Newsletter-JAN10

Greetings and welcome to a new and exciting year of Triathlon training. Although the temperatures are finally getting to the winter norms here in Chicago that certainly should not stop you from getting yourself ready for another new triathlon season. Throughout the last year, I have written several articles designed to help improve your swimming efficiency. Whether they were about drills to improve your stroke technique, creative workout ideas to simulate open-water swimming in the pool, or ways to increase your swimming distance per stroke, all these articles had the same end state in mind; getting through the water faster with less effort thus setting us up for a quicker overall race.

While introducing all these novel ideas it occurred to me that I have yet to provide something just as important. Feedback: How can you expect improvement if you have no way of measuring improvement. Or, to put it simply: “Inspect what you expect.” This article is going to cover the ways that you can measure improvement in your swimming.

There are several ways that you can measure improvement in your swimming efficiency. These range from the very easy to the slightly more complicated. Only a couple require some rudimentary math. The first way to measure or gauge improvement in your swimming is simply by time. Can you swim a certain length or set of intervals faster than you could previously? We measure this by using a Test Set. What a test set does is allow you to see improvements in your swimming fitness and perhaps some improvement in swimming speed. It goes something like this: Swim a given distance or interval set and record the times, comparing them to a previous time for that same distance or interval. Faster time or faster average time equals improvement. Here are a couple of examples: After a good warm up swim 500 yards as quick as you can for time. Record the time, and also calculate your average time (or split) per 100. Compare this to a previous effort. Repeat this test approximately every four to six weeks throughout the training cycle and see the improvement. Another test set is to swim a set of either 5 or 10 100 yard swims with a rest interval of 15 seconds between each 100. Record the time for each 100 and then come up with the average time. This is what is known as your T-pace. You can then use this information to develop your interval set for your swimming workouts. (Developing a complete swim training program and designing workouts for triathletes goes beyond the scope of this article.) Once again, perform this test set every four to six weeks and you should see an improvement in your T-pace as the season progresses. Both of these examples will give you some insight into improvements in your swimming fitness but, they only tell half the story. What they won’t tell you is whether or not you are becoming a more efficient swimmer or whether or not your stroke technique has improved. You can make the assumption that this is true based on an improved T-pace but, that could simply be a result of increased strength and endurance. To really know whether or not you are improving your technique and efficiency you need to make a couple of additional measurements. You need to learn how to calculate your distance per stroke and your stroke cycle. These calculations, coupled with T-pace will tell you whether you are getting faster and whether you are more efficient. The calculations are relatively simple and you can use them during your daily training sessions without having to collect significant amounts of data. Additionally, these calculations provide instant feedback on stroke efficiency during any stage of a workout.

Distance per Stroke; by definition refers to the distance a swimmer travels during each stroke cycle. Distance per Stroke (DPS) is calculated as the number of yards/meters your body moves forward during one stroke cycle. Let’s quickly define a stroke cycle. A stroke cycle includes two arm strokes, one with the right, and one with the left. Putting this simply, you are going to calculate the distance you move for each rotation of your arms. There are several ways to calculate DPS. The most accurate method is to use video to measure the distance your body moves forward during one stroke cycle. This would require access to video equipment and someone else to help you out. The most common way to calculate DPS is to count the number of stroke cycles required to complete a known distance, such as the length of a pool, and divide that number into the distance. For example, if it took you 20 stroke cycles to cover 40 meters, then your average DPS would come out to 2.0 meters/per stroke cycle. {40/20=2.0}. How is this useful? By knowing the distance you cover for each of your stroke cycles you can count your strokes and see if that number increases or decreases. The best way to use this in a workout is simply to count your stroke cycles during the workout. For example, I will use 500 meters as the given distance. Count your strokes for one length of the pool (25/50 meters depending on pool size) for every 100 meters you swim until you reach 500 meters. Did the number of strokes per length of the pool increase or decrease? If your stroke cycle increased, you were becoming less efficient per length or your distance per stroke was decreasing as you swam the required distance.

Stroke Rate refers to your cycling or turnover rate and can be expressed as the number of stroke cycles you take each minute (cycles/min) or the time required to complete one stroke cycle (time/cycle). The way to calculate stroke rate is, using a stopwatch, time one stroke cycle. This number will be expressed as time per cycle (time/cycle). An easier and more accurate way to do this would be to time two or more cycles and then find the average by dividing the number of cycles into the time. {ex. Three stroke cycles = 3.30 sec, divide the time by 3 to calculate a result of 1.10 sec/stroke cycle.} Stroke rate can also be expressed as stroke cycles per minute. The values are calculated by dividing the average time per stroke cycle into 60 seconds. Here is the example: You complete three stroke cycles in 3.2 seconds, you divide that by 3 and you get 1.067 sec/stroke cycle. To calculate stroke cycles per minute you take 60 seconds and divide that by your 1.067 sec/stroke cycle and that will give you 57 cycles per minute. This cycle per minute (57) is the number we are after. Stroke cycles per minute is a good way to tell how you performed over a given distance, if your stroke cycles per minute increase over a given distance we are using more effort to cover that same distance and thus we are less efficient. Never fear, if this math seems somewhat intimidating, most swimming stopwatches now have the capability of calculating stroke cycle per minute with just a touch of a button.

Putting it all together. Now that you are able to calculate your distance per stroke and your stroke rate you can use these calculations to provide accurate and instant feedback on your swimming efficiency as well as your endurance. Combining your T-pace along with your distance per stroke you can see if you are going fast and efficient or whether you are going fast but not efficient. By knowing these things you become aware of what you need to focus on to improve your swimming technique. The calculations now provide that feedback mechanism during your workout to alert you to degradation in your technique. If your DPS decreases or your stroke cycle increases per length you know that you are swimming less efficiently. This is most likely caused by a breakdown in technique coupled with some fatigue. The issue of fatigue is tackled by endurance training and strength. The breakdown in technique is tackled by performing the stroke correctly, this adjustment you can make during your workout. The goal is to perform the distance or interval at the same speed (T-pace) while not letting your DPS decrease or stroke rate increase. Here is what I mean; if your DPS is decreasing you are not staying long in your stroke, generally caused by swimming flat without rotation or not finishing your stroke. You can counter that by thinking of torpedo drill and the rotation of the hips. If you rotate your hips your stroke should lengthen and DPS should increase. Additionally, if you think about push drill, you will ensure that you are pushing your hands past your hips and finishing your stroke thus increasing your DPS. It is also assumed that by increasing your DPS you are decreasing your stroke rate.

As you can see from just that example, the calculations of distance per stroke and stroke cycle provide you instantaneous feedback on your efficiency. By identifying a loss of efficiency during your workout you can quickly apply the appropriate countermeasures or techniques during the workout and once again measure them for expected results. The cycle is complete. You now have two additional measurements to gauge your improvement in swimming efficiency both during and after your workout. Armed with this knowledge, and the previous articles on drills and techniques you will be able to design better swim workouts focusing on the areas you need to improve all the while becoming faster and more efficient. Until next month, Happy Swimming!

Coach Mike is a USA Swimming and ASCA Level 2 Certified coach who coaches competitive triathletes and swimmers from the Age Group ranks up through Masters. Additionally, he is the Director of Swimming at Break Through Multisport Inc. You can reach Coach Mike at Mike@BreakThroughMultisport.com with any questions, comments or for all of your coaching needs.

Works Cited/Further Reading

Maglischo, Ernest W., Swimming Fastest, Human Kinetics, 2003.

You may have noticed that some things have changed with your online TrainingPeaks™ account recently. They added some features and changed some features, some of which are immediately beneficial and some that need a little setup. In this article, I will review some the changes and suggest the best way to take advantage of the features of TrainingPeaks™ in the new year.

New Device Agent software: Device Agent allows you to upload your workouts directly into your online TrainingPeaks™ account. Device Agent v2.0 has been around for awhile and allows uploading from most workout devices and has a PC and Mac version. Recently, Device Agent v3.0 has been released. Before you immediately upgrade to get the shiny new software version, here are some things to keep in mind. Device Agent v3.0 only has a PC version, so Mac users have to stick with v2.0. TrainingPeaks™ anticipates a Mac version this spring. Also, v3.0 only supports a very limited number of devices, compared for v2.0, for now. As of today, Device Agent v3.0 only supports Powertap, SRM, and some Garmin devices. They will add more devices soon, so keep an eye out in their regular newsletters for updates. So, what are the benefits? Device Agent v3.0 allows bulk upload of workouts to your online TrainingPeaks™ account, instead of the one-at-a-time approach of v2.0. Also, v3.0 works directly with both your online TrainingPeaks™ account and WKO+ software and has a multi-user capability. This is mainly a benefit for coaches, but if you have WKO+ software as an athlete, this will allow you to upload your device data into either WKO+ or your online TrainingPeaks™ account, and allow you to upload WKO+ data to your online TrainingPeaks™ account all in the same place. So, my advice, think before you upgrade and keep an eye out for new software features over the next few months.

Day View: TrainingPeaks™ has now added a Calendar Day View to the previous Week or Month options. The Day View is designed to be the one-stop place for recording or viewing your workouts or meals for the day. It allows you to see the following items in one screen for the day you have selected: Daily Metrics, Weekly Goals, Workouts - with expanded set/rep/interval view, Nutrition, Daily Chart, and Routes. They also recently added the drag-and-drop feature to the Day View, if you want to drag routes, meals or foods into your daily recording. I really like this feature, especially for the athlete recording daily data. It gives a great summary page to review everything done for the day. I recommend using this as your homepage or default view when you log in.

Default View: That brings me to the next new feature, the Default View. You can now customize your default view upon login. You can make this happen under “My Settings” (top right hand corner) under “Calendar & Layout;” this will allow you to choose between the Calendar, Spreadsheet or Dashboard as your default view upon login. Also, you can choose your default Calendar view (day, week or month.) I recommend taking advantage of the new Day View feature by selecting the Default View as Calendar, and Default Calendar View as Day.

Customizable Summary Column: Second to only to Day View, I really like the Calendar's Month View. This allows you to see several weeks of workouts in a single page to get an overview of workouts or meals planned or completed. TrainingPeaks™ now allows you to customize what is shown in the Summary Column in the Month view, or not show it at all. I recommend showing this Summary Column, since it gives a quick reference to how many hours/miles you have completed versus planned for the week. In another new feature, the Summary Column now shows your Weekly Goals. You can find this by selecting the check-mark on the summary column of the Month View. You can customize your Summary Column also under “My Settings,” “Calendar & Layout,” under the “Week Summary (8th day labels)” tab. To turn on or off the Summary Column, go to the “View” tab and at the bottom select or unselect the “Show week summary as 8th day” option. As I mentioned, I don’t recommend turning off the Summary Column feature. While you in the “Calendar & Layout” section, I also suggest looking at all the customizations available. Other than the ones that I mentioned in this article, these are not new features, but you may not have been aware of them. These customizations can really help you set up the calendar view to your liking.

Export any Manually Created Route: This new feature allows you to export any manually created route, or any route you created from a GPS file, as a Garmin course, CompuTrainer Course, CompuTrainer 3D course, GPX file, Google Earth file, or TACX trainer file. Athletes with Garmins, personal CompuTrainers, or TACX trainers will get the most benefit from this feature. This will allow you to upload your route to your Garmin so it can navigate you during the workout, or upload your routes to your CompuTrainer or TACX trainer to bring outdoor rides inside and simulate courses on your trainer. If don’t have one of these devices, this feature will allow you to export a manually created route from TrainingPeaks™ to Google Earth. It sounds like a fun feature, but, in my opinion, with limited use.

Instructional Text: TrainingPeaks™ has also added some instructional text to your online account, some that you can remove and some that you can’t. First, you will notice the initial view of the left-side section is now a short summary of the features of the left-side sections. This can’t be removed and is beneficial if you are trying something new. Otherwise, it’s not really intrusive. You will also notice a small top bar that shows several tips and notices. This gives you information about new features or reminders of current features. You can close this easily with the X button, but it will come back every time you login. If you use the Dashboard view, you will also notice a new Welcome Pod. This explains how to use pods and customize the Dashboard. After you read it once, there is no point to clogging up screen space with it. You can remove this easily with the X button, and it stay gone the next time you login.

Bug Fixes: As with most software upgrades, several bug fixes are included. These aren’t new or changed features, per say, but really just fixes to things that are annoying or don’t work. Here are some of key bug fixes that have recently been added: laps and splits pod lap duration now correctly matching lap duration in Graph summary; multiple minor fixes with certain device file types not populating fields in Pods on uploads; fixed and improved new Dashboard layouts, enabling easier drag and drop of new pods; and a revamped calculation engine for processing uploaded data files that drastically improved the altitude gain calculation, and improved gap and data-dropout handling.

As always, I hope these explanations and suggestions help you use some of the technology available at TrainingPeaks™ to simplify your life, allowing you more time to focus on your workouts. Making the most of this online log will allow you to provide key feedback to your coach that will help you reach your training goals.

Coach Laura is a USA Triathlon Certified coach and an Assistant Coach at Break Through Multisport Inc. You can reach Coach Laura at Laura@BreakThroughMultisport.com with any questions, comments or for all of your coaching needs.

Linnea Miller is the 2009 Female Athlete of the Year.

Linnea had a GREAT 2009 season, which was her first as a coached athlete. She started off the year with a 2nd place finish in her age group at the Park Center Health and Fitness Sprint triathlon while she was preparing for the iron distance Great Floridian.

She had a goo day on a not-so-flat Florida bike course, completing her first iron distance race at the end of October. She was NOT satisfied with only one Ironman race so she completed her second Ironman distance race at Ironman Arizona in less than 1 month!

By Laura Koerner, USA Triathlon Certified Coach

By Dina Aburmishan RD, LDN

Liz Yerly, MPT, ATC, CSCS, C-ART

The information contained in this newsletter is the opinion of Ryan Riell and Break Through Multisport on endurance training, racing, and nutrition. These points are suggestions on how to train and not recommendations for athletes. Any article on the Break Through Multisport website may be reprinted into a paper or online newsletter for your NON-PROFIT club or organization, so long as the author and www.BreakThroughMultisport.com are credited. If you do reprint or link to any Break Through Multisport material, please send a courtesy email to Ryan@BreakThroughMultisport.com. For medical advice, and before starting a strenuous training program, consult with a physician.

Resolutions, in my opinion they are a waste of time. Honestly, how many of us really fulfill our new year’s resolution and how many of us really want to do what we are telling ourselves to do: quit smoking, lose weight, start exercising, etc. The reason why they are new year’s resolutions, is because we were capable to do them all year and we might not really want to do them. That’s why it takes us all year to make a commitment. But why? Because they are hard and they are big life changing goals.

Let’s take the bigness out of them. I am will be using losing weight and eating healthier as the example because well…I am a registered dietitian and that’s why I deal with most. You can use this for any resolution. First thing, don’t make one. Don’t think of this as a resolution. Think of this as another thing that you need to change in your life. Then, ask your self do you really want to lose weight/eat healthier? Really ask yourself. Yes, your doctor/wife/husband/mother/father/sister/brother…etc wants you to…but do you? If the answer is no, stop. Don’t do it. By doing something you don’t really want to do you are just setting yourself up for failure. Which will and does have a drastic affect on you. If losing weight or eating healthier is not what you want to do then you choose not to do it at this point. There is a reason why you don’t want to do it now. There is something more you want to do than lose weight or eat healthier. What is it? You like the taste of food, you don’t think you need too, your happy with the health of your body, or there’s too much stress in your life to add another life changing event? There can be 1001 reasons, but do it for yourself to figure out what that reason is. Think about it for awhile, put it away. It’s important to know what this reason is, because it might change at some point and then you might be ready to start this goal.

If you said yes, I do want to lose weight/eat healthier, then ask yourself why. Why now? Because your just tired of feeling unhealthy, low energy, low self esteem, not in control…what is the reason why you want to do it now. Try to stay away from negative reasons for example, fat isn’t a feeling…you might be feeling low self esteem or out of control with your eating and out of control with the way you want your body to look and feel. Make whatever reason it is a positive one. The negative spin on the reason will only make you feel like a failure and put more pressure and blame. Honesty, you don’t need more pressure and blame…you already feel it enough! Once you really know your reason then write it down. Make it one or two sentences. Keep it short and sweet. Put it where you will see it daily…on your phone as wallpaper, on your computer screen as wallpaper, in your bathroom, or shower, or fridge, or wherever you know you’ll see it. For example, I had a client put this saying on her backscreen of her blackberry “I am choosing to eat healthier so I can be in control of my energy level.” Where are you going to put yours?

Now that you have your want and the reason why you’re doing it, where to start? The funny thing is you are already on the course. New year’s resolutions are so hard to keep because you always think you are starting from scratch, but you’re not. You are where you should be. This may sound new age-y, but it’s true. You are where you are supposed to be…again we are taking away the blame of where you should have been. If you could be a size 2 and working out 6 days a week…you would be. Instead you are where you are. You are in a place where you ready for change. You have been walking on this road for so long and now you’re ready to take a left, rather than keep straight. Don’t think like you need to start eating healthier or lose weight. Think of it as ok, how can I eat healthier where I am now. What are one or two things I can do right now that will help me reach my goal? Whatever you decide the changes need to be something you are 100 percent comfortable doing. For example, adding just three extra glasses of water a day. Try this change for a week. See what happens. Listen to your body, it will tell you what its ready to do. Listening to your body and actually doing what it says is a very powerful thing. Once you have made this change and its feeling comfortable add another one. So you’ve added more water to your day. Maybe you are ready to eat one piece of fruit a day. Again whatever that change is make sure you feel confident about it. The new goal shouldn’t be a chore or ugh…yeah I guess I have to eat more veggies. Tip: instead of looking at what you need to take away, look at what you can add to your diet to make it healthier or encourage weight loss.

Lastly, don’t make it a big deal. If you didn’t do the things you wanted to do today, don’t worry about it. And definitely don’t beat yourself up about it. What happens is that you beat yourself up about eating a hamburger and french fries at lunch…you‘ll feel so bad that you’ll eat a high calorie dinner and dessert. Beating yourself up only leads to more frustration, calories, and heartache. Just play it cool, oh I didn’t get my water in today ok…no worries, I will just do it tomorrow.

Be kinder to yourself. Yelling at someone and being and a—hole never gets you very far…it won’t get you far to be that way to yourself. Good luck with whatever new goals you decide to create for the new year!

Dina Aburmishan RD, LDN is a registered dietitian who works with endurance athletes. Dina owns DMA Nutrition Inc. a private practice nutrition consulting company. You can reach Dina at dina@dmanutrition.com or www.dmanutrition.com or call her at 847-581-1160.

Liz Yerly, MPT, ATC, CSCS, cART is a licensed physical therapist and athletic trainer who has experience working with the highly trained athlete, as well as the weekend warrior She is the facility manager of the Bridgeport Accelerated Rehabilitation Center, as well as a treating therapist specializing in advanced certifications such as Active Release Technique and Graston Technique. She uses her manual skills to successfully rehabilitate her patients and quickly get them back to where they need to be. You can reach Liz at: lyerly@acceleratedrehab.com or call her at

(773) 254-5250.

By Mike Koerner, USA Swimming and ASCA Certified Coach

January, 2010

Volume 3,

Issue 1

In This Issue:

Announcements

Spring Training Camp

Cycling Development Program

New Training Peaks

New Years Resolutions

Measuring Your Stroke Efficiency

SPONSOR of the Month-

Infinit Nutrition

2009 Athete of the Year

Preventing Winter Running Injuries

Spring Training Camps

Running in the winter can be some of the most satisfying running you will do all year. These runs do, however, come with increased injury risks that one does not face during the warmer seasons. The most common are Achilles tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and calf strain. A few simple pointers can help you transition into the winter running season feeling healthy and ready to tackle those New Years Running Resolutions.

Running on snow and ice covered roads brings about changes in your gait and biomechanics that can challenge your ability to stay injury-free. It all comes down to how your foot transitions during the gait cycle. The gait cycle has three distinct phases: rear foot strike, mid foot weight bearing, and toe off. On a dry surface your foot has a predictably solid surface to strike and transition into mid foot weight bearing. Then, like a loaded spring, the foot moves to toe off, propelling you forward.

Enter snow and ice. As your foot strikes the ground and makes the transition into mid foot weight bearing, the foot will tense up and become more rigid. A rigid foot does not absorb shock well. Once past mid foot weight bearing, the foot transitions into toe off. It is during this third phase of the gait cycle that problems occur. As the foot pushes off the ground, the decreased friction of the surface allows the foot to slip a very small amount. This slipping places a tremendous amount of stress and strain on the Achilles tendon, plantar fascia, and both muscles of the calf (the gastrocnemius and soleus). You may not feel it right away during the run, but give it a day or two.

Continued running will increase this strain, and could eventually cause injury. Using moderation in your training will allow your body to adapt to the new stresses being placed on it. By cutting your runs back marginally over the first two weeks of inclement weather, your body will be better prepared to handle the change and therefore less likely to become injured. To aid in the transition, you can also use various snow/ice cleats on your shoes to gain traction without compromising the fit and function of the shoes.

So when the snow flies and you're determined to get out and run, take a measure of caution. You'll be thankful in the long run.