Newsletter-SEP09

With the culmination of the triathlon season approaching, this article will review some open-water techniques and provide some proven race tips to help you get through the swim portion of your triathlon.

If you are a competent pool swimmer, open water should pose no special challenge...except, perhaps, the challenge of overcoming your inhibitions. In open water swimming, it may be a little harder to navigate, but that is easily fixed: stop every once in a while and look around.

The Fears and Apprehensions

Visibility of less than 2 feet. No stripe to follow on the bottom. Unseen creatures lurking under you. Seen creatures kicking you and flailing their arms all around you. Choppy water trying to splash in your mouth on every breath. Cold water. Flotsam and jetsam.... add to that the compression of your wetsuit and being surrounded by dozens of your closest friends. The biggest mental challenge to open water swimming is to maintain composure no matter what happens. This may require doing some breaststroke, or even treading water or floating for a little while. Bottom line: take a deep breath and Get Comfortable!

Navigation

Can you swim in the right direction when there is no line painted on the bottom? As coaches we help our athletes conquer this issue by telling you to look up every few strokes. Practice in a pool. Try lifting your head up and looking at the end of your lane. Lift your head at different times during your stroke and see what feels most comfortable. With that accomplished, you have tackled the most important part of navigation in open water. That is really all you need to be able to do, although there are refinements to help you speed up and make it easier. Here are the refinements:

•Looking up slows you down and tires you out. If you can stay on course, you will be much better off looking up every 20 strokes as opposed to every 6 strokes.

•Know where to expect the buoy.

•Don't look for too long. If you don't spot your marker (buoy) quickly, take another stroke and look again.

•Follow others. If you are swimming with others, and they appear to be swimming in a straight line, just follow them. But even though they will probably not intentionally veer off course, you should still check periodically.

Racing with others

There are lots of other people around.

Keep this in mind during the swim. You almost always have the ability to control how large of a pack you are swimming in. If there are too many arms and legs, move to the outside of the course. Line up on the outside of the course over the inside of the course because of turns. At turns, everybody bunches up as close to the buoy as they can. If you are on the inside, you must work your way into that group in order to swim around the buoy (rules generally frown upon swimming to the inside of the turn buoy). If you are on the outside, you can remain just to the outside as everybody else fights to get within touching distance of the buoy.

Although there are advantages to be gained from drafting other swimmers, you have to be careful in doing so - there are some pitfalls also. When I am drafting someone else, I often notice that my stroke is much choppier as I am struggling to stay in the proper position. If the swimmer is the same speed as me, I find this choppiness just makes me more tired without any additional speed. Occasionally, I will find a swimmer or group of swimmers who I can draft, but I probably spend most of my time in open water races looking for open water where I can stretch out my stroke and cruise. Don't convince yourself that you have to draft just because it is faster; it may not be worth it, so examine each situation.

Imagine a whole bunch of swimmers/triathletes standing on the beach or treading water behind the starting line. They are contained in a pretty small area. Now sound the starting horn and what happens? They all go from being vertical to being horizontal and, just like the spaghetti, are now all over each other. No wonder we always get mercilessly kicked and elbowed at the beginning of races; there just isn't enough room for everybody until after we start to spread out.

Plan your escape route before the race starts. Don't start in the middle of the front. Start in the back, where nobody else will really want your space in the water. The only trouble is that as people get tired after the initial sprint, you will have to navigate through them (or over them, but I don't think Miss Manners would approve). Another option is to start near one side or the other. You can always just swim a little further to the outside to get away from the elbows, yet there aren't as many people to swim through after they tire from their sprint. If you want to mix it up with the other swimmers, then be prepared to do a little fighting to maintain your space. A bigger, more forceful kick is one method of getting a little more room. The splash acts as discouragement for those around you. Even if they are not afraid of getting kicked, I don't know of many swimmers who like to take a breath while getting splashed in the face. Another trick that is not too obnoxious is simply to make your pull a little wider and hold your forearm close to vertical. This allows you to use your forearm to keep other swimmers a slight distance to your side.

Use these tips and have a great swim in your next race! Good luck in your training and racing.

Coach Mike is a USA Swimming and ASCA Certified coach and 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.

For many of you, your A race is rapidly approaching. Here are some of my thoughts on how to approach race week to ensure you that you are ready to go for the big race.

1.Follow the taper plan. Depending on your race distance and personal factors, your taper may be as few as a few days to as long as a few weeks. At this point in your season, cramming in more workouts will not improve your fitness level and many even prevent you from performing your best on race day. This can be hard for many athletes since they used to a much higher level of training. You may have more energy which may manifest as nervousness, stress, anxiousness, or irritability. These are to be expected and should not cause you concern, but you may want to warn your family and friends.

2.Have a nutrition plan. You and your coach may have a nutrition plan for race morning and for the race, but thinking out what you going to eat for this week is also important. Don’t get sucked into worrying about your weight, since you are tapering and working out less, you may be compelled to eat less. I suggest that you don’t. By continuing to eat and hydrate as you normally would during this training phase, you will be essentially carbo-loading your body for the race. The day before the race, plan for a good carbohydrate-rich meal to ensure your glycogen stores are full before the race, but don’t eat more than you normally would, this could backfire on race morning if you stomach is upset from overeating.

3.Get your rest. Especially race week, getting a full night’s sleep every day is important to help with recovery process and ensure that you are not fatigued on race morning. Since your workout schedule is lighter this week, you may be tempted to sleep in. I recommend that you maintain your normal wake time and use the extra morning hours to work on other things (see following sections). That means, in order to get your full night’s rest, you will need to go to sleep on time. Don’t forget that you will have to still get up early on race day and maintaining your early rise time will not cause this to be shock on race day. Another part of rest is to stay off your feet as much as possible. If you race is out-of-town, don’t plan to be a walking tourist before your race, plan events where you can remain seated with minimal time on your feet.

4.Prepare Mentally. Since you will have extra time this week, one thing you can do is prepare mentally for your race. In a previous newsletter, I discussed the mental game and gave some mental exercises. Use this week to create or review your mantras, visualize the race, and clear your mind.

5.Know your Race Plan. Review your race plan with your coach to address any questions or concerns.

6.Prepare Logistics. This is time to plan all the logistics for you race.

a.Go through your packing list and make sure you have everything that you need. Figure out what you are going to purchase at home and bring with you, and what you are going to purchase at the race site (i.e. CO2 cartridges that you can’t take on a plane.)

b.Review the Athlete Guide or race website for last minute information. Confirm times and dates for race registration, athlete meetings, expo, when the course is open for training, and bike/gear drop-off.

c.Confirm your travel reservations (flight, hotel, car, etc.). If you are driving, review the driving route and plan when you plan to leave.

d.Make reservations or have definite plans for your night before meal.

7.Prepare Your Support Crew. Don’t forget your support crew. You will most likely have family and friends that want to cheer you on. Talk with them about their plans early in the week. Discuss how and where to cheer for you and what you will need from them on the day before the race and the day of. They may be planning a vacation in conjunction with watching you race, make sure you lay out in advance what you can and cannot do with them. Talking about this in advance will prevent any stressful moments at the race site and will help make the event enjoyable for both you and your family and friends. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to thank them for putting up with you throughout your training this year.

8.Don’t Forget the Cardinal Rule. I would remiss in not mentioning this least one: Don’t try anything new on race day!

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.

Jeff Mote headed down to Louisville to take on Ironman Louisville a few days ago and had a GREAT day, inspite of the flat tire about 2 miles from the special needs bags which earned him a 25 minute walk in the middle of the bike!

About 5 weeks ago, Jeff ended up with a small stress-fracture in his right foot and hadn’t ran at all since the beginning of August. This did NOT slow Jeff down at all, he had a great day and is now an IRONMAN! Way to go Jeff!!!!!

By Laura Koerner, USA Triathlon Certified Coach

By Dina Aburmishan RD, LDN

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

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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 Ryan Riell 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.

Race season is almost done! It’s time for you athletes to enjoy some much needed rest. At times you might even want to treat your self to a lot of sleep and certain foods. And while that is OK to treat your self for a bit, its important to put a limit on the pamper session. The volume and intensity of your training is going to be low because your recovering from the race season, but the biggest concern during this cycle or recovery is weight gain. Your intake only is increased when you are increasing in the activity. It can be difficult breaking the habit of eating more and more often however, if you want your weight to remain the same its important to get back to eating on a more normal scale. Weight gain will just make it even harder for you to get back into training season. A weight gaining goal should be no more than a moderate 5-7% of body weight. This amount of weight is the weight that will come off naturally when you increase your intensity at the beginning of training season.

Tips for Eating in the Active Recovery Cycle ere are a few guidelines to help keep the weight gain at a minimum.

1.Focus on hunger…eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. Increasing your fiber and water at meals will allow you to feel full quicker and longer. It takes 20 minutes for you to feel full, so go s l o w when you eat, it will take time for you to feel full.

2.Focus on fruits, veggies and whole grains as mid meal snacks: fruit and cheese, whole wheat crackers with swiss cheese, or raw veggies and hummus.

3.Keep your high antioxidant foods in your diet. While you aren’t emitting the same amount of power as you were training, your body still needs those extra antioxidants to stay healthy. Make sure your getting enough beta carotene (carrots & sweet potatoes), vitamin C (cantaloupe & broccoli), vitamin E (canola oil & sunflower seeds), and zinc (red meat and fish).

4.Allow your self a limited amount of time after your race cycle to indulge, but do this at a moderate amount. Meaning give your self 1 week to indulge and only to a meal a day, otherwise your 5-7% of body weight will add that week alone.

5.Reduce your intake. This can be as simple as decreasing the snacks, pre/post workout meals, or during workout supplements. While all nutrition recommendations should be individualized its best to follow the macronutrients recommendations for athletes in the active recovery phase.

Carbohydrate 5-6 g/kg of body weight

Protein1.2-1.4 g/kg of body weight

Fat0.8-1.0 g/kg of body weight

Fluids remain the same, keep urine a very light yellow color.

6.Decrease the nutritional supplements. Switch your power bar for whole foods. Gatorade should only be used if you are participating in exercise over 90 minutes indoors or 60 minutes outdoors (in heat). You don’t need the extra energy that the supplements will give because you are not participating in that extra activity.

7.Until your weight stabilized keep a 3-5 day food log to see exactly where and what you are eating. Decrease where you think is necessary.

8.Reduce the multivitamin intake. You are not moving as much anymore therefore you don’t require as much nutrients. However it is important to take a multivitamin at least 3 days a week just to ensure you are getting in all your nutrients.

After the end of a race cycle enjoy your performance and accomplishments. Then remind your self to stay in the mind set of your goals for next race and training period. If one of your goals is to reduce body fat your active recovery cycle should be the time to do it, not the training period. Reducing body fat during your training cycle will only inhibit your performance and training. It is during this time where you will have the time and energy to focus on body fat reduction.

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

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September, 2009

Volume 2,

Issue 8

In This Issue:

Announcements

Free Training Resources

Race Week

Eating for the

Recovery Cycle

Open Water Swimming:

The Final Exam

SPONSOR of the Month-

ProActive Chiropractic

and Physiotherapy

Athlete of the Month

Training Videos

Graston Technique

IM Arizona

Training Camp

The Graston Technique is an innovative and proven approach to the diagnosis and treatment of soft-tissue injuries. It is performed with patented stainless-steel instruments designed to detect and treat soft-tissue fibrosis (scar tissue) in order to reduce pain and restore function.

Just as a stethoscope amplifies what the human ear can hear, the Graston instruments amplify what the human hand can feel. Certified providers of the Graston Technique are trained in how to scan the tissue for areas of scar tissue build-up, allowing previously undetected areas of fibrosis to be treated effectively. Once the dysfunctional tissue has been identified, the practitioner can use the appropriate tool to focus on the area of adhesion and break down the scar tissue for the body to absorb. The small amount of inflammation created by the treatment process “re-starts” the healing process, this time with specific instructions for the patient to help promote the development of healthy, properly aligned tissue in the same area.

Effects of Repetitive Overuse Injuries to Connective Tissue

•Irregular laying down of collagen and cross links

•Ligaments, tendons, and joint capsule weaken

•Muscle contusions heal with scar tissue of dense connective tissue

•Decreased muscle extensibility

•Faulty running mechanics INJURY

Benefits of Soft Tissue Mobilization

•Release of Fascial Restrictions and Adhesions

•Separates and breaks-down cross-links

•Splays & stretches connective tissue and muscle fibers

•Increases amount and rate of blood flow to and from the area

•Increases cellular activity in the region including fibroblasts and mast cells

•Recreates the normal inflammatory response … fibroblastic proliferation!

•Allows muscles to function at their ideal position and length causing improved efficiency, and less injury during running

Make sure to checkout all of the training videos that are on the Break Through YouTube site or click here to go to the BTMS video page! The video above is one of the many in the quickly growing training video collection that is available for your use!

So again, it was too hard to choose just one athlete of the month, so again, we have two!

Swim Bike MPH T2 Run Total

1:08 6:28 17.3 04:02 5:43 13:35:25

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Joanne Cain from Phenix City Alabama headed up to Ironman Canada, also on August 30th and had a great day too as a repeat Ironman finisher! finished in 8th place in his age group at the Park Center Health and Fitness Sprint distance triathlon- check out the results:

Swim Bike Run Total

1:11 6:34:51 5:54:2813:54:06