#815 – Self-Correcting Your Technique
55:37 Share

All right, welcome back. Hey, welcome. Welcome back. It is November 19th, the year. It's still 2024. Welcome aboard, everybody. You're listening to the Crushing Iron Podcast. This is episode 814. No, no, no. 815? 815? Yeah, man, because I had a setup, man. That's the Rockford area code. I totally ruined it. Yeah, episode 815. Yep, the Rockford area code for Rockford 70.3 next year.

Everybody's calling him, signing up.

Book a new race. We can't take it. We should have done a little bit of, uh, research and made this like the Rockford 70.3 preview podcast. Cause it would have fit perfectly with the, uh, with the area code eight one five. Yeah, I know I can do it. I live there. Um, that's my old stomping grounds. That is man. That's your old stomping grounds. You see like, uh, you see pictures of Mike Torelli on like the, the lamppost banners that like line main street when you guys go in there next year. And it was a June. It's a June race, right? Yeah. Yeah. Uh,

More like the wanted posters on the telephone poles. Yeah, they want you back. That's what they do. They want Mike back. Yeah. Pre-race meal at Uncle Nick's, the old Euro shop downtown. That place, man. I'm really interested to see how that race goes off this year, or next year, I guess, in new...

New races are always interesting. But yeah, it's just what a wild. I'm sure like when you first got into the sport and then, you know, what has this been like 10 years and you telling stories about Rockford, you probably didn't think 10 years. How much money would you have bet that there would not have been a 70 point on Ironman branded 70.3 event in Rockford a decade later when you started the sport?

Probably a lot because I mean, I know that place very well. Well, you know what? Places change. So it'd be interesting to see how that's how that race kicks off. Yeah. Next June. And we had a semi busy weekend. A lot of run races. You had Ironman Arizona, which outside of Cozumel kind of ends the North American full distance racing season, which means a lot of people are ready to kick back and relax next week for Thanksgiving and

And then you got a few, like a couple of 7.3s. You got Indian Wells in Florida in December. But yeah, outside of that, people are ready to embrace one of our favorite topics, December rules, which is coming up on us very quickly.

But yeah, busy weekend, lots of great things. Looks like everybody had an awesome time in Arizona. Typical weather, a little bit of wind, cooler than I think people anticipated, especially the water temp. I heard it was wetsuit mandatory, which is pretty cold. It's like you think of going out into the desert in Tempe to do a race, and you don't predict how cold it's going to be and that effect it's going to have on your body. I remember that was the second full I ever did.

And I also remember like that was the first year. Oh, excuse me. That was the very first I ever very first race I ever implemented the now famous C26 trick of putting plastic bags, plastic grocery bags inside your kit.

Because it was very chilly. The water was fine. I don't mind swimming in cold water. But I do remember the first loop on the bike, I had my bags in and then some arm warmers and then had to ditch them. But yeah, you don't think of Arizona like that. But yeah, it was quite chilly. And I think it's always interesting to see how the cold water impacts people usually in a negative way. Because a lot of people don't think, oh, yeah, and I would rather swim in cold water versus warm water. But

One, it was wetsuit mandatory, and some people hate swimming in a wetsuit. And so I know that was obviously a negative for some people, because if you're not used to swimming in a wetsuit, you don't want to swim in one, then it's...

If you're going to feel more claustrophobic and like more short of breath, it's going to be in cold water. So you're like combining two big negatives to start your race where you're putting on a restrictive, you know, full or even, you know, sleeveless wetsuit. It's going to make you feel more restricted and you're jumping into cold water, which is going to make you breathe faster because you're so cold. It's not a really fun way to start your race.

Um, but again, it's, it's interesting to, you know, when you hear Arizona, you think about that time, you're thinking like perfect temps, but that is a, that's a little chilly to start the race. Yeah, no doubt. I was a little, cause I was thinking about Rockford before you went to that. We can come back to that second. I, I was curious about, I went to the site and looked at the Ironman recommended hotels. Cause I, I know that downtown Rockford is where the race is, but there's not much down there.

And I see that they're kind of, there's one hotel, it's downtown, it's the Embassy Suites. And I think it's a nice one. It's kind of a newer, kind of a cool place. But it's not on the list. But everything else is way out by the interstate or up in Janesville or Beloit. I mean, they're really spreading it out. So it's just interesting to me to see where they're going to stay. Because that downtown has been trying to make a comeback for about 30 years. Yeah.

Is that the area? I mean, it's been probably like five years since you told me this, but is that the area where that lady basically built out an entire block? No, that's in Beloit. That's in Beloit. Okay, yeah. We lived in Chattanooga. That was a similar thing happened when they put up the Westin Hotel. Somebody bought out that whole...

weird little intersection by the, by the interstate and built up a whole bunch of, and it was like this really random, nice strip of, of, uh, retail stores and restaurants in the middle of nowhere. I remember you saying somebody did that in Wisconsin, but I can't remember if it was Rockford or Beloit. Uh, yeah. So anyway, we'll see. We'll see. We'll see as usual. Um,

This, everyone's favorite topic, as you know, is swimming this time of year. We had a swim camp this last weekend, and I don't want to dive too much into swimming today because we've had, I don't know, probably eight or nine of these podcasts. But I did want to go over a few kind of, not highlights, but we always learn something new at all these camps from either feedback or just doing a different demo.

And I thought it was really interesting that in this camp, and this is kind of not the opposite of what we've done in some of the other camps, but when you think about swimming, we always talk a lot about feel, like feel for the water, which is, I think, one of the trickier things to explain to someone. You know, you can explain to them,

Even if you have a coach on deck or you have a coach online or you're watching a video, you're reading an article, everyone likes to talk about feel for the water and what that is and what that's supposed to feel like. But no one can show you.

Right. No one can say, all right, Mike, I really want you to feel the water. We have no idea what you feel, right? There isn't like this direct connection from your, you know, the, your middle of your hand to your elbow, which is where you're supposed to feel the water. There's, there's no like sensation gauge where you can do that and think, ah,

Mike hit an eight on the feel gauge and that transmits to my phone and my feel app. And now I know that Mike is actually feeling better. It is such a subjective measurement, but it is so crucial when it comes to swimming. Because as we've talked, I think, a lot about or a lot in other podcasts about swimming,

Is that if you're not feeling the water and you're not feeling yourself press the water backwards, the likelihood is you're not generating a lot of force, which is how you propel yourself in swimming, right? We talk about the least amount of you in the water and the most of the water pushing backwards. That's how you go fast. And so feel for the water is so important because you can't provide the feel to gain the force if you don't have it.

On the other side of the coin, most athletes just simply move their arms within the water and then anticipate going faster. But you're not grabbing anything. So one of the things we tried to do this last camp is I actually had – and again, this is kind of the best effort to create good movement patterns. But again, as online coaches, even in-person coaches, you don't see people that frequently –

So you have to teach people and educate people on what it's like to understand and then kind of notify in their own head, like, when am I doing something right or when am I doing something wrong? And so I actually made them do like a 25. We kind of worked our way down. So I maybe the first 25 was into the water as early as possible on the way down.

And you really shorten up your stroke, really feel what it's like to swim, you know, with like T-Rex arms and shorten up a stroke, a waste of energy by increasing your high cadence. That's what it's supposed to feel like. Right. And then on the return trip. So now, you know what it's what it's not supposed to feel like. So you can realize when you're not doing it right. And then a return trip, we would do something like now take the longest stroke possible, which will be one. Right. Once you anything water way out and finishing far back. Right.

Trying to really work and then we worked through straight arm recovery early vertical forearm finishing Short and not finishing far back. We worked like on crossing over in your body and then making yourself stay square So it was really enlightening to like force people which I mean if you're at some camp You probably do a lot of these just very natural like crossing over or not finishing far back but was to get them to do it and focus on what it feels like to do it wrong and then to do it right because

Again, no matter if you go to like a master swim or a coach swim on the swim deck, unless you swim in front of someone three, four, five days a week, you kind of have to be your own coach in a way. You have to be able to self-correct. And we talk about this a lot when it comes to just overall training philosophy and in training zones and listening to your body, right? You hop on the bike, you don't feel very good. You know what your legs feel like to go hard. And if you feel hard, you go hard.

If you feel crappy, then you need to slow it down. So understanding and listening to your own body and being in touch with that is hugely important in all aspects, right? Just from training effort, but also if you are ending your run, you got 10 minutes left, but your form is breaking down, you know you're going to do damage, then don't run, walk, right? Just walk it out. There's no reason to increase the likelihood of doing something wrong.

wrong when it comes to your running economy and you're running harder, you're more inefficient, you're more likely to get hurt. Like more people get hurt in running on bad form at speed than they do running fresh with good economy. Same thing goes with swimming. You have to be able to self-correct and know what, again,

we talk a lot about what good feel is supposed to feel like but it's also important to know what it doesn't feel like so if you're taking your swim stroke and you think oh that doesn't feel what i because now you know right there's a what you want to feel right which is you know the feel of your forearms what you don't want to feel is none of it and so when you we kind of worked our way through hand entry crossing over

you know, early vertical forearm, straight arm recovery, short arm, and then extending your arm and then worked, worked away from the front to back again, making them kind of think through, Hey, what is this supposed to feel like? And then what is it not supposed to feel like? So you can self-correct. And I think that,

It seemed like it was beneficial to kind of highlight those. And I think when we look at like our overall training in athletes in general, the big the biggest thing to me that comes to mind in swimming and I think is is an ever present issue, no pun intended, with all aspects, all aspects of what we do is just staying present within what we do. And we talked a lot about, again, is like doing things correctly in short bursts. We talked about being

being efficient and economical. We talked a lot about not wasting time and energy going really, really, really long if you're just implementing bad strokes, right? You know, and we, one of the first days we got, uh, we did like a whiteboard, like dry erase board talk is I, we'd had swimming on one side and then I had biking and running on the right. And before we even talked about swimming, uh,

I said, all right, listen, let's go through and list out all the things we want to do that we're obsessed about or that we know about when it comes to cycling, right, that we know we need to do to get better. You know, first one's consistency, right? We got to do more, right? We got to run more often, get a bike more often, that makes us better. Two, you know, aerobic swimming. We got to be more, we got to be aerobically efficient. Check. You know, three, we have to be economical. We have to have good economy, right?

Right. So we have to be able to run well. Obviously, cycling is a lot easier because you just pedal on a fixed plane or a fixed platform. But running economy, huge deal. Everyone's good doing run, you know, run form stuff. Three, increase power and speed. Love to do that. Got to do that. So we want more. More force. Cycling. Got to improve aerodynamics. We got to spend a million getting a bike fit. We got to get aero.

We got to do all these things. And then we looked to the left and swimming and we got a blank because these are all things that people obsess about that they always want to talk about all the time. This is what they want to read up on this when they want to hear about the pros doing that. And then, but when it comes to swimming, um,

They think just getting in the water and swimming a 2K or 3K straight is going to make them better, right? So we took that and kind of pasted it on the other side and how that also applies to swimming if you choose to, right? Consistency, that's the biggest, I think the biggest thing when it comes to getting people to do better in the pool is just straight up consistency. Just get your butt in the pool. Swim more often, right? And a lot of times people get themselves back into swimming

a i'm never going to be good because i haven't improved and you go back and look at how often they've been swimming and they're just you know predicting their own future right they they go swim once twice a week and they get more dejected because they're not improving so then what happens well then they they don't approve so they don't want to go less and so there's it's again we're our own self-fulfilling prophecy

Number two, an easy one, aerodynamics. Everyone wants to be an aero. People are out there spending $1,500 on the best front end they can get on their new tri-bike, or they want to have these high hands and the praying mantis, and they want to bottle integration. We're talking four figures here.

aerodynamics, but they pay zero attention to freeness and free speed, which is hydrodynamics, which is your body positioning in water. The most underrated, underappreciated, non-focused piece of what people do is you can have the most perfect stroke in the most perfect early vertical form on the planet, but if you have the worst body position, it's not going to be that helpful.

if uh conversely if you have a mediocre to maybe even like slightly less than average early catch and early vertical forearm but a great body position you're going to be better so do things that focus on higher body position in the water right that also leads the next one people want to focus on economy and efficiency and running

You know, how was my run form? I really focused on my foot strike. I'm really focused on run cadence. But when it comes to economy and efficiency and swimming, again, we're talking about having a better stroke overall because the easier you consume, the more efficient you consume. It's all about energy and output. So less energy, bigger output, or they're coming out of the water in the same time with less effort or coming out with both. Right. You're coming out with less effort and better speed.

economy and efficiency. Same thing with power, right? No one likes to swim hard. No one likes to swim, you know, and get really fatigued, but it is a, it is a upper body sport. So I was, I think that was a really like a fun exercise due to all these things that athletes, especially triathletes love to talk about, which is, um,

Run, run, run, run, run, bike, bike, bike, bike, all the fun gear and gadgets and things we can do when it comes to running and riding. And now every single one of those things that people focus on, you know, a new run shoes, I got to get some new carbon shoes. It costs like 350 bucks. And yet you're not willing to do anything.

Put more time and effort into the sport that starts out your day, which is the immediate start of like your energy depletion. And again, even if you can come out of the one of the athletes we had there, we had intros, you know, said, why are you here? And they just said, I'm here because I know the better a swimmer I am, the better cycling, the better cyclist and runner I will be.

And I thought it's just a very refreshing way to look at it when we spend so much time looking at gear or power meters or, you know, spending, you know, 600 bucks on the feed each week on in trying to shove 150 carbs in our throat before every ride and run we do, because that's what we have to do to get better and faster. But yet very few actually put the time and effort into fixing their swim stroke, getting becoming a better swimmer and then starting to bike fresh. So yeah,

As usual, I totally lied. I said I didn't want to talk about swimming today, and here I am 20 minutes later, and I'll have Dennis talk about swimming. Yeah. Well, that's okay, man. You saw that one coming, though, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. Usually, we talk about swimming, biking, and running, so...

Got to pick one here and there. Well, what you said, the one thing that, well, there's several things, but one of the things that really stood out to me was this concept of self-correcting and doing things wrong on purpose. Because I think that to me that I've always thought about that with regard to running and cycling. It's sort of like in my head, like,

I know when I'm running my best, it feels the easiest, right? So I think there's something to be said for trying to, you know, I follow this guy's name's Irwin something. He's a movement specialist. And he talks about like when you're out running every once in a while, throw in purposely bad strides just so you can feel it. And what you're saying about swimming, and that makes sense to me, is that I think when we're real, you know, kind of,

sort of close to what we're trying to feel it's harder to make that adjustment but if you know how bad something feels then you're like oh okay this is exactly what i shouldn't be doing what's the opposite or what's something that makes more sense and i think you know sometimes to me you know i'm fortunate enough to have an open body of water that gets you know windy and choppy and things like that and i think that when you force yourself into situations that um

you know, you have to make adjustments and adapt. I think that helps you understand sort of what makes sense and what works in the, at least in the water for sure. But like, you know, that's why I think sometimes, you know, when, when you do a lot of trail running or mountain biking, that it kind of forces you into stickier situations and you kind of figure out your way through it because you got to,

you know make you got to try and make it easier sometimes rather than just kind of running along on a flat surface and trying to find the right stride or something can be a little more difficult so there's something to be said for kind of you know running leaning a little forward or too far back or whatever and then really kind of just finding your equilibrium that perfect kind of balance and that stroke and or that stride and the same with the swimming and the strokes I think that

that there's a lot to be learned there by doing it the wrong way just at least to feel it because you know when you're talking about feel for the water uh that's if you're feeling it in a weird way you know um and it is a hard thing to describe but certain times and and and again it

You can feel, you know, I think everybody's the same with that. Sometimes you get out of the water and you're like, damn, I nailed it today. And then you go back the next day and you like completely forgot. Yeah. It's so true. What happened? It's like by the end of the next one, you're like, wait, I was doing this yesterday. And then suddenly, whatever. So that is the case, I think, for frequency. And we talk about, we've talked about it recently, but, you know, even...

like you're saying it isn't about going in there and always swimming three, 4,000 yards. If you're doing it wrong, it's about, can you go back every day and start to remember, remember what's right. And just sort of build that up in a, in a way that makes sense and helps you learn it and helps you like kind of crystallize it in your brain. Because then, you know, that's the whole secret, right? It's like, you learned that as a child, swimming all those, those labs. I mean, it's like, you just do that shit naturally. And, um,

I kind of think that happened with me on the bike just because of all the mountain biking I did and whatever. And it's just like I sort of know internally that

how to pedal a bike, you know, or if I'm off or something like that and I can self-correct a lot easier because I had so much frequency with it. I'm sure you're like that in the pool. I'm sure you get off sometimes, but you know how to do it because you've done it so much that you're like, wait a minute, this isn't, you know, this is the trap we fall into and I start doing the wrong shit, but you can self-correct because you know how to do it. Self-correcting with purpose. Right. I mean,

That's such a really good point I hadn't thought about in that, like, I know what it feels like. In swimming, at least, like, my predominant feel is to have feel.

So when I don't have it, it's really easy for me to recognize because, again, growing up as a lifelong swimmer, I know what feel looks like and I know what it's like to have it. And I know immediately when I don't have it because it's abnormal. And on the flip of the coin, it's, you know, oddly enough, like when you look at adult onset swimmers or people picking up late in life, like they're more of their aha moment is when they actually do feel it.

And one of the, one of the things I've really been in this, I think resonates with swimming and running because they're both the, the technique dominant disciplines that we do, right? Cycling. I think everyone would agree is easily the, um, it's third, you know, on the one through three of the disciplines we do on what it's like to have, you know, good, uh, be efficient with your pedal stroke. Yes. I think, um,

People do need to work on being in air or having the right position. Right. But when it comes to running and swimming, it's technique driven. Swimming is easily number one and running is number two. And I think one of the things I mean, one of the things I'd love to highlight is, you know, doing these like twenty fives and fifties and hundreds, which which I know is is because I see these comments and online swim school all the time is they're maddening to people.

they are absolutely maddening because they are more concerned with getting finished with their swim than getting better. And what I want to really kind of drive home today, especially for this time of year, and I've been having this discussion with a lot of athletes when it comes to where we are right now with their running or where we are right now with their swimming, is run-wise, we talk a lot about having...

having a really, really, really strong engine but no chassis. And so what happens is you have this huge discrepancy in the durability of your chassis and the horsepower in your engine, so the aerobic system. If you don't

relax a bit and just kind of again not scale back your effort on making your engine have more horsepower then you can do all the work you want to do with your chassis but you're still going to have that same discrepancy right if you keep working on building that aerobic engine over and over and over and over again you might still get stronger more resilient and more durable by increasing your chassis but you're still going to have the same delta between the two

So you have to slow down. You have to let them catch up. Like I can use this example on the phone. I think last week a few times was, you know, so you see a guy or a girl going into the gym and they hop on the leg extension machine using their quads and they're doing like 200 pounds. And then they flip over to do hamstring curls or doing like 80. Like if you look at them, you would say, and they do any kind of a sport, you would say, please stop doing 200 pounds or stop trying to go up on your,

Leg extension, let's get it to where at least your hamstring extension, your leg extension are at least closer, right? Because we don't have these huge discrepancies because then you become so quad dominant that you're more likely to have either a quad injury from overuse or a hamstring injury from being too weak.

same thing happens with like you know running we talk about run frequency let's keep things real easy let's not try to really explode our engine with doing a lot of you know anaerobic work and trying to really again move your threshold and your vo2 up let's just do some very light aerobic running hold on to it and let's let your chassis catch up so then we can be in a better position to now do more volume and more intensity but the biggest thing is we now have a complete

you know, car or truck, whatever you want to call yourself as a, you know, um,

You know, you have your own vehicle that's now evenly distributed. And now I can run, I can drive it as fast as I want to. It's for as long as I want to, without worrying, it's going to break down or the wheels are going to fall off or it's going to, you know, fumes are going to start coming out. You've got to wait for that. The same, it's the exact same thing with swimming, because when you use these different muscles and again, for an adult onset swimmer, they are really different. Like you're not used to feeling these muscles. You're not used to feeling these muscles.

And I did this kind of not experiment, but oh, one of the things that about feeling it wrong and feeling it right was I had athletes finish as far as they could underneath their bodies.

What you see really, really common. We talk about a lot like swimming like a gorilla or something like a house. And you've got all these athletes and you're forcing them just to move water underneath themselves. Right. Finish as far as you can underneath yourselves, which is what we do when we get tired, because that is the path of least resistance. You ask an athlete to stay wide and grab water. You tire. Right.

Right. Your your your muscular endurance wears down. It's harder on your your forearms and your and your arms and your lats and your chest because you're grabbing water, grabbing still water. If you kind of whoosh your hand underneath you, that water is moving as a channel because you're moving on top of it. So it's easier to push back, which, again, as humans, we are we are we are created to find the path of least resistance. So I don't finish underneath and finish far out and feel what it's like.

But what happens is when you continue to swim long periods doing the wrong thing, these muscles that you have thought or become accustomed to using continue to get fitter. So when you go to make changes to engage muscle groups that are weaker, right? Maybe it's your lats, maybe it's your chest, maybe it's your triceps when you finish. It's harder to isolate those because they are not your dominant muscle group that you've been trying to use or it's not your dominant muscle.

when it comes to form. So the more time you spend implementing bad form, the more time you spend implementing

focusing on the muscle groups that aren't supposed to be your primary movers when it comes to the levers you move in swimming, the harder it's going to be to limit that interference and to close that gap from the ones you're supposed to be using that are more primary and then the ones you're not supposed to be using much which should be more stabilizer. So you're causing more internal confusion, more instability and just a higher likelihood that you're going to be able to have

or be able to withstand lower and lower reps and need longer rest to do it right. And that's why taking the time now, especially this time of year to strengthen those muscles and it's enclosed the gap so that now you're, you're secondary or you're, you know, second or third thought through muscles are now your primary movers, right? Take the time to make that flip. Same thing with doing some string training, working on the mobility, um,

Flip the script on your running, right? Make yourself a more durable, resilient athlete. So now when it comes to February, March, April, where we want to run harder and everything feels good, like you're more durable and close that gap.

And that is just something I can't encourage people enough because it is like when you do it right, you know what it feels like. Like the like the money getting run that we do is a great example. You do all these, you know, because you're sprinting, but you're you're short enough to where you can hold great form.

And every single person I've ever had do it, they do the warm-up and they're okay and they kind of feel out, whatever. They're kind of probably just like shuffling along. They go through this pyramid of intervals, again, all short enough, one, to go fast, two, to maintain good form. On the quote-unquote cool-down or remainder of it, everyone runs faster and it feels easier. Not because it's the beginning, right? Because it's the end. But because you...

just did for a period of time, you know, and on the interval and then the rest interval when you're probably not having the best form, you know what it feels like now to run well and to run efficiently and to run with good economy and strides the same way. That's why it's so great to add in strides to two, three, four, um,

runs a week to know what it's like to feel that perfect stride, that perfect form, that perfect level of efficiency. And weaving those in, again, to swimming is a great thing. And build your way up and pyramid it out if you need to. But the more you do that, the easier the season will be. And if you can slow down enough to do it right now, you will thank yourself later because, again, the closer you get to your biggest training blocks and your build season, your peak season, you know what you're not wanting to do? Slow down and do less.

And this is the exact cycle everyone finds himself in come March and May. I don't have time to focus on that. You're right, you don't. Because you work on a six, seven-month cycle where you do six or seven months of repeated training, the exact same thing you probably did the year before. You still got the same swim form. You still got the same run form. You probably still have the same bike power. But you don't have time to work on being more economical and more efficient.

working on your top end, becoming stronger, because now you don't have time to do less and focus on those specifics because you feel like you need to do more because you're behind. The race is so close. So if you're one of those athletes that finds themselves in February, I'll just wait till January, wait till February, wait till March. You are behind. You're behind. And this is the if you're an athlete has the same niggles and the same injuries. It's because you go from no use to overuse.

in a period of eight weeks, you don't do any appropriate use, which is what we all should be doing right now. November, December, January, February, this is the time for appropriate use, right? Strengthening, having better mobility and swimming and cycling and running, right? Prepping the chassis, prepping the foundation for when we want to do some work. And if you're not doing that, and then you're no, right? If you got 10, 12 hours in a week,

And you should be doing two, two and a half hours of some strength work, some focus drills and swimming, some things, maybe some things, same things with running. You're not going to want to use those because that's going to come out to about 20% of your work week come when you actually want to choose to do work in February, March, April, where you're also panic training because you now see your events 12 weeks away. You don't want to give up 20% of your load. So do it now. Because then just to maintain that, that drops down to like 5%.

when it comes to your weekly training load. And here's the great thing, is that with increased focus now, better use of your time and appropriate movements now, strengthening things that are now weak, guess what you can handle late in the future? More volume. You can do more. You won't get hurt as much. You won't be prevented from doing 25, 30, 35, 40 miles a week because you are injury-free.

So everyone wants to do more, right? And go faster, but very few are willing to do the work to be able to withstand what they want and the demands that are necessary to be able to actually recover from that load in that amount of volume and that level of intensity getting closer into the season. So do it now, because if you don't guarantee you, if you don't want to do it in the time of year where it's easiest to get it done, where swimming and cycling running volume is probably a lot lower, then

You're not going to want to do it when you're panic training and you're 12 weeks out and you're looking online for PDFs and your email and coach and looking for online training programs, because now you're lost. You're back to where you were February of last year and you got 20 weeks to your race. Now, what do we do? Now is the time to start that foundation, become more durable athlete. That way, when it's time to train, like you need to train the train that you want to train for race day, you can do that. Yeah, man, you said it, uh,

now's a great time to become more economical, you know, and I've used analogies up and down the block and I've talked about how, you know, everybody wants to play a drum solo, but you got to work on your rudiments and get all that stuff done so you can have actually hold onto it. And one of my more recent discoveries, I talked about playing wiffle ball a few weeks ago and I've had a bad shoulder for like ever, maybe 20 years, you know, uh, for throwing. And, uh, I played and I, I kind of was like, you know what? I,

I played baseball my whole life or whatever. And so I ordered one of these pitch back things, you know, where you throw the ball and it bounces back. Like I got to go into it because my buddy was playing in the 60 over baseball league. And he's like, you got to play next year. And it's in November. And I was like, ah, but I've kind of curious about it. But anyway, so I started, I went out there and my instinct was to just kind of start playing.

playing like I used to play right but I my mechanics are so jacked you talk about feel for the water and nobody thinks about this but you really need a feel for the ball when you're throwing it and the release point and how it when to let it go I mean that's just a something you learn over time and it's really the key to throwing is just having that neuromuscular connection to know exactly when to let go and how you know your arms coming through as hard as possible whatever and

But I just stood in front of that thing. But, you know, I started way back maybe at a pitcher's mound level. And then I just moved up to like 20 feet and I just kept trying. It was so weird, man, throwing it. It was like, can you imagine coming back from swimming after not doing it for 20 years? Yeah.

But I just, I gave into the ideas like I know how to do this, but my brain isn't connecting right now. So I was just easily throwing it in there and it took about a hundred throws. And then I was like, all right, I'll move back like five feet or something like that. So I know over time that that connection is there, but I have, you know, it's really like a chassis thing. My body wasn't ready to throw like that anymore. And so, I mean, it's kind of a,

A lot of what we're talking about is a confidence thing, right? In the sense of you work on your economy now, you work on your form now and make it feel, you know, lock that in and make it feel easier. Then everything feels easier when you put that volume. I think a lot of us, you know, you get done with a race and you're like, I got to go after it now. And then you just want to go, you know, like you think now's the time to go slog on a two hour run or something like that. But no, it's about being confident.

More economical with your form and just having stronger form so that when you, like you said, train like you need to train, you're ready for it and it becomes easier. I think that it's really hard to...

understand and it's almost like I got to start reading again and then you just have to like read a whole book tonight you know what I mean rather it's like a struggle because you're you're out of practice or if you're writing I I want to write a book so you you just sit down the night and you write out like a hundred pages and then you're so burned out from it you know what I mean because it's a muscle you haven't used or whatever but you're jacked up on one day so like how do we

you know, work on, uh, you know, our grammar and our form and our writing short sentences and taking on the clutter and things like that. Those are the things that make writing easier. And same with triathlon, you know, it's like work on things that connect to making the whole process feel easier in, like you're saying, you know, just general strength and

um, you know, that's why I'm, you know, I can't really swim outside right now. It's a little chilly, but you know, I just, I've been into my pushups and rowing and, you know, just trying to build that overall upper body strength. And, um, but thinking about when I get to the pool is just really getting that form dialed down. And that's why those 25s, I know what you said was so interesting. They're more worried about getting it

done and getting it and getting better and I think that that is such a huge point with everything it's like right now if you're working on your strides or you're working on you know medium shorter medium runs and getting some good you know form going on and just feeling free and flowing a little better rather than thinking you just got to build that endurance you know you got to go forever and know that you can do it I mean

It works for it only works for so long, you know, before you just start falling apart. So now is the time to put your body back together and have it ready to go. I mean, and just the overall mindset is so counter to like the culture that we have in America, which is, you know, be in a hurry and only do things that make us feel good.

like because we're asking you to slow down and do things you aren't good at that's like that's why i have like the like so much respect for everybody that came into camp and people that are trying to like do things that they

they know they need to work on and to slow down and do. I have so much respect for that because it takes a totally different type of person. One, you're hopeful and encouraged and at least feel and confident that you can improve, but now we're asking you to slow down and work on things that you're not good at. No one likes that. All we want to do is how quickly can we get done and how good can we feel when we're finished. That's it. All that is is a great way to keep building bad habits.

It is a way for you to stay fine and to stay okay and to be okay, but you're really good at being mediocre. You might be very good at doing the same thing over and over and over again. And so when you hop in the pool, you hop on the bike, and you do your runs, and you're just ignoring these things that you know aren't going to feel good and that you're going to feel maybe even awkward or insecure doing it because you're not good at it,

Like use it as a growth opportunity. Use it. That was one of our jokes at swim campus. I said, you know, it was highlighted. We did our whiteboard session the next morning for our first one. We did like a little bit of like a strength and mobility session. And I just kind of I just kind of joked and said, I said, I feel a lot of area. I feel a lot of areas of deficiency.

Like a lot of areas that I need to improve on. And someone said, no, they're just growth opportunities. And so that was like the running joke. The rest thing is like I see a lot of areas for growth and that. And I think that's like, I mean, what's more empowering and fun and fulfilling than to find areas of growth to get better at?

And we just don't chase that down. If we want to keep doing what we do over and over again, you might hop in the pool and you're just, we're more worried about doing your same 2k at the same speed every single time and just doing it because it feels better to you than to stay fine than it does to go against the grain and slow down and try to actually be better at it and see that you have a flaw. Because the scary part is you might also realize like, I got a long way to go and no one wants to feel that. But here's the cool thing.

is unless you've already decided it, there is no end to your triathlete, you know, hobby career. It's not, it doesn't end at this year. And what happens is a lot of people keep putting off the inevitable, which is, you know, getting stronger to, you know, working through imbalances, fixing their swim technique, look, working on the run form, you know, uh, increasing their chassis. They don't want to do it now. They don't want to do it. Cause it means slowing down and then trying to figure things out. They might, it might be like, ah, I might take me longer to get to X, Y, and Z. Um,

Well, if you keep ignoring it at some point, guess what? You're going to have to address it. It's like, you know, the, you're, you're a little bit, you're a little bit under the weather and you want to hop on the next morning at 4am and go crush yourself on a, on a hour and a half, you know, Zwift race. Well now, now you're no longer kind of sick. Now you're out for a week or you got a slight, a slight niggle in your, in your, in your, you know, somewhat, um, uh, you know, fairly, you know, um,

I totally lost my train of thought. Where was I going? I totally lost it. You don't know either. I lost my train of thought. Oh, same thing with having a niggle. It's like you might have a slight pain here and there, and if you ignore it for long enough and you just want to, quote unquote, run through it, ride through it, swim through it, well, now you're going to be on the shelf for months.

Right. Or maybe longer. All you had to do is maybe take off a little bit and then work on an imbalance. And then on a larger scale, if you don't do that, you don't work on these deficiencies, you keep creating this the distance between your, you know, your chassis and it continues to grow and grow and grow over the over the years. At some point, you're going to have to take an extended period of time and it's not going to take you a few weeks and a few months. Ketchup's going to take you a year or two.

So slowing down and addressing these things that can allow you to do things better and to move better and to feel better and to be stronger and to be more efficient. Like it's this is all about energy. It's all about energy and the cost of doing business and the cost of doing work.

And so if you can make the cost of doing work a lot less, you're going to be more efficient. Right. And just like you were saying, you know, a lot of athletes want to do more to do more, but they're not efficient at it. And it's like, you know, a business that wants to start doing more volume and open themselves up to, you know, a whole nother territory.

They don't have the processes and the procedures in place to withstand that. They might have a perfect product, but then when they start to go into a whole different territory and they quadruple their sales, well, now they don't have the infrastructure or the procedures in place. So now they're not getting out product in time. And then the product they do get out, it's not the same standard they used to get to. And so now everything else is becoming deficient. It's the same thing with training.

If you don't do it right on the micro, you're never going to do it well in the macro. And more people are concerned with how the macro looks and how much they can try to get by with. But if you can't do it right on a small level, you can't do it right once. That's why practice is so important. Repetition is so important. If you can't do it right perfectly once, you can't do it right millions or hundreds or thousands of times. Yeah.

Do it right on the micro and then work your way to doing more of it more frequently. I nailed it once. Let's see if I can nail it twice in a row. And I was doing it three or four times in a row. Now I just did 10 in a row. That's called practice. And as kids, we were all about that. You go out there and you throw the football forever trying to get the perfect spiral. Or Hayden might be in the basement shooting pucks and he's trying to make it in the top right corner 20 times in a row. It is practice, practice, practice, practice.

And now we just, we just kind of go through the motions. We just kind of move through and expect it. And again, expect it to get better while we're trying to drive, you know, a square peg through a round hole, right? Which is, you know, the, the durability, the distance of your durability to your efficiency or your, your aerobic capacity, instead of trying to move things fluidly with the, you know, a circular peg through a round hole.

Like you have to be able to address those and take the time. But, and most people, and again, most people don't do that because when they find the time, you know, when the season starts, they don't, they have this sense of urgency and panic. They don't want to. So this time of year is the time, right? When you have no, like you don't have that swim, bike, run sense of urgency. You don't have the same volume, the same intensity. You don't have a race around the corner, right? You got to freaking, you know,

Turkey trot next week. That's it. Who cares? You might be wearing a turkey costume. Do it now when that pressure and that expectation is so low. But we promise you, you will see the benefit later. And just like being efficient and having better technique in the pool might, let's say you go into a two-month, eight-month focus and

you know, um, and you only focus on your technique and you're being really efficient and your 45 minutes swim goes from a 45 minutes swim at RP eight, you don't drop much time. You're down to only like a 43 30, but RP of three, right? Huge to gain. You might not have gotten faster. It could be a pacing problem, but you got way more efficient and you, and you expended way less energy, you know, referenced by the, the, the huge drop in the RPE scale.

Same thing goes like doing the small things and the mobility work or a little bit of strength training that you can do this time of year. You might not increase because there's people saying like, I want to see, you know, I'm a faster in my one mile because I've, you know, I dropped my, you know, my one rep max, my deadlift went from 180 to 250. Like you shouldn't care about that.

You should care about, man, last year I didn't do anything. I was only able to get by with like 20, 25 miles a week and running. And I always got niggles and my calf would do this and my hip would do that. But this year I'm doing 30, 35 miles a week, sometimes 40, and I've got no pain and I'm recovering better and I feel better. That's going to lead to huge gains. All right. So what you do now allows you to do more, which is how you gain the fitness that you want.

not by forcing yourself to do more and neglecting again in another year what you haven't done in the past and again creating more of a gap from what you're doing right to what you need to do to be doing right but you're currently doing wrong yeah i mean so much of this to me comes down to this concept of uh

you know, think about it now. So you don't have to think about it later. You know, you taught, I'm sure you saw this all weekend is, uh, you could just see the wheels churning in people's heads while they're swimming, you know, because it's like, that's the last thing you want when you're racing and you're out doing stuff in a long distance is to be okay. It's dry. I got my arm here. You know, you, you just want to be flowing, right? So you want to, you know, kind of work it into your brain. So, um,

it comes naturally, you know, back to my throwing. I know how to throw, but I couldn't throw from long. So I was just repetitively getting it down in a short distance. So it just becomes natural because the more I think about it, the worse I get. I mean, you know, sports is just not thinking it's reacting and having a, you know, those muscular connections that just execute things normally. And that's just repetition, you know? And like you're saying, man, it's like, wow, we can't,

you know, if you want to swim 500 fast, you got to be able to swim, you know, 25 in a, in a way that, you know, makes sense. I just think that if we could shift our thought process on that and realize that we're working on something that, you know, because when you think about long, you're thinking about swimming 4,000 yards and Ironman, it's just like dawning, but your first instinct is be like, I just got to be in shape for that.

Well, no, let's really dial things in and get your form right and your economy and have the right approach to it versus thinking that you got to swim, you know, such a long distance. I mean, you know, most people that are good at long distance will tell you that Ironman shouldn't feel hard.

I mean, it's going to feel hard on the run, of course, at the end. But, I mean, for the most part, it's just sort of an economy day. You know, if you're in good enough shape for it and you have the right form across the board and you're doing things the right way, it shouldn't be like killing yourself from the get-go. You know, and I think that that's a mentality a lot of us have, you know, if you don't understand it and you didn't grow up necessarily in endurance sports. It's just sort of this mindset of...

just creating ways to make it feel easier. And, and there's something beautiful about, I mean, that's when I talk about drumming all the time, I don't even know how I got better. I do know. I mean, I was working on these little things and then suddenly I could do shit while I was playing and it just sort of came together, you know, and that's an interesting thing is if you work on those little low hanging basics all the time,

And they talk about it in whatever, football, basketball, all these things. These college players probably practice these fundamental things that seem goofy all the time, but they just do it so it's natural so they don't have to think about it when they're in the game and it just kind of comes out. It's instinct. That's what we're looking for. Yeah, and I think we can close it out here, but I love what you said because the instinct is for –

People to do things that make it feel easier instead of doing the hard work that's uncomfortable that is required to then actually make the things that they want to do easier. Right. It's easier to go to the pool and do 200 and swim 200 straight. It's easier to go get on your bike on the indoor trainer and just go hard all the time because that's what you want and it's what you're accustomed to and it makes you feel good.

But what will be easier down the road, right, and make you more efficient and economical is to slow things down, break it up into 25s, 50s, maybe even go shorter than 2K, spend more time in the pool, but do it right. You know, or maybe hop on the bike and not hammer yourself in doing more zone two work. It might not feel easy. It might be boring, but will make your longer days much easier later in the year.

And it's just it's that everyone's definition of of easy. And to me, most of the time, easy translates to comfortable. Like I want it to be easy. That means I want to be comfortable and that means I don't have to work on changing things. But the reality is, if I want to move better and run better and swim faster and bike with more power, I need to focus on things that I don't necessarily like to do because that's how I got here in the first place. Right.

I had these deficiencies, these growth areas for a reason. So let's focus on closing that gap and then everything will become easier.

And that's how we get better, right? So it's like, is your definition of easy doing what's comfortable and doing what I've always done and repeating the same season over and over again for the last decade, right? And wondering why you weren't getting faster or is your definition of easy doing work that's uncomfortable, finding ways to get better, finding areas that I can do that's growth that might take more time and not be as flashy, but then come March, April, May, June, I'm going to be moving easier, handling more load and going faster and being fitter.

It's just two different ways of looking at what easy and economical feels like. And it could, you know, really have a drastic effect on the outlook of your whole season, right? Between now and January, February. Yeah. And every time I say close that gap, I think of that stupid Deion Sanders and Nick Saban commercial for Geico.

or Aflac, whatever it is, he says, close that gap. I'm like, I've got to quit saying that. Yeah. Well, that was a good reminder for me always too, to think about shit like this. So, you know, yeah. I mean, see, I'm me too. You go through it and you don't think those growth areas. Yeah. Think about it now. So you don't have to think about it later.

Yeah. It's, I mean, it's serious like that. It's like that Aaron or that chore you keep putting off because it's just not your favorite, but then it's always there. But then when you finally do it, you're like, God, I feel so much better than you could have done two weeks earlier. Yep. So don't put it off. Do it now. Uh, as always love you guys. We appreciate you. Go to our website, c26carathlin.com is our one-stop shop for all things, coaching camps and community.

If you need anything from Mike, he is available. Mike at C26Girafflin.com. If you need anything from me, Robbie at C26Girafflin.com. All right. Check you Thursday. Sounds good, man. See you.