
The next thing is the stroke.
To do that, I'm going to enlist in the help
of a trusty handrail.
Get the snorkel on.
It allows you to, like I said, focus a lot
on the front part of your stroke,
so when you get the snorkel on,
it allows you to focus on the front part of your stroke,
and that's the most important part of your stroke.
The kick is maybe, at best, like we're talking
eight to 12% of the overall pie
that goes into moving yourself forward.
The stroke is a much bigger part of that,
and what you want is you want to catch as much of the water
at the front of the stroke and have it feel
almost like you're grabbing something that's solid.
That's why we use this, and how you wanna think about it
is you wanna get the feeling at the front of the stroke
like you're grabbing water and using it
to move yourself forward.
Picture this in your mind as you've got the snorkel on
and you're pushing yourself forward.
Keep your shoulder steady because if you lift it up
to get that propulsion,
you're gonna develop shoulder problems
but have this in mind, and you're gonna be a better swimmer.
Grab one of these.
They're like 15 bucks.
Be happy you did.
Pair this with a pull boy and a band,
you're gonna take everything out of the overall stroke
besides just body roll and your arm turnover.
We're off to the office.
(hip-hop music)
I mentioned about four, five days ago
that we're doing a little bit of planning
to make triathlontaren.com a little bit fancier.
If you go there right now, it gets, it's ugly.
There ain't much to it, but we wanna put a lot more
of the content that it doesn't belong in the vlog,
but it would make for a really good written article
with supporting pictures and maybe a video
that goes alongside of it.
Oh, like the core routine, yeah, that we put up yesterday,
if we were just to do a core routine in the vlog,
take up the entire vlog, but I can create an article
in the website with a video that's just dedicated
to how to do that core routine, so that said,
we're doing some figuring about what content to put there.
Why don't we crowdsource that today?
Ask me basically any question that you want
in the comments below.
At very least, in the next couple days,
I'll do a Q and A, answer as many questions as I can
live here, and then if it's something that I'm like,
"Ooh, you know what,
"that would make a really good blog post."
Oh, you're still rotating.
I'm gonna stop that.
And if it makes a good blog post,
we'll create a blog post over it,
and there's gonna be like a whole redesign out of that.
Ask you questions down below.
(hip-hop music)
Is that a camera, is that a camera?
Is it on?
- Yeah.
- Really? - Yeah.
- What are you doing, what are you filming?
What are you camera-ing?
- Filming this.
- Thank you.
- Okay, bye.
- Bye!
- I like that thumbnail. - Yeah?
- The least awkward (muffled) things
made out of all my (muffled).
- 90 photos, and that's the least awkward?
- (muffled) the wall, and possibly (muffled).
- 89 of 90 photos.
This is Mel's life.
And before we call this day a wrap,
there's a special something that I wanna show ya.
(hip-hop music)
Alright, ladies and gentlemen.
This here is the Red River.
This right there is about the halfway point,
which is called The Forks in Winnipeg,
and that is, yeah, gonna be like six hours through
the 10-hour, 39k marathon swim that Coach Pat and Jacques
and I are doing in a few months.
It is crazy high right now.
Apparently, the crest was this past week,
which is a month earlier than normal,
and we're in a bit of a race because every week
that we wait, the water level goes down,
the current becomes slower, but we get to train more,
so it's a bit of a balance of,
do we wait so we're better trained, or do we do it sooner
because the current's gonna push us more?
I haven't really decided.
Alright, I'm out, end of the day.
See ya, trainiacs.