DON’T Smash it!

This is advice I frequently give to swimmers in the squad and to (mainly) inexperienced triathletes that I coach in preparation for a key conditioning session and sometimes even for a race.  Why is a ‘smash it’ mentality counter productive for a speed endurance athlete?

Surely an athlete wants to ‘smash’ their PB’s, ‘smash’ their competitors, ‘smash’ the course, conditions and themselves in training or racing?

Er, no.

Think about it. You invest time, energy, effort, patience to build your aerobic endurance, muscular strength, pace awareness and hone your technique into an impressive athlete ‘project in progress’ or finished article at your ‘A’ race. Many months go into this process. Then in one session or race, try and smash it?! Extreme contrasts in physical conditioning will rarely yield expected or exceptional results. A ‘smash it’ mentality is counter productive for endurance athletes due to the aim of extreme speed or effort, which inevitably is not sustainable. PB’s and podium performances are a consistent result of learning to pace correctly! Note the consistent bit… That is what = ongoing improvement over a season/ training block/ in medium to long term.

Sustainable effort is the difference between good and great performances. Take a look at world class endurance athlete time splits over the duration of their events.  Elite and experienced athletes will actually finish stronger towards the end of a race, as a negative split or in delivering a sprint finish. To prevail at the performance end of the scale, the athlete needs to be able to strongly sustain their race pace, effort or approach.  Each of these factors is important, however mindset is often the prevailing significant factor influencing the physical performance delivery. Investing the work in training and then selecting the wrong approach or mindset can literally blow your race right out of the water!

As an endurance swimmer or multisport triathlete, key factors are required to manage energy.  Being calm, focused (even relaxed), with a considered approach based on experience of sustainable pace in training for the goal or race distance. Literally the opposite of ‘smashing’! Practicing in training and applying strategy to race execution allows the athlete to reduce the anxiety, nerves and lack of experience that leads to this counter productive mindset. I recall the final moments waiting on the pontoon to start in Lausanne at the World Championships 2006, feeling the calmest I had ever felt before a major international race. Despite questioning whether maybe I was too relaxed, I went on to deliver a winning performance and it ‘almost’ felt easy. Being well conditioned, able to judge your individual sustainable speed and focusing on the process facilitates the ability to deliver your best possible performance. Increasingly so, if you are racing over +2 hours.

Athletes who need to overtly psyche themselves up will quite often be the ‘crash and burners’ on race day, unable to work out why they couldn’t hold pace and/ or fade towards the end of their event or a key training conditioning set. In a typical post-race debrief or session review with the athlete, there may be many variables to blame (nutrition, hydration, conditions, mechanical/ technical failure, cramp) and nearly always pacing won’t figure in there. Adjusting the mindset issue, focusing on the process of execution, staying ‘in the moment’ will assist the athlete in performing at their potential. A ‘smash it’ mentality can indicate the athlete is a bit too focused on the outcome rather than balancing with the expected workload, what has to be done / the process.

Carefully build the best version of yourself in athletic terms and challenge yourself to deliver the best possible performance on the day it matters. Then recover and not be in pieces or ‘broken’ to repeat this process again. The ability to fine tune and keep improving is then inherent to the process rather than getting into a ‘boom and bust’ cycle, which is, quite frankly (yawn), boring!

Thanks to Simon Griffiths of H20pen magazine, one of our Lane 1 squad swimmers, for his take on this coaching advice and example of perfectly paced split times over a 1500m swim event. You can find his Editor blog on this link

Sun Yang’s 50m splits during the 1500m final and the 400m at the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pace Awareness

One of the key skills differentiating an elite athlete from an amateur, is the ability to judge pace when training and racing. This takes many hours of well invested time in the pool, on the bike or on your legs running if you are a triathlete. Quite often as an athlete develops skills in pace awareness in one discipline such as swimming they see and feel the benefits in their other sports such as cycling and running too. Training needs to be specific and targeted to the athlete’s own individual data, rather than numbers or pace identified as part of a goal oriented process. Too often the ‘numbers’ become unrealistic without any data or performances to back up or scaffold these expectations.

A threshold test is a good way to highlight the ability to judge pace, as is a race scenario, if you can gain accurate split times for comparison. This is often difficult data to acquire in the open water and consequently many triathletes find it difficult to understand how their judgement can be so ‘off the pace’ when their perception of their work rate is the opposite. The most common feedback we see as coaches in the squads with our newer swimmers is that they set off way too fast on timed or test sets, due to it ‘feeling easy’ and then struggle to maintain 10-20% slower pace towards the end of an effort. In fact they will often tell us they were swimming faster at the end of a 400m effort. However the split times and data reveal a completely different story…. The proof is always in the numbers and performance delivery and perception often won’t provide an accurate correlation to the data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A regular focus frequently featuring throughout our squad annual program is pace awareness and judgement exercises. Using a range of sets helps reveal an athlete’s ability to maintain and then improve their pace (negative splits), as do our contrast sets. The majority of work however needs to be invested consistently in specific CSS work week in and week out, to develop and improve ability to pace at or just below threshold. A threshold effort is sustainable, and the most relevant to endurance athlete racing for an hour or more. Threshold and tempo pace are not in the slightest bit comparable to an all-out sprint.

As we are training in 33m pools at Richmond Pools on the Park, it is handy to have the beepers set to provide feedback every half length in order to allow for more frequent pace adjustment particularly in the earlier stages of developing pace awareness. Here is a handy reference for setting up your timing device if you are working on pacing in your sessions with an idea of each lane group CSS on the various distances (33m to 800m).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Finis Tempo Trainer Pro or Wetronome are both excellent devices to help swimmers and triathletes work on this key area to improve their swim performance, both in the squad environment where we use them frequently on lane leaders and if training independently.

Enjoy making the leap from good to great in your pacing and performance, it is a very sound investment in progression!

Coach Fi

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race specific training: Tactical surges

Delivering an effective race swim requires the ability to sustain your race pace for the distance, incorporate changes of pace and then settling back into your CSS or race pace without too much impact on your overall speed or resulting in a drop off in pace. The ability to sustain CSS pace has been a key focus for the squad throughout the Winter and Spring months, leading into the race season. Approaching the season and early races, implementing tactical and technical focus will bring about performance gains to allow a solid pool swimming training block to be applied successfully to Open Water and race scenarios.

Technical skills include:

Different forms of drafting and being able to adapt and implement as the conditions require, despite having a personal preference for making good use of other swimmers to conserve energy and swim slightly faster if well selected as the race pans out (ie: feet or hip drafting)

Regular, minimalistic sighting technique integrated into the breathing cycle of the stroke. If well practiced it is difficult to observe the swimmer lifting only the goggles from the water immediately before they turn their head to breathe in, making good use of the ‘bow wave’ channel beside the face. It becomes a natural progression for open water navigation, essential to use in OW and has little or no impact on the swimmer’s body and leg position in the water, ie: no additional drag issues as the legs sink if they lift their head too high (water polo style). A very different breathing technique to requirements of a competitive pool swimmer, and needs to be trained as such!

Tactical skills include:

The ability to change pace, to bridge a gap between packs of swimmers, or to switch from drafting the feet of a swimmer heading off course to a swimmer or group that are navigating correctly on the shortest route to the next turn or swim buoy. Once the gap has been closed down, the swimmer is able to recover and settle efficiently into their race pace

Tactical surges where putting a short fast effort will increase chances of performing well, exiting ahead of competitors, getting onto a faster swimmer’s feet as they pass you or getting a clear run at the ramp to or beach to complete a second lap unhindered. Equally a surge away from a turn or swim buoy may drop drafting competitors if you are keen to break away rather than providing drafting benefits to a group who will inevitably attempt to overtake you later in your event or finish of the race.

The ability to use a tactical surge, however short, with the confidence you can settle back into race pace, is a highly useful skill to develop in training. By working through these sessions, you will gain understanding of the impact on your energy levels and pace in order to implement it sparingly or with consideration over a given race distance. With practice to ensure you are aware of the energy deficit ‘cost’, this race-specific conditioning will enable you to sustain race pace rather than suffer the disproportionate drop-off that inevitably occurs. To sustain pace over a goal race distance you need sufficient aerobic conditioning to maintain your threshold (CSS) pace, by training at or slightly below CSS. If this forms a key component of the swimmer’s swim training, then tactical skills add another performance dimension for open water events and will often allow a slightly slower pool swimmer to out-swim faster swimmers in training, simply by having well-practiced tactical skills.

Enjoy this month’s sessions written by Fiona for H20pen magazine:

Our squad program has an underpinning foundation of training SMART, with aspirations to see improvements, make measurable gains over time and line up for races each season posting vastly better performances year on year.

SMART Goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic & Time Sensitive

A positive performance cycle perpetuates further improvements as the athlete’s confidence levels rise, stretch goals are considered and new skills or strategies are acquired to allow better performance. As a coach planning the sessions, progression and providing technical and motivational feedback, focusing on what the athlete ‘can do’ helps scaffold areas they need to address, utilising a positive mindset. I overtly encourage any of my athletes NOT to focus on anyone else’s performance delivery but their own. It is a complete waste of energy to worry about what your competitors are doing, far better to develop confidence and competence in what you can produce under pressure, when you are in the shape of your life or peak form on race day! Advice from others should always be contextualised by asking how this is relevant to you, as an individual? Remember the #1 rule of training SMART, focus your training on being specific, not generic!

I’ve been very impressed with some of the incidental feedback from numerous squad regulars, who have surpassed their expectations of performance in races the past few weeks. Podium placings, PB’s and a common theme of ‘exiting the water into T1 and being pleasantly surprised at seeing so many bikes’ has been coming through on the emails and post-training discussions on the pool deck.

Our recent squad CSS testing allowed individual swimmers to make comparisons on their improvement over the course of the Winter and Spring training, and as ever, consistency is paramount for delivering results across all of our lanes. This has been demonstrated as ever by swimmers who are new to triathlon in Lane 6, working at ~2:00 per 100m pace through to our fast lane swimmers in Lane 1, fine tuning their cruising speeds at sub 1:20 pace per 100m. We are talking sustainable threshold pace here, to train at or slightly below, in order to increase the athlete’s speed efficiency or CSS (Critical Swim Speed) NOT their all-out 100m sprint pace (although we measure this from time to time for interest and confidence). The trainable metric we focus on in our SwimSmooth squad training sessions for triathlon, multi-sport and endurance type swim events (1500m through to 10km) is the ability to sustain 100m threshold pace for the goal event distance.

Improvement highlights:

Niall O’Rourke – CSS 2:10 (March 2014) to 1:59 (May 2014)

Thomas Reynolds – CSS 2:05 (Feb 2014) to 1:49 (May 2014) – Tuesday 10 week improvers fast track squad attendee!

Clive Smith – CSS 2:09 (Jan 2014) to 1:57 (May 2014)

Trishia Ward – CSS 1:55 (Jan 2014) to 1:45 (May 2014)

Luke Tyburski – CSS 2:02 (Jan 2014) to 1:45 (March 2014), then in wetsuit to 1:33 CSS (May 2014)!!

Performance highlights:

Jim Hoadley – podium at BTF Sprint Triathlon Championships

Kate McCombe – ‘Thank you – I had the best open water swim I’ve ever had today! I couldn’t believe it when I got into an empty transition!!  I’ve never had a swim like it…’ 3rd out of her swim at BTF Sprint Triathlon Championships

Gareth Moore – completed half IM distance swim in 33 mins. ‘There were a lot of bikes left in transition when I got out of the swim which was a unique experience and great to see!!’

Graham Ross – nailing his IM70.3 Mallorca swim easily in sub 30 mins (Lane 2 super-improvers)

Ian Williams – another awesome Lane 2 swim at half IM distance in 28 minutes!

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More improvements and performance highlights to come from the next training cycle, through a combination of race specific open water technical training, focused CSS pace development and endurance/ conditioning sessions each week. Availability for squad training can be found by clicking on the image above. Currently Monday evening squad training (open water skills) has a lengthy waiting list, as it is a very popular session and there is limited availability on Wednesday and Friday evenings, based on your current CSS. Please contact me to find out whether we can offer you a place and register you on any particular squad evening session you might want to add to your current training schedule to significantly improve your performance!

Coach Fi

Email: fiona@triathloneurope.com

 

 

 

 

Due to the Bank Holidays in May, the Monday evening sessions on 05/05 and 26/05/2014 will not be possible as the pool closes at 5:45pm instead of 9pm. See below for a race-specific skills session you could implement in the pool, preferably with a drafting buddy for some of the main set! The session is written as the usual 4km set for completion in 75 minutes, wetsuit assisted. There is a 3km version for swimmers preparing for Standard / Olympic distance and/ or Sprint and Middle distance Triathlon. Ironman athletes should aim to complete the full 4km…

 

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Warm up:

8-10×100 as 1L FS, 1L sculling or doggy paddle, 1L FS +5-10 sec

Main set:

4-5×200 @ CSS pace open turns at shallow end (no wall push off). Breathe bilaterally on 1,3 and 5. Breathe 3/2/3/2 pattern on 2 and 4 +15-20 sec

3x10L FS – drafting in pairs, swap the lead every 2L swim @CSS when on the front, recover slightly in the ‘draft’ and practice hip or toe led drafting (breathe towards partner) +30 sec

Cool down: 400 easy, choice (3km swimmers)

4km swimmers finish with:

2 x 15L FS as building effort 1-5, 6-10, 11-15L +30-60 sec

 

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This month’s session were written for the April/ May issue of H20pen magazine, you will possibly recognise some of our squad and the lovely outdoor Richmond Pools on the Park featuring in the article, alongside the training sessions. Our super popular open water/ wetsuit session in the outdoor pool on Monday evenings will be starting after Easter, so keep an eye on the news page and our weekly squad email update for the dates and details.

Thank you to Neil, Richard and Nathan for featuring in the article I wrote this month!

    

Developing the ability to finish strong in an event can mean the difference between a mediocre and excellent performance. This month’s session is designed to help you gain three key outcomes:

1) identify the type of ‘engine’ you predominantly have

2) understand and train your strength as a key asset in your performance repertoire

3) develop the ability to swim strongly as you complete an identified race or event distance, rather than fade to finish

Firstly, start by reviewing your CSS (Critical Swim Speed) data from recent tests. If you deduce that you are more of a ‘petrol’ engine due to the proportionately higher rate of pace decline, you should aim to incorporate some training to help improve ability to pace evenly, hold back a little at the beginning and gradually be able to sustain your natural turn of pace/ sprint for further at the end of sets or a race. If you decide that you are more ‘one paced’ and have no issue holding a strong steady pace, but have limited ability to sprint fast then you are probably more of a ‘diesel’ engine. Your CSS 400m and 200m times will practically be identical on paper in average pace terms. This type of swimmer benefits from developing their ability to gradually ramp up the pace and sustain a higher effort over a longer duration towards the end of races. Sprinty petrol engines will tend to find the relentless upping of pace difficult to match, as the diesel swimmer will just keep going!

Knowing where your strengths lie allows you to better execute your race strategy. By understanding when and how to unleash your finishing effort can mean timing your fast sprint effort and drafting tactically behind until that point, or deciding to when to begin gradually ramping up the pace as you approach the finish with the aim of dropping your competitors. Either option can be utilised effectively with specific training to know how best to employ a fast finish and increase in pace that your competitors will find difficult to respond to. Having this information is essential when you conduct your course recon, to help find sighting points to indicate when you should time your finishing effort according to whether it’s a sprint or sustained ramping up of speed.

Once you have identified the predominant type of swimmer you are (more one-paced or able to sprint short distances fast) the following sessions will help you develop your natural asset into more of a performance strength. Anything is trainable, if you have a specific goal in mind, ie: to be able to sprint fast at the end of a race, or sustain a longer ramping up type effort, and the sessions below will provide opportunities to work on both elements. The very nature of open water swimming/ triathlon competition environment means that you need to be versatile, so knowing where your strengths lie and how to deploy them most effectively, will be a big confidence booster on race day. Aim to identify exactly how far you can sustain a strong sprint for or the limit of your ramped up pace in distances as you work through the sessions and progression ideas below.

H2O22_62-64 Train Now – Fiona Ford Training sessions

Enjoy!

Coach Fi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This month sees a prolonged focus on pace awareness and judgement with our SwimSmooth squad at Richmond. I’m always very pleased to see the rate of progress across all abilities and lanes as a result of ‘dialling in’ correct pacing at a true measure of the swimmer’s CSS pace (Critical Swim Speed) which is essentially their sustainable threshold pace. This is not the fastest possible 100m they can produce, as last week our Wednesday squad had the fun to test out and note the effect on subsequent ability to maintain CSS after an ‘eye-balls out’ set of 4 x 100’s! Paul Newsome when coaching his Perth squad refers to this as ‘Pretty Flippin’ Quick’, or PFQ!

 This month’s session provides a descending distance set on identified ‘Swim and Rest’ (S&R) times for 100m, 50m and 25m. This type of session allows the swimmer to find a range of outcomes:

1) The impact of over-pacing early on in the session, in terms of sustaining true threshold pace as they progress through the session

2) How to swim efficiently to maximise the relentless rest intervals as you decrease distances, the rest times are consistently short turn around times

3) Developing consistent pace awareness using the good old fashioned pace clock or own stopwatch

4) Increased mental agility performing mental arithmetic as they swim each 100m, 50m or 25m effort!

5) Significant conditioning benefits sustaining pace and developing aerobic endurance

 

 

Enjoy the session!

Coach Fi

 

 

 

With the launch of a new SwimSmooth Tuesday evening squad for our novices and new starters, it’s a timely opportunity to review some of the ‘coach speak’, abbreviations, acronyms and vocabulary which help sessions run smoothly. This ‘swim speak’ is obviously taken granted if you have been swimming most of your life, and is like learning another language to those who are new to squad or masters training sessions.

I hope the reference table below explain the various terms we use and help you get the most from your squad training!

FS or FC	freestyle or front crawl, continuous swimming
m	metres
‘into’	usually suggests an interval which is split into two separate parts (eg: drill then swim) but swum continuously, i.e.: 25m drill [straight] into 25m FS
‘descending’	Descending time based reps, where each interval is swum progressively faster than the previous one, eg: descending 1-3, 4-6 would mean swim the 1st one easy, the 2nd one moderate paced, the last one FAST! Then repeat with similar split times on reps 4-6
+10s	the rest interval between reps/ intervals eg: +10s or sec = 10 seconds at the wall or stopping before next rep
TT	Time Trial, a timed swim over a set distance. You’re aiming to complete as fast as possible/ sustainable, akin to a race scenario
EZ	Easy, light intensity swimming usually as active recovery between reps or cool down. Advisable to include other strokes, such as backstroke/ breaststroke or easy kicking
BS	BackStroke
FLY/ FLY DRILL	Butterfly or its associated drills – a simple dolphin kick to learn the propulsion,  single arm fly to work on arm/leg/ hip co-ordination and technique, or the full butterfly stroke!
BRS	Breast stroke
IM	Individual medley of strokes in order of FLY, BS, BRS, FS. ‘Reverse IM’ is starting with the FS and working through the opposite order to finish on FLY
PULL	Pull Buoy. Using a Pull buoy between the thighs to improve hip buoyancy and reduce or eliminate leg kick for propulsion
P&P	Pull & Paddles. Using pull & paddles to focus on hand entry, the catch and pull phase of the stroke to improve functional muscular strength with increased workload. Introduce gradually for short periods if you haven’t used paddles before
FINS	Using a pair of fins or flippers to aid the particular element/ drill/ focus of the set
BB 3/5/7/9	Bilateral Breathing every 3/5/7/9 strokes, or a combination if written consecutively 3,5,7 or 7,5,3 separated by commas. Another eg: BB3 for 1 length, BB5 for next length, BB7 for last length, which means sustain the breathing pattern for the entire length!
L	L = lengths, as 1 or 2 lengths of the pool swum continuously (no rest break in between)
6  x 2L	6 x 2 lengths: The first number refers to the number of repetitions, the second number refers to the distances of the repeats. This might be expressed in metres (as in 100m) or lengths (as in 1,2 or 8L)
> Up < down	Swimming the outward length ‘up’ completing a drill/ stroke, turning at the end of the pool and coming back ‘down’ completing a different element.
Split 400	Completing the first split in a certain time (swim & rest) straight into the second split, swum as a complete interval. Eg: split 400’s as 200 PULL in 3:00, into 2×100’s fast FS +10s
Straight swim	continuous freestyle
CSS	Critical Swim Speed, or your ‘threshold’ speed based on the average 100m pace you can sustain on a 10×100 swim test or 400 + 200 TT
3 x (4×100)	3 sets of 4 repeats of 100m intervals, usually where all four intervals distances in each of the 3 sets are consistent. The times / pacing may vary Eg: 4×100 in 1:40, 4×100 in 1:35, 4×100 in 1:30 (swim & rest)
20x100m   1:45 S&R	Total time for the swim rep and rest interval (S&R). This would mean swimming the 100’s in 1:30 or 1:35 and resting for 10-15s. Develops pace judgement!

 

Even though the above guide should help swimmers develop an understanding of a lot of our innate ‘Coach Speak’, it will probably still provide a few opportunities for comedy moments trying to relate the full explanation. Thanks to our long-term squad swimmers in each lane on their efforts to ensure nothing is lost in translation when they relate instructions. This is often noted and much appreciated in the smooth running of our super busy sessions!

 

Comedy captions for these 3 images from last Summer, on a postcard please….

 

         

Coach Fi

 

 

 

 

Last month I started writing a regular training feature for H20pen magazine, inspired around a familiar theme of: ‘coping with adversity’ when racing, when things don’t go to plan. All athletes, even the most talented and well conditioned or trained will benefit from incorporating regular adversity challenges in training. This gives you a range of strategies to draw upon or apply if you need to on race day.

Athletes will often be able to conjure up these tough, tricky or difficult sessions, remember the success resulting from finding a solution or suffering it out, and draw strength from the experience to apply on race day, when things don’t pan out as you expect. It is impossible to predict all the variables that could potentially occur during any race, and going into events knowing you have experienced and worked through a range of adversities will give you confidence to cope when difficult situations present themselves.

With athletes I coach individually and work with regularly at my squad sessions I often refer to this as this ‘training hard to race easy’. Cover all your bases in training, make sure you are mentally robust and physically in the best shape you can be on the day and you will be in a strong position to outperform your expectations!

Here are 3 separate sessions featured in the current H20pen magazine issue Feb / March 2014, to cater for short course (750-1600m), medium distance (3km to 5km) or long distance (10km+). Click on the image below to view the sessions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For more information about H20pen Magazine, please visit the website 

Enjoy working from these sessions this month, there are a range of progression ideas designed to help you implement the sessions once a week or a month on a repeat cycle of 2-3 times to develop and consolidate the technical aspects in your training.

Coach Fi