When you look at the cost of getting
into triathlon, there is a lot of super expensive try gear that we could buy,
and most of it is a total waste of money that won't make any of us any faster.
But in some cases, those luxury purchases
will actually make a big difference in our training and racing.
These eight super high end purchases are the best ways to get rid of that $40,000
burning a hole in your pocket, or they're just a fun way to spend a few
minutes on YouTube lusting after things we'll buy in our rich and famous futures.
What's up, Motivators? My name is Tarrin.
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Before getting into this, I want to say that every single one
of these items is something that I have tested and used for years.
We are going to start at the least
expensive upgrades and then work our way to the obscenely expensive purchases.
The first high end purchase is a set of Magic 5 3D printed swim goggles.
Now, these aren't a huge expense.
They only cost about $85 to $95, depending on the model that you want to get.
These are twice as expensive as the average goggles.
The thing that's really nice about
the Magic 5 goggles is that you take a scan of your face and the Magic 5 3D
prints goggles specifically for your eye socket.
So what happens is you get a really nice, narrow set of goggles that don't create
a lot of drag in the water that are specifically customized to you,
so you have a huge amount of viewing area and you don't have to put a ton
of pressure on those goggles to suction them down to your face.
It's a fairly small difference in price for a big difference in performance.
And the more we can enjoy our swimming, the better we will be.
I'm not sponsored by the Magic 5 goggles, but I have a link to where you can get
them with a small discount on the Magic Five's website in the description below.
The next thing that I found made a huge
difference was tracking my heart rate variability.
Now, you can do this on a Garmin watch.
You can use a whoop strap.
You can use an Aura Ring.
You can even use an app like HRV for training.
In a lot of cases, those are going to cost anywhere from 50 to, say, $400.
Heart rate variability measures the difference in when your heart beats.
When you're really healthy and you're
training really well and recovering really well, there will actually be a lot
of variation in the difference in the amount of time that it takes
for your heart to beat from one beat to the next.
But if you're sick or you're over training or you drank a bottle of wine the night
before, your heartbeats are going to just be going through the motion,
and there isn't going to be a lot of variation in those heartbeats.
So what heart rate variability allows you
to do is you start to understand how much is too much.
When can you push a little bit more?
What activities that you do one day affect you in your readiness the next day?
Doing it for a period of about three
to four months will allow you to go through a number of cycles of training
and go through your day to day routines, understanding what affects your readiness
to train and how much you need to offset that with proper recovery.
The next luxury purchase that people ask questions about is a set of Super Shoes.
Super shoes are carbon plated shoes where
there is a plate of carbon going through the sole of the shoe,
and it tends to match with a sole made of P-back's foam and give you a really big
spring with every single footstrike that you make.
Now, yes, there have been some studies
showing that Super Shoes might increase the likelihood of injury.
I haven't really seen the studies designed
really well to convince me that the super shoes are causing these injuries.
What I have seen, however, is study after study, person after person,
including myself, that put on a pair of super shoes
and almost instantly increased the speed that they ran.
You just have to make sure that you offset
the use of those super shoes with a gradual introduction of using them
a little bit week by week, more and more, and making sure that you're doing strength
training to offset that need for a nice, stable lower leg.
Super shoes cost anywhere from 200 to all the way up to almost 500 dollars.
But in my opinion, they're very well worth it.
The fourth thing that is related
to that is a really nice strength set up that you can do at home.
Us try athletes tend not to be gym rats
where we really like going and doing strength training in a gym,
but that doesn't mean that we should ignore strength training.
I think that we should all be doing more
strength training than almost any of us endurance athletes are because there is no
one single thing that is consistently proven time and time and again to be as
significant a performance enhancer as strength training is.
Thing about it is that us triathletes are very busy with swim, bike, run,
and our day to day life to fit in strength training.
So if we have a nice strength training set
up at home, we're going to be much more likely to do it.
The cost of a really good strength
training setup is actually far less than you think.
We actually found that the use of about
five kettlebells for men ranging from about 15 pounds all the way up
to about 55 pounds, and women ranging from 10 pounds all
the way up to about 45 pounds, is more than enough to do every single
strength workout that endurance athletes need to do.
Everything from heavy strength workouts
to very mobility-focused workouts to very stability-focused workouts,
kettlebells are about as versatile as you can possibly get,
and for about $500 to $700, you can get anywhere between about five
and seven kettlebells, and you will have a perfect gym set up
that you won't ever have to go and buy additional equipment for.
The next most important luxury purchase
that I think people should seriously consider is their bike touchpoint setup.
And by that, what I mean is the front end
of your bike, the bike saddle, and getting a proper bike fit.
We only interact with the bike at three points: pedals, seat, and handlebars.
The pedals don't adjust a lot, but a seat adjusts up, down, forward.
The design of the saddle can change the width, the length.
Is it a split nose or is it a single nose?
And then the front end of the bike, the cockpit, where we get into the aerobar
position and getting that position so dialed in that we are powerful
and comfortable and aerodynamic is going to make a huge difference in your
performance and get off the bike and still feel fresh.
That's when you start becoming a really deadly triathlete.
This is going to make a much bigger
difference than the $12, $14, $17,000 bike.
I think that people should be actually looking at getting more like the $6,
to $8,000 bike and then saving that additional money for maybe the $1,000
to $2,000 that you have to spend on a customized front end cockpit,
a saddle that you love, and a bike fit to nail it all down.
The sixth thing that I really liked when I
was training a lot was a super nice Swift setup.
And it doesn't have to be a Swift setup.
It can be a trainer road setup.
It can be a ruby setup.
And I believe that the Swift Hub trainer is probably the single best trainer out
there for getting started training indoors.
But if you want the ultimate experience,
the setup that I love the most was a Oahu kicker paired with a Oahu Rise that raised
the front end of the bike up and down as I went over hills in Swift.
And now, I'd probably even add in a rocker
plate because rocker plates seem to be getting a lot more realistic to take
that pressure off the saddle, just being locked into one place.
And then having a really big TV and a fan right in front of you to cool you off,
that was by far the most enjoyable Swift setup that I ever used.
The second to last thing you are going
to say that it's very lame, so I will make it very quick,
but it does make a huge difference, is a really nice bed setup.
And this might cost anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000, but having a bed that you love
being in that you don't feel sore after in the morning, and then a temperature
and set up in the room with the lights and maybe an eye mask,
basically your entire sleep hygiene setup to make sure that you can get in at least
seven continuous hours of sleep every single night.
It's going to sound like a very small thing, but it is probably just as
impactful as having a good strength training set up in your training plan.
Moving on to the very most expensive piece of triathlon equipment that I ever tried
and fell in love with, we'll end it
with the Masters Paws Swimspa, costing anywhere from $35,000 to $70,000.
Full disclosure here, I'm not sponsored by Masters Paws anymore,
but I used to be sponsored by Masters Paws.
My first Masters Paws Swimspa was given to me by Masters Paws.
When we moved at one point, I bought another Swimspa out of my own pocket.
The reason being that the amount of time that you spend in a swim spot as
an amateur swimmer is way more impactful than the thousands of meters that you
could swim on your own or even in a swim group.
When I got the first Masters' Pa's Swim Spot,
I went from those four 60 to 90 minutes swims down to three 30 minutes swims
in the Masters' Pa's Swim Spot and just one swim squad swim.
And even though I was swimming less than
half as much, this was actually when I was swimming my fastest.
The reason being that I had a mirror
on the bottom of the swim spot and then a mirror in front.
And every single stroke that I took was
very purposeful where I could see the exact technique.
I was able to fix technique issues that I've been working on for six years.
I got about 15 seconds faster per 100
meters, all in the course of about two months.
Again, I'm not sponsored by Masters Paws anymore, but I still have a link where you
can go and get a discount on a swim spa of your own.
That is linked in the description below.
Now, I want to hear from you.
What was the favorite purchase you've ever made in triathlon?
Maybe it was a small purchase, maybe it was a big purchase.
But I want to hear what is the most
favorite thing that you have ever purchased.
Let me know in the comments below.
And finally, if you want to see the worst purchases that you can make that are
expensive and don't make a difference in either your race or your training
performance, click the video that's on the screen right now where I talk about
the biggest wastes of money that triathletes shouldn't make.
Later, Motivators.