 Visualizing your upcoming race, or even individual training sessions is an extremely important part of improving your personal performance. A lot of people make this part of their race week routine, but if you can make it part of your daily routine you’ll reap the rewards.
We tend to visualize at two distinct times: 1) During a training session, 2) In a quiet place with our eyes closed. For the former, imagining yourself in your race situation, or performing like a world class athlete can help you improve the overall quality of your training session and kick the effort level up a notch as needed. The most important thing is to keep the mental imagery positive – run strong up the hill just like you will in the race, ride the next lonely 10k like your are passing your competitors on the bike, do those repetitive laps like you are swimming strong within a group of 2000 people. Pretend you are your Ironman idol.
Continue reading Visualize your best race
A great way to build bike specific strength is to find yourself a nice, not so steep hill and ride up it in your big chain ring. When selecting the hill look for something that will allow you to ride up for a minimum of 5 minutes. Keep your HR low and focus on a nice circular pedal stroke. Doing these in your aero position is a great way to strengthen your race specific muscles (and to look ridiculous to the common observer). If your knees aren’t tracking straight and are wobbling from side to side you should most likely put it in an easier gear. Look to hold between 50 and 60 RPM for 5-10 minutes. You should feel a gentle burn and fatigue in your quads, not the oxygen debt, lactic acid burn that you would get from a max effort hill climb. Think “weight room on the bike”.
Continue reading Big Ring Hill Intervals
Keep this one handy ’cause it will save you a trip to the bike store before and after every race. Swapping your cog set from a training wheel to a racing wheel and back again is super easy and something you can do on your own. You’ll need 3 tools and 2.5 minutes. 5 minutes if you want to clean your cog set at the same time.
You can pick two of these tools up at most bike stores. The other is your standard Vice Grip or Monkey wrench.
 Tool #1. Chain Whip – Used to hold your cogset in place while you unscrew the lock ring.
Continue reading Change your cog set
Getting adequate sleep is crucially important for your recovery and general quality of waking life. Some people would argue that a good coffee is also crucially important for the quality of waking life! A lot of us get trapped in a caffeine cycle where we have too much coffee throughout the day, have [...]
 Swimming with one arm is a common drill, but there are some modifications that you can make to spice up your life and work on your form more efficiently. The most common version of this drill is to have one arm out in front with the other doing the pulling for 25 or 50m. Often people tend to flatten out on top of the water when they do this. It is important to think about being on your side instead of being a surf board. Holding on to the bottom of a kick board with your non-pulling arm, can help you stay on your side (and give you a nice scapula/shoulder muscle stretch too). It also makes the whole kicking and breathing thing easier if you are a beginner – you can actually focus on your form instead of not drowning. Think about having that pulling hand enter the water first, fingers towards the black line and not allowing your forearm to hit the surface of the water before your hand does. Having good shoulder rotation and recovering with your arm up your side instead of way out over the water helps this.
Another, more advanced, variation is to ditch the board completely and have your non-swimming arm at your side. You will naturally breathe to the side of the nonworking arm and it will make you hyper aware of your roll and body position. Concentrate on the catch, initiating body rotation with the core muscles. You can do boring old 25 or 50m one arm drill sets with normal swim in between (to actually apply what you are drilling to your full stroke), or you can be creative and mix drill into longer steady sets like say this: 5 x 200m on your goal time as 50m drill 150m swim.
Continue reading One arm swimming
Ironman race day brings with it a ton of excitement. Often times you get so focused on the race that you forget to take care of your body. Head down, riding for 5-7hrs, it is very easy to forget to drink or eat food when you need it most. Take a moment or two [...]
Studying pictures is a great way to improve your own form. Find someone who does it well and compare your own photos or video. They don’t have to be triathlon specific. What does Michael Phelps or Inge De Bruijn do that you don’t? Or, what COULD you do that Michael Phelps does? What does [...]
When going for your long rides it’s a good idea to limit your sugary drink intake ’til after the first hour. Staying with water for that period, or longer, will help teach your body to burn stored fuel in place of going directly to the readily available sugars. This also helps simulate the first [...]
GasX is an Ironman race saver. Take one before the race starts, have another couple at your disposal on the bike, and force some down on the run. Keeping your digestion moving is a big part of having a successful race day experience. A bloated belly is a sure fire way to make [...]
 Swimming fast is all about technique so drills should be incorporated into all workouts, even if just in your warm up or cool down. A good drill for those of us with imperfect catches is to swim with clenched fists. By decreasing the surface area of your hand you become much more aware of where you lose water during the catch. A common problem is to drop the elbow, especially on the arm opposite the breathing side, to prop yourself up. It may help you get a breath but it is a great way to lose forward momentum and slow yourself down. Clenched fists will force you to use your forearms to pull, and you have to keep your elbows high to do this. The trick is to still rotate your body and keep your length. You will likely feel slow and awkward and crappy doing this drill for the first few times and this can make you want to rush thru it. DON’T. Focus on your form and don’t cheat by opening your hand tiger-crane style! Try adding this steady set, with drill incorporated, next time you are in the pool: 800m steady with 25m 7/8 catch-up on the 2nd 25 of each 100m, fist swim on the 3rd 25m of each 100 and a gradual build on the 4th 25 m. Re-adjusting your muscle memory can be tricky but a strong catch is key to going fast.
Continue reading Swim with your fists – no tiger crane style!
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