- New video board at the pool is absolutely lit!
(music)
How tight in can we get our elbows
without feeling any sort of pinch?
- So I should clarify that Taren didn't actually
pass off to me, he just kept running.
(engine whirring)
- What's up trainiacs?
In an effort to get more vitamin D
as per the last couple weeks,
figured I'd come out here.
Somebody had mentioned to me just recently
that they're feeling a little bit sore on the bike.
I said is it bike fit, is it something structural,
did they need to be stronger in a certain area?
I don't know, can't say from here.
But, I thought that talking about bike fit now that everyone
at least that I can think of, because it's Winnipeg
and we're outside, so everyone should be outside,
is out on their bikes and not being bike fit.
What I want to show as an example is how
Sebastian Kienle probably, what I think is
the fastest full Ironman distance
pro-triathlete out there right now.
How his bike fit looks, and look,
we as regular human triathletes can learn from that.
What we've got here is footage
from Sebastian Kienle in Kona in 2015.
I think that was probably his strongest cycling performance
because he dominated the field, passed everyone,
and then got off the bike and ran really fast, too.
So, that says how fresh he was
after annihilating the field in the bike.
We've got some really good close-up
slow motion footage here that I'll just play through.
There's a couple of things that we can learn from that,
that if you see as you scrub through here,
that his shoulders are rocking back and forth.
Now, do you wanna emulate that as a triathlete?
No, you don't.
Why Sebastian can get away with this,
and with everything basically that he does
and a lot of pro triathletes do on the bike
that we shouldn't be emulating is that these men and women
are freaks of nature, they're more flexible,
they're stronger, their bodies can recover faster
than we can, but we can look at the things that they do
on super-human levels and say alright,
they're generating a lot of power, but...
what are the things that I should be looking for
as not to do's, typically?
Because a lot of us aren't superhuman freaks of nature.
So, as you play this through, look at how much his shoulders
and his entire body is rocking back and forth.
There's a little bit of movement from side-to-side.
We don't want that as triathletes because typically
in our core, we aren't nearly as strong
as folks like Sebastian are.
We wanna be as steady as we possibly can.
So, as you are in a bike fit,
make sure that you can stay steady,
and you can turn the pedals over without having to go
ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh.
This next slow-motion clip here is a perfect spot
to look at the side view of how a bike should be set up.
You can see that at the bottom of his pedal stroke,
Sebastian's leg is almost straight, but it's not quite.
You wanna have a little bit of bend in your leg
because if you go straight and lock it out,
you're losing the fluidity to pull that pedal back up.
You can also see at the bottom of the pedal stroke...
What I want you to look at is how his foot
is fairly horizontal to the ground,
if you go back and forth.
He's not pointed down, and he's not pointed up.
The motion that you wanna think of in your head is
as you're coming to the bottom of the pedal stroke,
it's kind of like scraping mud off the front of your foot,
and he's got a perfect mud scrape going on
at the bottom of his pedal stroke.
As we scrub forward here, there's one thing
that Sebastian is able to do,
that a lot of pro triathletes even can't do,
that we certainly shouldn't be thinking
that we have to emulate, and that is his body's position
from the saddle to the handlebars.
If you take a look at this, it's probably,
I'm guessing about a six- to nine-inch drop
from the saddle to the handlebars.
You can see that over top of the stem
that there's basically no space.
No space whatsoever, and that gets Sebastian
extremely aero with his back going basically,
perfectly horizontal and flat,
he's tucked in under the wind.
For years, the thought was aero is everything.
The more aero you can get, the better.
You would actually have triathletes
that would be getting lower than this.
They would have handlebars that would
bring them down past the top of the stem.
What we've since learned is that if you aren't
flexible enough in your lower back, your glutes,
and your hamstrings to get that low.
When you get that low, and you work on being
nothing but aero at the expense of your body,
you're gonna burn out your body.
When you hop off your bike,
you aren't gonna be able to run nearly as well.
When somebody more like Jan Frodeno,
which we'll show you later, even he
is quite a bit further up, and what he's realized is that
two things, number one, the further up he is,
the fresher he is for the run, and the further up he is,
the more he can stay tucked in that tight aero position.
He's actually more aero being higher.
That said, we'll go forward here.
The position that Sebastian has got,
if you are a superhuman freak of nature,
strength-wise and flexibility-wise,
he has the exact aero position that you want.
This clip here is from the Half Ironman World Championship
a couple of years before.
Sebastian was just breaking out
as an unbelievable biker, and you can see why.
He is still, at that point, very very low.
His body is right forward on the saddle,
and being that far forward on the saddle
allows you to put a ton of power into the pedals.
He's got his hips, basically, perfectly over his foot
where the bottom of the pedal stroke is.
That puts you forward on the entire bike,
and it opens up your hip angle
so that you don't have a crotched hip angle,
and you're burning out your glutes
more than you are your quads.
You want that hip angle to be as open as possible,
like so, at 90 degrees if you can.
That's kind of a neutral quads,
glute, hamstring, burnout position.
Now here's Jan Frodeno, and what you can see
that's different between Jan and Sebastian
is that his elbow pads are raised up quite a bit
off the top of the head tube.
What that allows them to do is get his arms in this
inward V-shape, so his elbows are really tucked in.
Can we do that as regular triathletes?
Typically not, most of us don't have
the shoulder flexibility to be in that position.
But, what we wanna think about is how tight in
can we get our elbows without feeling any sort of pinch.
I'll tell you that since this race happened,
that Jan has even brought his body up further.
So, you can see from this photo right here,
that both Jan and Sebastian in behind him
are tucked in as tight as they can be.
Just watch Sebastian here for a few seconds.
It's just pure power, and granted,
we can't do that as triathletes,
but we can take some of the good aspects of his bike fit
and think about how close we can let
our bodies get to that without injuring 'em.
Get 'em back as close to horizontal as you can.
Get your arms tucked in as close as you can.
Get your body positioned as far forward
on the saddle as you can.
Keep your back flat, without any sort of humps.
But, you've gotta do it all
within your body's natural abilities.
Go any further than your body's natural abilities,
and you're gonna be doing it at the expense of your run.
Guaranteed, go to a professional bike shop.
Here ya go, Trainiacs, into the office for a little bit.
This morning was a solid swim
with some disco fantabuloso lights
that I didn't know were coming into the pool.
New video board in the pool is absolutely lit, literally!
Yellow kickboard, yes!
(bright techno music)
Trainiacs, take a look at who this is.
- No triathlon Jesse?
- Triathlon Teran.
- Ugly man?
- Very attractive man.
- Out of shape.
- Stud.
- I would still beat the crap out of you, you mind?
- Very pregnant, adorable sister, Cara.
Also, no triathlon Cara.
- I've done, like, a couple of half marathons.
- True, that's Cam, he's got the best beard in the family.
- I'll take it.
- It's family time, it's their birthdays.
So, we're gonna eat a lot of burgers.
(happy music)
We're going to retell the Gazelle family relay marathon
five legs, and there are five of us in the family.
I did the first leg, passed off to Cara.
Oh, and then I went to go around a 131.
- So, actually clarifying that Teran
didn't actually pass off to me,
he just kept running.
- Yeah. - Just passed, yeah.
- Yeah, he just passed me.
- I passed to you, past you. - Yeah,
I had to as a 180 pound,
five-foot-six girl who
barely walked down the block, had to chase him down
to get the bib number, and I got it after a while and then,
about five minutes into running after that,
I realized I was with the same people
that were running at the pace that Teran was,
and that isn't a pace that I could run at.
So, I quickly felt like I was tasting pennies.
No triathlon Kim sent me a couple of messages
being like, are you done?
I was like, no!
I was like, how are you Tweeting?
Oh, I'm just walking.
- Then you passed off to Mom,
that went really well (laughing)
- Yeah, she was not in the spot she was supposed to be,
she was in the Porta Potty, and I felt like I was dying
for the last hour and a half because literally,
children were passing me and older women
in their 80s were passing me.
So, when I finally found her,
I slammed the bib on her chest and told her to run!
- The next year, we found out that Laurie was running
as soon as she got the bib,
and as soon as you got to her around the corner, stopped.
- (laughing)
- Walked, strutted, and then, she could get to where
she could see that there were people cheering again,
and then started sprinting towards them.
(group laughing)
Every single photo of her was like,
full-on sprint, feet up to her bum and (laughing)
meanwhile, her six mile time was like an hour twenty.
So, she runs, runs.
- Passes it off to this guy.
- Mama comes in and she's tried her hardest.
No, you can see it on her face,
she really pumped it through the entire way.
So, I embrace her and it's a real heartfelt moment,
everybody's loving it and I grab the bib,
and I'm off like a shot 'cause you know I'm a real athlete.
Never trained for these things, but I run for soccer
and play all sorts of sports, so I'm an athlete.
I do this, right?
Pumping, going hard. - You look like an athlete.
- Exactly, little doughy, little doughy now, back then?
Fast, so I'm running, I'm running, I'm running, I'm running.
Thinking I'm doing it well, then I start seeing
these mile markers, or kilometer markers and going
I don't know if I'm doing so well,
don't know if I'm doing so well, so I'm still pumping,
pumping, finally up, seeing more people, more people.
Okay, I'm getting closer, getting closer.
I see who I have to pass off to, I pass it off to my dad.
When I get to him, I pass off to him (nervous breathing).
Take couple steps, all hell broke loose and everywhere...
Pasted the tree (group laughing)
- The tree didn't see it coming.
- But hey, I ran, ran hard. - Wasn't even a public tree.
- In some dude's front yard. - Yeah (laughing)
- We are a fit bunch trainiacs (laughing)
- I'm also pretty sure Barry had
just finished his cigarette.
(group laughing)
- We were very fit in our younger days, it was one of these
(imitating smoking cigarette) let's do this.
(group laughing)
- It was also Barry crossing the finish line,
it's like a scene in Rocky.
- Oh yeah. (group laughing)
Pull a stadium chair up.
(group laughing)