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Rock Star Triathlete Articles

WHEN 2ND IS BETTER THAN 1ST by John Post, MD

Setting Goals – When 2nd is Better Than 1st

This
is Sarah Reinertsen, the only female amputee finisher of the Hawaiian
Ironman. Born with a limb deficiency known as PFFD, She had an above
the knee amputation a very early age and never really knew life
without a prosthesis. Seen here from the back during the 2007 Kona
Underpants Run (in a snappy home made skirt of old GU wrappers),
her goal was the 2004 IMH. But, she fell short on the bike missing
the cut off. Undaunted, she made some changes during the year returning
in 2005. She bettered her bike split by two hours and finished the race
easily with a big smile on her face. You talk about goal oriented!”

Another athlete I know is pretty competitive in his age group. In fact he can
frequently win the age group at local races.

Ben Greenfield teaches that when you set your expectations for an upcoming
race, you need to do so carefully by picking an outcome that’s dependent on your
behavior alone. For example, a goal of winning
the age group depends on the potential for a perfect race for you and the luck
that nobody who can beat you shows up! Maybe, rather than an outcome of age
group victory, the choice of a PR run split, or finally winning both T1
and T2 would be reasonable. A result that is both within your reach
based on past performance and one that is almost totally under your
control.

Our athlete has been thinking all summer that he would be
getting yet another age group win at the upcoming tri (yawn – more hardware!)
But what he didn’t count on was that the race would be late in filling and that
although he’d periodically reviewed the list of entrants assuring himself that
he was king cheese, at the last minute, someone from out of town registered who was way out
of our boy’s league.

Initially a little put out (and briefly considering,
“Why even go if I can’t win?”) he eventually saw the race as an opportunity to
really push it from the minute he got out of the water to the minute he exited
T2 on the run. This change in attitude resulted in a terrific race, even though
he got 2nd place by a wide margin, he managed a faster swim, faster T1,
faster bike, faster T2, and faster run than the previous year. Overall, he cut
his time for the sprint tri by SEVEN minutes!

And guess who had a huge grin getting that 2nd place trophy!

John Post, MD
www.johnpostmdsblog.blogspot.com
Triathletes with Joint Replacements

FOCUS: Thinking about what you’re doing

This article is written for the obsessive competitive streak in all triathletes and runners. Every athlete putting in dedicated training to a well-thought-out plan will eventually approach their physical limits for that season of their athletic career.

Continue reading →

Training to Win

This article is about the training strategy that took ironguides athlete Leonardo Moreira to an age group win at Ironman Brazil 2011. It explains the strategies we used to win the M40-44 age group and finish in 9hr 03, a 19-minute PB for Leonardo.

Continue reading →

BROKEN TOES by John Post, MD

Broken Toes

St.
Peter’s Catholic Church is a tiny house of worship located at the 5 mile
turn around where the Ironman Hawaii competitors head back to town and
their journey on the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway. If memory serves, there
have been five different run courses since the race moved to the Big
Island from Oahu in1981.

True story. A local athlete participates in the regional 70.3 race, and
seemingly coordinated in other aspects of life (yes, he can walk and chew gum at
the same time) he has broken a toe twice at this race site before really getting
his race going.

The first was his big toe having finished his warm up
swim, wading back to the starting line, when he kicked a submerged rock…and
Whammo – broken toe. Two years later, after exiting the 1.2 mile swim, running
to the transition area on a long green miniature golf-like carpet, he tripped on
a small fold in the carpet…and Whammo #2, a 4th toe broken on the other foot
and the nail pulled 1/2 way off. And bleeding!. He finished both
races!

Most broken toes are the result of trauma although I’d expect
several of you to have suffered stress fractures of the same bones. We’re
covering the former today. Usually they occur secondary to an axial load such as
a stubbed toe or some type of crush injury…such as dropping your bowling ball
on it. Most will have significant pain at the time of injury although those with
preexisting osteoporosis (thinning of the bones or loss of bone stock) may have
less. Accompanied by less trauma. The injured usually are noted to have point
tenderness at the site of the fracture although the skin is normally intact. The
toe may be pointing a different direction…always a bad sign!

Although
it’s usually not an emergency, an early x-ray can be very helpful both in
diagnosing the type and location of fracture, displacement if any, etc. A
negative x-ray is no less useful. Also, in children, an x-ray can frequently
reveal the presence or absence of a growth plate injury.

In fractures of toes 2-5, usually both the injury and treatment are less involved. Oftentimes, if the fracture is satisfactorily aligned and stable, simply taping the toe to it’s next door neighbor, avoiding activities which might tend to displace the ends of the bones and occasionally a fracture shoe are all that’s needed. However, a break in the bog toe is a horse of a different color given the importance of this structure in balance, directional control and weight bearing. If displaced or into the joint, the fracture needs to be reduced and the joint needs to be maintained. This can occasionally require a surgical procedure and prolonged post operative immobilization.

In short, if you think you may
have broken a toe, and the pain doesn’t subside in a reasonable time, why not
let you local Urgent Care or health care provider take a gander and consider an
x-ray.

John Post, MD

www.johnpostmdsblog.blogspot.com

8/17/2011

Surgery, What if I need it

“I Always Win the Transitions”

SUMMER’S FADING by John Post, MD

Summer’s Fading

“There
was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place,
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile lit Casey’s face,
And when, responding to cheers,
he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt t’was Casey
at the bat.”

While the racing season is over for some, many
others are just hitting their stride, and like Casey, optimistically and
confidently are looking forward to their final “A” race of the season.

We
get spoiled being able to bike at 5:30 am in the summer with simply a singlet in
the early dawn. But as August becomes September, the sun stays in bed another
hour and retires and hour earlier. We have a tendency to get caught out after
dark and the first time we hit our headlight switch…with last Spring’s
batteries, all too often we’re headed home in the dark and not only can we not
see, we cannot be seen. I think I use the strobe function on my headlight more
than the simple light. So why not take some Sunday afternoon time and check all
those batteries, look for your orange reflective vest and flashlight for those
pre-dawn runs, and don’t get caught in the dark. Take a minute to look through
your bike saddle bag/fanny pack at your ability to provide first aid. I know as
a physician you’d expect me to carry more (I’m always equipped with band aids,
Tylenol, Benadryl, Bacitracin, Ibuprofen, cell phone, etc.) you don’t want to be
surprised if the ride presents a challenge. Don’t the Boy Scouts promote the
motto BE PREPARED?

In our county here in Virginia, school starts on
Tuesday, so the buses will be back on the roads frustrating drivers. Watch that
they don’t take their frustration out on you as it may take some common sense
route changes to ensure you stay out of harms way.

It’s been a bad day at Black Rock. I try to preach safety above almost all else and we’ve had a bad streak. The owner of my LBS was hit by a car on a quiet country road incurring a spine fracture which required hospitalization but not surgery. Then another of our group had his handlebars loosen after hitting a particularly deep pothole….hip fracture with surgery and screws. Near the sight of his accident, at almost the same time, another biker crashed fracturing his neck leading to surgery and plating.

Less fortunate was a gent riding his bike from our area to visit his daughter at a nearby college when he was struck and killed by a motor vehicle. Cell phone records of the driver have been subpoenaed as authorities think this may have contributed to driver inattention. But he’s still dead.

So, although the racing season has finished for many of us, significant biking challenges and work outs lay ahead. Please don’t let your guard down, ride like they’re out to get you – maybe they are -and take that extra minute to make sure everything…everything is 100% on the bike without taking a short cut. You could end up on this blog, and that’d be a bad thing. Have a conversation with your bike. Today and every day.

Best of luck to everyone in that final summer/fall race.

I have a blog up now that might be of interest. What happens when age or injury
forces you the conclude your triathlon career.
www.johnpostmdsblog.blogspot.com

Learning From the Best Swimmers In The World

As we mentioned last week on the blog, we hope you’ve been enjoying the FINA Swimming World Championships from Shanghai. (If the championships haven’t been shown on TV in your country you’ll find most races on YouTube)

The winners of both the men’s and women’s 1500m finals featured totally dominant performances from swimmers with very different stroke styles. Making the headlines in the men’s race was China’s Sun Yang, breaking Grant Hackett’s long standing world record of 10 years in the event. Sun’s strikingly long smooth stroke (taking just 28 strokes per 50m at 62 strokes per minute) perfectly matched his 1.98m tall (6’6″) long-limbed frame. You can watch the race here.

It would be easy to watch Sun’s performance and assume that everyone should aim to swim using this style but in the women’s race Lotte Friis from Denmark put in a fantastic winning performance, finishing just 7 seconds off Kate Zieglers’s world record. Lotte’s stroke has a completely different style from Sun’s, using a straight arm recovery with a much shorter faster stroke. In direct comparison to Sun, Lotte took 43 strokes per 50m at 88 strokes per minute. Still very tall at 1.84m (6’0″), Lotte has chosen and refined a style that works superbly well for her and it might well be best for you too. You can watch her race here. (Incidentally, Kate Zeigler also used this stroke technique, we call it the Swinger style and it’s used by most elite open water swimmers and triathletes)

Let’s analyse these two great performances and draw some important conclusions for your own swimming:

Absence of Gliding

Sun has an amazingly long stroke, perhaps the longest we’ve ever seen in the elite swimming world. It looks like he’s *gliding* down the pool but be very careful – it’s almost entirely an illusion due to the sheer length of his stroke. Here’s some consecutive frames from his video, 0.04 seconds apart:

The gap between one stroke finishing at the rear and the next starting at the front is less than 0.2 of a second – less than a blink of an eye! The truth is he’s hardly gliding at all – to Sun as he swims his strokes will feel very continuous from one side to the other. The same is true for Grant Hackett (the previous world record holder) – we measured the gap between his strokes as 0.15 seconds.

Although these tall smooth swimmers look like they pause in their stroke and glide down the pool, we can see from the frames above that they don’t. What we perceive when we see this footage at full speed is quite different from the reality. Sun has an extremely long stroke by virtue of his huge wingspan and efficient propulsive technique, this long style creates the perception that he is gliding when in fact there’s only a tiny fraction of a second between strokes.

The Swim Smooth team here in Perth perform thousands of sets of video analysis on swimmers every year. If you are a bit of an Overglider and have tried to lengthen things out by adding an active glide to your stroke, we can tell you from experience that your deadspot will be in the range of 0.6 to 1.2 seconds. This means you’ll be decelerating on every stroke which is losing you a lot of efficiency as you have to re-accelerate on the next stroke. This deadspot between strokes is the key difference between a Smooth Swim Type (of which Sun is a classic example) and an Overglider – other than the fact that a Smooth swims more than twice as quickly of course!

Overgliders need to work on the fluidity and timing of their catch to remove the deadspot in their stroke and so become more efficient. Find out how in our Overglider Swim Type Guide here.

As you’d expect with her faster stroke rate style, Lotte Friis has no gap between propulsion phases at all, starting her stroke at the front just as the stroke is finishing at the back:

This continuous propulsion is what makes the Swinger stroke style so dominant in open water, there’s not even a tiny gap in propulsion to become stalled by wake or chop from other swimmers. Although this style can look like hard work, it isn’t when you get it right and if it suits your physiology. It’s a bit like spinning a smaller gear on the bike – she takes more strokes but each stroke is less effort. You could say she’s Lance Armstrong to Sun’s Jan Ullrich.

If you’re looking to lift your stroke rate remember it’s not a matter of shortening your stroke: we can see from the frame above that Lotte’s still finishing the stroke by her hip and not shortening it at all. Instead, the key is to get into your catch at the front just a little sooner by keeping that lead hand in motion, either extending forwards, tipping over or pressing backwards. Never stopping and actively gliding.

Stroke Timing

The stroke timing of Sun’s and Lotte’s stroke is also worth examining. They both use ‘front-quadrant timing’ which is swimming jargon for the hands passing in front of the head:

his is important as it helps keep the stroke long and gives you support when you go to breathe because the lead arm is out in front of you. If your lead arm collapses down then your hands will pass behind your head and will offer you no support to breath, as we can see with this classic Bambino swimmer:

If you take on water when you breathe, try improving your stroke timing to always have one hand in front of your head at all times. Try repeating the mantra ‘one-two-stretch’ as you swim where the ‘one’ and ‘two’ are on a normal stroke and the ‘stretch’ is on the breathing stroke. This will help you focus on keeping that lead hand out in front of you for support as you breathe, making things feel much more comfortable:

Even though Sun has a very long stroke, he doesn’t catch-up with his hand in front of his head as many Overgliders do. This is critical, a full catch-up style stroke is slow and inefficient because of the very long gap between strokes. Here is such an Overglider, swimming around 2:20 per 100m pace. We measured the gap between his strokes during video analysis as 1.0 seconds, so long he nearly comes to a halt between strokes when he swims:

Both Sun and Lotte tip their wrist at the front of the stroke as they initiate the catch prior to bending and maintaining a high elbow, just as we animated Mr Smooth to do. When watching video clips at full speed this is easy to miss but it’s a key to you initiating a good catch in your own stroke:

Catch Initiation

Remember you’re looking for a light rhythmical feeling to the catch at this point, it’s not a solid feeling until underneath your body during the pull phase. It’s quite likely in your stroke that you over-power things here in front of your head. Even though Sun and Lotte are swimming at maximum effort they’re still keeping their catch light and rhythmical. Find out how to develop a great catch yourself in our Catch Masterclass DVD by clicking here.

By SwimSmooth.com

REDUCING INJURY POTENTIAL THROUGH “DATING” by John Post, MD

Know
Your Stuff

YIKES,
it’s on the inside too!

“Don’t mistake activity
for achievement.” John Wooden

It’s been
stated before that preventing an injury is usually preferable to treating one. For any kind of accidents and injuries, the lawyers from Hale Law, P.A. can help with your accident can help you!
My oldest son Chris is a superb runner…won the local 5K last week going away
in 16 and change…and it didn’t look all that hard for him. I’m not certain if
I fell off a cliff I’d go that fast. He works at Ragged Mountain Running Shoes,
a one owner shop for over 25 years. This store is a fantastic resource for the
area athletes as owner Mark Lorenzoni has seen EVERYTHING that can go wrong with
an athlete, and frequently diagnose and fix the problem on the spot. Every
community should be so lucky to have someone like Mark. If people want to check accident related information, they can click here to check a wrongful death law firm!

One important
lesson I’ve learned from Mark is to date everything. Do you know exactly when
you purchased your most recent pair of running shoes? The last chain for your
bike? Your tires? By dating/recording the purchase, you have a better idea of
the products longevity and are less likely to have an on the road failure or
injury. If uou hire injury and accident attorneys, you can read this to learn why and get to know the advantages of the same! I practice this religiously and have had six 112 mile rides on the Queen
K, all without bike related failure. (But don’t ask me how my butt feels when I
dismount.) If people have to know how to recover from the traumatic injury, they can check the lawyers’ advice from this firm. It is also advised to consult an attorney from the car accident law firm in Riverside to get compensation for the injury and damage caused.

So, why not take a Sharpie and put the date of purchase on the
sides of your new tires and the tongue of your running shoes? Add the date of a
new saddle or chain purchase to your training log and if you ride more than one
bike specify which ride got the new chain…and whether or not a new cog was
part of the deal. You’ll be ever so glad you
did.

Training Your Brain for Triathlon Success

This is a guest post from Renegade Triathlon Psychology coach Stephen Ladd (pictured right), who has taken a somewhat unorthodox path to becoming one of most sought after gurus in the world when it comes to training your brain for peak performance. His formal education in the States included undergraduate studies in psychology, religion, and philosophy, and Graduate studies in Comparative Religions. He then ventured outside of the US to experience the cultures and mind practices of Southeast Asia and Japan. In addition to this guest post and article below, Stephen will be featured on next week’s BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast episode.

I consider a triathlon (of any distance) to be the “toughest sport on earth”. The amount of time and effort required to train for three separate sports is unparalleled in the world of athletics.

But what is often overlooked are the extreme mental and emotional demands of triathlon training and racing.

For a triathlete to consistently perform at peak performance levels, they must have the ability to control their mental and emotional states, especially prior to and during the actual race. Imagine being able to instantly evoke a supreme state of “confidence” in yourself instead of having pre-race anxiety, or evoke a state of “determination and focus” when you start to feel fatigued and have another six miles to the finish.

It is important to understand the difference between what is labeled these days as “Positive Thinking” and what I am talking about when I refer to controlling your mental and emotional states. The “Positive Thinking” protocol (at least how it’s commonly taught) is to simply ignore how you feel (anxiety) and tell yourself, over and over again, that you feel confident, or happy, or focused or whatever it is you’re desperately trying to convince yourself that you are.

On the other hand, accurately and properly controlling your mental and emotional state is a way for you to literally change your subconcious mind, so that you’ll actually be confident, instead of just telling yourself that you are confident. See the difference? When you do what I am about to teach you properly, there will be no need for you to try to convince yourself that you are confident – instead, you will actually be in a supreme state of confidence and able to perform closer to your peak potential.

One valuable tool for achieving this true change in your mental and emotional state is called “Anchoring”, which comes from the world of Neuro-Linguistic Programing (NLP).

What is an “Anchor”?

An Anchor is formed when your internal response becomes associated with an external stimulus. For example, think about Pavlov and his salivating dogs:

Hear A Bell = Salivate

We can use a similar process for Anchoring any positive mental state to a specific action. You will simply replace the “bell” with an action – such as touching a specific knuckle on your hand, and replace “salivating” with something more useful for your triathlon training and racing – such as “confidence” (although it could also be “relaxation”, “speed”, “aggressiveness” or whatever else you want your mental state to be).

Now, let’s go through a concrete example of how to use Anchoring to achieve a state of confidence.

Step 1) Recall a time in your life when you felt the most confident. This doesn’t have to be during a triathlon. It can be any moment – any moment of exceptional performance or confidence in your life, no matter how long ago it may have been.

Step 2) Next, you need to “ramp up” the positive emotion. In order to do this, you must completely place yourself into your remembered scene. As a matter of fact, I want you to get up and move the way you would be moving in this situation. You may want to be in a quiet place where you can focus. Feel what you would be feeling (confidence). Hear what you would be hearing, and see what you would be seeing. Take this emotion of confidence and intensify it by a factor of ten. Sense it as energy surging through your body. Imagine the crowds of spectators cheering you on (even if they weren’t in your original scene). Then imagine it as another bolt of confidence that shoots through your body and intensifies your feelings of confidence by another factor of ten.

Step 3) When you sense you are at your peak intensity of confidence emotions, “SET” your physical anchor to this state (I’m about to explain to you how to do that).

Step 4) How to choose and set your anchor: you can use almost anything for your anchor, as long as it is not a common action that you do in everyday life. For example, you could “set” an anchor as tapping your right shoulder with your left hand. Knuckles are my favorite anchors, for reasons I will reveal shortly. I suggest using the knuckles of your non-dominate hand. For example, if you are right-handed, take you right index finger and push down on the knuckle of your left index finger (remember that you are doing this while you are still in your state of peak confidence, and visualizing/re-enacting that scene). In this case, that movement of right finger on knuckle of left finger would be your anchor for supreme confidence.

Step 5) Now come out of your emotional state brief period of time. Count backwards from twenty to zero. This will “break” your emotional state. Once broken, stay away from that state for one to two minutes.

Step 6) Next, repeat steps 1-5 at least two times, and if you want to completely perfect the Anchor, up to ten more times, each time with as much enthusiasm and excitement as the first time.

Step 7) Finally, test the strength of your anchor. After that last time, break your emotional state by counting backwards from twenty to zero. Wait just a few moments, then “fire-off” your anchor (in this case pushing down on the knuckle of your left index finger). You should get the surge of confidence that you have anchored to that action.

If you get a strong feeling of confidence, then you have successfully set a solid anchor.

If you didn’t quite get that same feeling of confidence, then you need to keep working on the intensity of your emotion while setting the anchor, and perhaps just a bit more repetition. This takes practice, and often is not perfect the first time you try!

Don’t be discouraged if it takes you some time to set a really strong anchor. It can take devoted practice, but it’s worth it, because once you are in control of your mental states, your triathlon potential will be able to reveal itself, and you’ll be able to set as many anchors as you want for as many mental and emotional states as you need to call upon during your event.

This is just one method that you can use to train your brain for triathlon success. The methods that I teach in my Renegade Triathlon Psychology program go way above and beyond Anchoring. This program is the only product of its kind on the market today, utilizing the best alternative sports psychology technologies to empower you to take control of your mental training and perform consistently at the peak of your genetics and skill levels.

I look forward to helping you learn how to change your mental and emotional state. Click here to read more and to watch to an important video from me.

DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ by John Post, MD

Don’t
Believe Everything You Read

“I
left a good job in the city, working for the man every night and day, and I
never lost one minute of sleeping worryin’ about the way things might have
been.” Creedence Clearwater Revival

When you’re cruising through
the latest literature, don’t unwittingly believe all that you see. Just because
it’s in a magazine doesn’t make it necessarily right for you. Don’t change your
whole training plan based on a single article in a monthly magazine or on line
journal, even if it’s from a source you ordinarily trust. Think, evaluate,
question. You know yourself, and your limitations, best. Ask around, mentors,
friends, valued sources. Then, if this new approach makes sense, incorporate it
into your training or racing and watch carefully for success or failure. Change
only one thing at a time. Also, you’re watching for the least sign of
injury.

After all, asbestos used to be the insulator of choice. And what
would you say if someone asked you to make a bicycle frame from cloth….”It’s
got carbon fibers!” they exclaim.

So, each time you read a “Get in Tour
de France Shape in 3 weeks,” maybe there’s a role for this in your life….or
maybe not.

Be the careful consumer when someone tells you that watermelon seeds are

absolute cure for swimmer’s shoulder. If it seems too far out of the

ordinary, it probably is.

WORRIED ABOUT HYPOTHERMIA? by JOHN POST, MD

I Love Open Water Swimming, I Really Do

51 DEGREES, that’ll do nicely!
John Shrum, MD

So started one of
our early spring lake workouts before Dr. Shrum and I went to England to swim
the Channel in 1998. You intentionally find the coldest water around. We stayed
about an hour that day and would have gone longer but were rousted out by the
park ranger.

When the swim portion of a triathlon starts with wind and
waves, or cold water, or some type of challenge, I’m ready. So many in our sport
would be nervous or afraid, I know this, and can’t wait for the starters gun.
Why? For the same reason you look forward to the run. Because you’ve practiced
and trained for all types of weather and conditions as you’ve been doing it for
many years. Like the NY Postal Service saying,“Neither snow nor rain not
heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their
appointed rounds,” you’ve been there before. So why not make it the same
with open water swimming?

If you’re going to use a wetsuit, why not
practice in it at the local swimming hole at least every other week. If the
water temp is warm, be aware of over heating and keep the swim to a reasonable
length. Many consider wetsuit swimming mandatory. They think they’ll fail with
out it.

I propose that it’s simply a state of mind and unless you’re
vying for a podium spot, try the race without it. Our local tri swim water temp was
74 degrees, and after 100 yards in no wetsuit, it was delightful. Many folks
make the should I/shouldn’t I decision on wetsuit use weeks before their event
when the water is still 60! Why not postpone that one?

In a previous
blog, I recommended that if your race begins with an open water/ocean swim you
try to get there the day before and go play in the water. In your wetsuit if you
plan on using one. Practice your swim starts. And if they still make you
nervous, when your wave starts on race day, wait 10-15 seconds for the mayhem to
clear and then go. Practice, practice, practice. Then you’ll be the confident
one on race day looking forward to conditions that might slow others and give
you an advantage. As for hypothermia, the athlete who thinks, who plans out

each step of his/her triathlon, needn’t give it a second thi\ought.