Episode 50 Special | EP#50

Highlights and hidden gems from the best of the best of the first 49 episodes of That Triathlon Show, to celebrate the show turning 50 episodes old!

In this Episode you'll learn about:

• Top-10 highlights: the best of the best in terms of advice, tips, tools and tactics
• Hidden gems: unconventional or more unknown pieces of advice and information
• The most voted for favorite books, blogs and resources, triathlon gear and equipment, and personal habits of all TTS guests
• The 5 most downloaded TTS episodes revealed. Have you listened to all of them?

Shownotes:

Top-10 highlights: the best of the best in terms of advice, tips, tools and tactics

1. Episode 1​: Joe Friel's advice for improving training structure and periodize your way to success

05:17 -

"The closer in time you get to your race, the more like your race your training should become"

• Many athletes start to unconsciously second-guess their training plan the closer they get to the race and start to throw in workouts that they find in magazines, on forums, or on podcasts randomly, in search of a magic bullet workout that is going to make them a lot fitter.
• This is obviously not the way that you should do it. In many ways planning your training becomes much easier the closer you get to your race because you can just try to simulate your race in training.
• For example, if you are targeting an Olympic distance race, a key bike workout might be 6x10 minutes at race intensity with a few minutes of recovery between each repetition (assuming that you are shooting for close to a 1-hour bike split).​

2. Episode 3: 3 foundational elements that will make you swim faster with Gerry Rodrigues

06:44 -

• The 3 foundational elements are:
• Tautness
• Alignment
• Propulsion
• Tautness means to engage your muscles and keep your body taut and firm. An analogy would be an uncooked spaghetti straw versus a cooked spaghetti straw. You want to have structural integrity to your body.
• Alignment is a way to really simplify stroke advice and the way you should think about your movement patterns. From your hand entry to the very end of your stroke, keep your hand in the "channel" that’s formed by a line projected from your shoulder, and a second line that is the center of your body. So keep your hand in that channel, between that central line and the shoulder line, throughout the stroke from hand entry to exit. Simple but not easy.
• Propulsion. Gerry put it very eloquently, “Grip it and rip it.” Keep your wrist firm and don’t "pet the kitty" as he said.

3. Episode 4: How to get started in triathlon with Wendy Mader

09:38 -

• Wendy talked about what beginners should think of when starting out in triathlon.​
• She also talks about how to make triathlon a lifestyle and the importance of it.
• Don’t get overwhelmed and think that you have to get all the latest gears and gadgets.
• And equally important, don’t think that you have to do tons of training.
• It’s more about being consistent than training a whole lot. Train to the level that you want to, remember to keep it fun.

4. Episode 7: How to use data to get faster with Jim Vance

11:30 -

• He talks about the importance of being confident on the start line and how to become confident.​
• Jim talks about using data for this. Knowing that you’ve done the work based on the data, and that you have done it right, is one way of being confident at that starting line.
• I review my most successful recent workouts before every race. I look at the training file and my splits, and think about how I felt during that workout and try to relive it. This puts me in a confident state of mind, which makes me ready to perform.

Episode 13: The Pillars of Performance with elite coach Matt Dixon

13:12 -

• If you’re even semi-serious about improving as a triathlete, then you can’t isolate swimming, biking, and running. You need to consider and be particular about recovery, nutrition, and strength and conditioning as well.
• This isn’t just for the top age-groupers. This is really for everyone.
• This episode is one of the first episodes I would recommend to any triathlete to listen to of all the 49 episodes so far.

6. Episode 16: The Great Debate: Intensity vs. Volume

14:34 -

• If you’re a beginner, you'll gain the most from increasing your volume by increasing the frequency of workouts. They don’t need to be too long. Just do a bit more than you’ve been doing now by increasing more workouts.
• If you’re an intermediate triathlete, you don’t train too much, and you have time to train more than you do at the moment, then you can increase the volume. Primarily, you should increase the duration of your workout.
• Most of us are time-constrained and you’re already at your limit at what you can do time-wise. So this is when starting to do high-intensity training really comes into play and can become your path to performance improvement.
• For advanced triathletes, the key to improving is nailing your intensity. You need to include about 10-20% of high-quality intensity in your training. These should be the kind of workouts that you really try to nail.

7. Episode 20: Masters Athletes: How to minimize the performance decline for aging triathletes

15:45 -

• In this episode I talk about how to train for masters athletes to minimize the performance decline that comes with age. I also talk about the main reason of performance decline with age.​

"The reduction and decline in performance is associated most closely with direct reductions in exercise volume and intensity. And probably, as a consequence of changes in a number of both physical and behavioral factors. For example, increased prevalence to injuries for masters athletes, and reductions in energy perhaps, and time, motivation, and a lot of social obligations, etc."

• This is not to say that decline won’t happen. But in many cases, a lot of what we naturally blame age for might just be your own training. There might be something that you can change in your training that will greatly reduce the reduction that you'd otherwise see.

8. Episode 26: High-performance coaching with elite coach Paulo Sousa