- Morning Trainiacs, welcome to the channel.
In the words of one of my new favorite YouTube channels,
Seth's Bike Hacks and Berm Peak Express,
today we're gonna do something a little different
but also kinda the same.
We are going to be talking about triathlons,
specifically for the beginner triathlete.
And what we're gonna do today
is these are the Aqua Sphere Alpha Fins.
I was told about these back in Hawaii
at the Iron Man World Championship
by a very, very decorated,
like one of America's all-time
best age group master swimmers,
and her contention is that these are the very best swim fins
that you can possibly get for training.
Now, historically, I have used these TYR CrossBlade Fins
and the reason for that is because you want a set of fins
that are somewhat pliable, that have a stiff side,
that are slightly longer by about four to six inches
than your toes, but not these short ones.
Really short fins, those Zoomer fins
that just go past the edge of your toes,
those are really good if you are Michael Phelps
or if you're a really elite swimmer
and you wanna strengthen your kick,
but for us age group triathletes,
our kick really only amounts to somewhere
in between about zero and 4% of our total propulsion
so making our kick that much stronger
really isn't gonna help us.
If we double the effectiveness of our kick,
we might only improve our propulsion
by a grand total of like 2%.
But what we can do with our kick is A, balance ourselves out
by using fins to learn how to do kick properly in drills
and we can basically use fins for recovery.
With the slightly longer fin, what we do
is we end up actually making our kick a fair bit more fluid.
It ends up kinda loosening up those muscles.
On teamtrainiac.com, we use fins at the beginning
of every single workout, basically just to prepare
the muscles for the remainder of the workout.
But, here's the thing that I don't like about these fins,
is that they tend to encourage my legs to splay side to side
because if you want your toes together almost touching
in your kick, these fins, they hit,
so it encourages your legs to splay out to the side,
creating a little bit more drag.
In addition to that, what I find is that
because these are rubber, they're not buoyant,
they end up basically driving my legs down
and it's creating that sensation of sinking in the water
which creates a little bit of panic for newer swimmers.
It's a bad technique for more experienced swimmers.
So, these Alpha Fins, I've actually been trying them
for a little while, but let me show you
why they might alleviate some of those issues
and then we'll take them into the pool and I'll show you
what they end up actually doing.
On first glance, when you first open these up,
you're gonna notice that this
is a lot heavier than this, rubber, foam.
What you're also gonna notice
is that these are like Aquaman fins.
These look really funny.
If you're walking around on deck with them,
if you're putting them on and other people
are putting on these, you might get some funny looks.
But these being foam,
you're obviously going to float a little bit better.
Also, as you can see, these are tapered basically
right in line with the edge of your foot
so you're gonna be able to get your feet quite
a bit more tight towards each other getting
that nice kick where your toes are pointed slightly in
at each other, just kissing back and forth.
There are some speed holes, I guess here,
I don't know what those are for.
It's molded, like the entire thing is molded to your feet,
you got these lines here.
They look like Aquaman fins.
So let's now take them into the pool,
I'll do a little bit of swimming
and I'll give you the play-by-play of how they actually go
in comparison to these.
And this is actually, yeah, let's just do that.
Okay, so I ended up finding some of the Stubby fins
so Zoomer Stubby Fins for basically elite swimmers,
I'll give these a try.
These TYR CrossBlades, or whatever fins look like this,
historically what I've used.
These Aquaman fins, that's what we're gonna try
and like good point about this right now is,
if you're trying, say, a new technique, a new shoe,
a new whatever it is, it's a good idea to go back
and forth immediately from one to the next.
(upbeat music)
It's been a long time
since I've used these little Stubby fins.
I forgot what they were like.
Those, you gotta work a lot harder with those.
They're much more kicky kinda kick instead of a fluid kick,
which isn't necessarily what we want
'cause we wanna conserve energy.
All right.
(upbeat music)
Compared to the Stubby fins, these fins do so much more
of the work for you and it gets a much more fluid kick.
Ahh, control.
(water running)
(upbeat music)
It's kinda actually, now that I've gone back and forth
between these and the Stubby ones,
the Stubby ones are not all bad
because it's hard to get a real quick kick.
If you're working on fast, fast swimming,
you'd want, oh, oh, oh.
If you're working on fast swimming,
the Stubby fins might work better.
Let's go to these.
Now, I'll tell you this about these fins,
they are much tighter to get on.
(water running)
(upbeat music)
The very first thing I noticed is that my feet,
because they're foam obviously,
come right up to the surface, which is a much better feeling
than what you'd normally have.
You don't want sinky feet,
that creates drag if you're like this.
You wanna be level with the surface
of the water and this gets those feet up.
(upbeat music)
And then like I was saying,
the feet are able to get nice and narrow.
So what you want when you're kicking is you want
to have your toes basically just pointed
in slightly towards each other.
And as you're practicing your kicking,
you want your toes basically just kissing each other
and if you've got that nice inward flex,
you're gonna actually catch the surface of the water.
If your toes are pointed out,
you're gonna be slicing through them
so you wanna have, sorta that, nice inward turn
and you've got that inward turn with these,
you're obviously gonna be hitting the inside of the edge.
(upbeat music)
Fins, fins, fins, we have so many fins.
I'll cut to the chase here, these here,
Aqua Sphere Alpha Fins, yeah, they're my favorite fins.
I've got one pair here, I've got a second pair here.
Now, one of the things that we need to figure out
when we are training as age group triathletes
to be prepared for a race, we have to figure out
how to get our feet up close to the surface of the water.
We don't wanna drag in the water, pushing ourselves forward,
making things tougher on ourselves by being inefficient
and if you're totally new at having those legs sinking,
that's what creates the panic response.
Now, do you end up getting that panic response
and really dragging with these fins?
No, you don't.
These are going to help you get up closer to the surface
of the water but because they are so heavy,
they are going to sink a little bit.
Because you can't get your toes close to each other,
your legs are going to separate a little bit,
that's going to create a little bit
of kinda inefficient kicking,
you're gonna splay your legs a fair bit
and it's going to therefore end up creating more drag,
bringing your legs down.
Now, are these the be-all end-all?
They're better, A, because you can get your feet closer,
it does still have that nice fluid motion
so that you do get the fluid kick
instead of a real snappy kick,
but the one thing that I don't necessarily like about these
is that it could become a crutch.
If you're using these strictly for the purpose
of making it easier to get your feet up close to the surface
of the water and then not thinking actively about how
to get those feet up close to the surface of the water
and simulate that feeling or do that exact feeling
when you take the fins off.
Because these are buoyant, it could become that crutch,
just like a pull buoy could become a crutch.
Use these fins to feel what good swimming feels like.
Have that buoyancy with the EVA foam,
getting those feet up close to the surface of the water,
but then when you take them off
and you do your normal swimming,
make sure that you are actively trying to get your legs up.
Now, next thing is, these cost $37 bucks,
these cost $25 bucks, $12 dollars more.
For that, that's kinda one of the nice things
about swim gear is that you can get much better swim gear
and instead of bike gear where to get a really nice bike,
it costs you $15,000 instead of $5,
swim gear costs you just marginally more
so I would always recommend with swim drill pull buoys,
tools like that, upgrading to the nicest equipment
that you can because it's going to make
a really big difference in your actual swimming
for a grand total of like, if you maxed out the amount
of toys that you bought in a swim bag,
maybe it's $150 bucks instead of $100 bucks.
We're triathletes, that's a drop in the bucket.
So final answer, only use these
if you're a competitive swimmer.
Only use these if that's what you've got.
If you have to get together your new swim bag,
by all means, get these.
I'm not sponsored by them, I paid my own money to get these,
I think that they are a much better tool than these,
simple as that.
Still you get the nice fluid kicking,
you get to be able to put your toes together,
you get that sensation of what it's like to float up
to the surface of the water, all good things.
I highly recommend them.
That's the video for today.
If you want to watch any more
of our beginner swimming videos, check out the ones here
and here, and if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below.
Later Trainiacs.