[music] Mark Threlfall: Welcome to GTN's Coaches Corner,
where we're going to be answering all your triathlon-related questions. You can submit
them to us using the hashtag GTN's Coaches Corner. You can submit them on YouTube and
our social media platforms. Now with racing, hopefully, commencing around the world or
in many parts of the world, we've been noticing that many of you have been hard in training,
and you've been submitting race-related questions to us. We thought we'd start up this Coaches
Corner, we'll be putting out this video once every two weeks, and basically providing a
resource to you and helping you along and through that journey.
I've got to say that there does seem to be a better theme with many of these questions
of late, regarding getting back into swimming, increasing training, and of course, getting
ready for racing. Let's get stuck in with the first question. Michel Atkins said, "I
want to know how to get my hips up and higher, closer to the surface of the water. Do I need
to arch my back or something?" Good question. It's a big question, you're definitely not
alone. To answer your first question. No, you certainly
should not be arching your back, you want to have a good strong core. As soon as you
start letting that core go, you're essentially losing that stiffness in your body and the
ability to apply as much power as you possibly can. Now to explain to people out there that
aren't aware already, the reason why you want to get your hips and your legs close to the
surface of the water, is to reduce essentially, your frontal area through the water.
If I'm coming towards you at the camera, my hips and legs were dropped. You can see that
my frontal area is increased, I'm almost dragging a plow through the water. As soon as you lift
your hips and legs up, you're reducing that frontal area more streamline through the water
and therefore, reducing the amount of effort you need to get yourself through the water.
There's a few reasons that your hips and legs may be dropping, it could be that you're looking
ahead while swimming. Whilst you're swimming, you're looking up, that's going to force your
hips and legs to drop because your body almost acts a bit like a seesaw. Lift your head up,
your hips and legs again to drop. Could be that you're lifting your head to breathe,
each time you breathe, you lift your head out of the water. Similarly, you get that
seesaw effect, because you're lifting that big weight your head up out of the water hips
next drop. Also, this might sound odd, but it could be
because you're holding your breath. If you think about it, storing a load of air in your
lungs, which is rather buoyant. Again, you get that seesaw effect, because your chest
is rising up in the water, then your hips and legs will drop down. Also, as a result,
it can actually create tension in your upper body. Because you're holding on to your breath,
that's going to limit the amount of movement, which again, it's going to lead me on to the
next one, is reduces your catch or your ability to catch and apply force at the front of the
stroke. If you think about it, if you think of almost
like your hips, or your torso, as the pivot point of your body. If you can apply force
at the front of the stroke, it's going to help to lift the legs up. If you can't apply
that force and back end of your body is going to start to drop down. You want to work out
which one is the cause for your hips and legs dropping and then address that. We've got
a ton of videos over my channel, which do address sinking legs, sinking hips, and trying
to improve that. Go check those ones out. Sticking with swimming. Jamie Fuhrman has
asked, "What is the difference between 2/4/6 bit kick, and how can I tell which you have?"
Which is another good question. Simply, there are the difference in speed or kick rate.
Two being a slow kick, six or an eight being a nice, fast leg kick. This is measured over
a full left and right arm cycle. Two bit kick would be one kick on, say, the left arm, and
then one kick on the right arm making it two kicks throughout the whole stroke. A four-bit
kick is two kicks per arm, six-bit kick, three kicks per arm, and so on. You get the picture.
That's really it, in terms of figuring out yourself with. This is actually quite tricky
because as you may have found out already when you start trying to count the number
of kicks when you swim, you actually can subconsciously affect how you're kicking because you're trying
to count at the same time. What I would say is for two-bit kick, probably is pretty obvious
because it is one kick per stroke. Between a four and six-bit kick, it can be quite tricky.
If you can find someone to count for you, or better, record you, the film you and then
you can figure out. Now, moving on to a question that I'm sure
many of you had over this past year and maybe even this year, too, unfortunately, "What
should I do if my race has been postponed?" This one comes in from Rob Brydon. Hopefully,
the actor. I mean, you got under the radar but if you've taken up triathlon, [unintelligible
00:05:29]. Anyway, he's fired on to say, "Should I continue to train hard or should I rejig
my schedule?" I think firstly, we could be here all day
answering this one that probably does deserve its own dedicated video. It is, of course,
so personal. When has the race been postponed to? Is it in simply a month's time or is it
later this year in four or five months' time? Also, what shape are you currently in? Have
you managed to get yourself in peak shape or will you weigh off that anyway? Now, first
of all, talking about that peak shape, once you get yourself into peak shape, it's worth
pointing out that you can't just sustain that indefinitely. You will eventually plateau.
Potentially, if you keep pushing at that kind of level, you're going to overtrain drop off
a cliff, which nobody wants to do, you can end up in a bit of a deep dark hole.
Initially, if you have got yourself in really good shape, you do want to back off, regardless
of whether there is in a month's time or five month's time. If it's in a month's time, you're
just backing up a little bit. Then you can push on again, just going into the race. Efforts
later this year, you may even want to think about going as far as taking a mini-break.
This isn't uncommon, a lot of pros do this in the middle of the long season. You may
just want to take a week off or a couple of weeks off, and that's to recharge physically
but also, mentally. It's a long time to be dragging out your training in a season for.
Also, if you've got a family, partner, it could be a good time to get back to them a
little bit. I mentioned, you probably made quite a lot of sacrifices to do all this training,
and might be nice to spend a bit of time with them. Get them on the side before pushing
back on. In terms of your workouts and your sessions. Again, this is so personal. What
I've done in the past for athletes, regardless of COVID, when they've had to rejig schedules.
Stripping out some of that race-specific sweet spot threshold work that can be really quite
taxing and stressful on the body. Just going back to some of the more strength-based
stuff, the zone three stuff, but also complementing it with some of the high-intensity stuff that
really short duration. Make sure we're hitting both ends of the spectrum. The threshold sweet
spot stuff is fantastic for getting you fit, but it's not the sort of workouts and efforts
that you should be doing indefinitely. Hold on to those until closer to the race. As I
said, this is a huge topic, we can go on about this for days but if you do have any other
specific questions, drop them in the comment section below using that hashtag GTN Coach's
Corner. We can maybe delve into a little bit more next week.
Next question, this one comes from Herr Daniel. He has asked or she has asked, "Is it worthy
to buy a TT tri bike as my second bike?" I don't actually compete in time trials or triathlons
but they do look cool and fun. Damn, right they do. I've heard about how they're horribly
suited to normal road riding, but I was wondering if I could still have some fun out on it even
on a solo ride. First of all, if you just want to get by TT triathlon bike, and you
don't even do triathlon, good going on you and hopefully we can convince you to do triathlon
or TTs. First of all, I would say if you're interested
in this whole going fast on a bike or maybe if you are a triathlete and you're wanting
to upgrade a little bit, make sure you've explored the clip-on aero bar option first
as you can add those onto your normal road bike. One bit of advice, if you are doing
that, push the seat or the saddle up a little bit and forwards because a row back at the
end wasn't really designed to have clip-on aero bars on so just whacking the clip-on
aero bars on and staying in your position, it's going to be a bit uncomfortable. You
need to adapt the bike a little bit because that got slightly slack a seat tube angle.
A good way doing that, just got in the saddle up and force a tiny bit.
Then, if you've explored that, and you feel like you've got as much out of that as you
possibly can, then do down the triathlon bike or TT bike route. Yes, they are super fun.
Admittedly, they can be a little less comfortable than a road bike, but you equally can get
yourself very comfortable on them. They take a little bit of getting used to adapting,
at the end of the day, you are down on the aero bars. If you want to get to the breaks,
you've got to be moving around so. Worth bearing in mind but explore that rowboat tip and arrow
bars option first. Next question from HH65FLYER, "Maybe an explanation
is needed of the different positions and use of the big end versus the small end." They're
referring to a pool buoy, Hey, in case you're wondering. Now, this is an interesting one.
From what I understand and have been told in the past is the big end essentially goes
the lowest in the water. For instance, if I'm swimming front crawl on my front, the
bigger end would go around the front, so it would be the deepest in the water.
That then means that my legs are nicely gripped onto the pool buoy. The pool buoy is not going
to slip out as easily with the smallest end, poking out the top. The only issue that does
come with that is when you go to do tumble turns and you've got this bigger thing as
you're crunching up into a pool. I won't go into the details, but anyway, that is what
I have been led to believe. I'd love to hear anyone else's evidence or explanation on this.
If you do know, get involved in the comment section down below, but bigger and depest
in the water, best grip and good buoyancy. Next question from The Car Dude, "Might be
a silly question. Nothing's a silly question. Would you include both uphill and downhill
fast sets in your hill reps or just hard going uphill and gentle coming down. Firstly, uphil
efforts, fantastic, downhill efforts? We've done a whole video on this. I would be very
careful with, they're something that you want to build up to gradually with time. Understandably,
you're paying a bit more stress and impact through your lower limbs when you're running
fast downhill. It's something that I have done in my training. I wouldn't say necessarily
go hell for leather downhills, but it can help for increasing that turnover of your
legs. If you're doing hill reps, I probably just
suggest focusing on doing hard efforts on this hilll reps and then just jogging, walking
back down. Of course, feel free to in other sessions, work on just letting yourself go,
getting used to running faster down hills, but I wouldn't necessarily suggest going hell
for leather down hills all the time. Be careful with that. YY has asked, "If you only have
four are able to display four fields of data on your bike computer during a ride, what
would it be? What do you think are the most useful four data bits to constantly look at?
Personally speaking, four probably won't be enough, but I'll try. I'd have a normalized
power and that would just be current power, maybe an average of three seconds, something
like that. I normally have my lap time. I potentially have my heart rate, although I've
got to say I'm pretty bad at using heart rate. I don't always use it all the time. Then maybe
speed. Again, maybe not as important. I probably actually substitute that more for
average lap power or average normalized lap power. Therefore when I'm doing reps, I know
how I'm doing across the board of that whole say 10-minute effort. Personally speaking,
they're the ones that I look to the most. Heart rate, if I used it more, definitely
say that's one you would keep. Hopefully, that's helped.
For the final question from Ben Quinn and they have asked, "hat does 'turning around
on two minutes' mean? Again, this is a really simple question, but
it certainly, isn't a silly question either. I'm sure many people out there have the same
question, but maybe too scared to ask. This is relevant for all sports where it is particularly
used in swimming. You'd often hear people saying, right, you've got turnaround time
of two minutes or turnaround time of three minutes. What it means is that from the moment
of leaving the wall, you have two minutes to complete that rep and then leave for the
next rep. You might complete that first rep in one minute and 30 seconds, and then you've
got 30 seconds of rest, which is static at the wall before then leaving for the next
rep, so a turnaround time or two minutes. I think that's the best way to explain it.
I don't know how else I can explain that without over-complicating it. Anyway, I hope you have
enjoyed today's video. Please do give it a thumbs up, give it a like. Please get involved
in the comment section down below. Leave your question, it's for next week, perhaps maybe
more on the postponement of races, which, I'm sure is going to come this year. Don't
forget to use that #GTN coaches corner. If you're not doing so already, make sure you're
giving us a follow over on social media and give us a subscribe just down below.
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