#6 The Role of Strength Training in Endurance Sports

In this episode, Cal, Tim, and Emma dive into the importance of strength training for endurance athletes. Learn practical ways to incorporate gym work into your training, debunk common misconceptions, and discover how strength can improve performance and prevent injuries.

Main Topics:

• The benefits of strength training for endurance athletes, including injury prevention and performance gains
• How to integrate strength training into your seasonal training plan effectively
• Common misconceptions about strength and muscle development in triathlon and endurance sports
• Practical at-home workouts and exercises for busy athletes
• The science behind strength, neuromuscular adaptation, and muscle endurance in triathlon

Timestamps:

00:00 - Episode introduction & episode overview

00:22 - The frustrations with swimming and parent management in child swim lessons

01:14 - Emma discusses her recent focus on strength training and performance improvements

01:42 - The importance of strength training for injury resistance and muscular load capacity

02:13 - How strength training enhances power transfer in swimming, cycling, and running

03:00 - Misconceptions around gym duration and muscle size versus strength

03:30 - The purpose of strength training beyond muscle size, including longevity

04:58 - The role of strength in neuromuscular fatigue resistance and performance

05:14 - Emma shares her injury history and progress through targeted strength work

07:03 - How to fit strength training into a busy season and training schedule

07:54 - The benefits of off-season vs. in-season strength work and program design

08:35 - Home workout strategies for injury prevention and technique improvement

09:57 - Strength deficits in runners and how to address them with targeted exercises

10:15 - Challenges faced when starting strength training and overcoming movement unfamiliarity

11:19 - The significance of progress tracking and testing in strength training programs

12:00 - Testing and measuring strength improvements with physiotherapy insights

13:26 - Using plyometric and horizontal strength exercises to enhance performance

14:22 - End-season strength maintenance and neuromuscular recruitment

15:46 - How older athletes can benefit from strength work to counteract atrophy

16:19 - The value of purposeful training and tracking progress over time

17:16 - Cross-application of strength work in swimming, cycling, and running drills

18:16 - Specific strength development through parachute, band, and hill work for runners

19:45 - Plyometric drills and uphill bounds for improving elastic energy and neuromuscular power

20:52 - Practical tips for integrating strength work into swim, bike, and run routines

21:59 - Implementing strength training during race season for speed and injury prevention

23:20 - Adjusting training for aging athletes and the importance of high-intensity work

24:09 - The significance of targeted movements and quality over quantity in gym work

25:46 - The role of physio and testing in identifying individual weaknesses and injury risks

27:20 - The difference between performance enhancement and injury prevention in strength training

28:39 - Debunking the myth that strength training must be about muscle size and appearance

31:34 - The importance of efficiency and targeted exercises for athletes with limited training time

32:04 - Recognizing that function, efficiency, and technique often matter more than looks

Come find us Cartel Coaching — Swim. Bike. Run. Together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Team, welcome to Cartel Coaching. I am Callum Millward. I'm an ex-professional triathlete and three times IMN 70.3 champion, and now I'm getting a proper reintroduction into the sport of triathlon as an age grouper. I spent a number of years at the pointy end of the sport, and now I've got a business, a life, a family, and the same 24 hours as everyone else who is trying to figure out how to be competitive again. And I tell you what, it is super humbling and it's interesting. What I bring to the table is the elite side of things. I'm living the age group reality right now. Not going to pretend that they're the same thing. With me every episode is Tim Brazier, who coaches everyone from first-timers to Olympians, and M, our resident age grouper, who is keeping us honest. This is Cartel Coaching, and let's get into it.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

Okay, welcome back to Cartel Coaching. And today, today we're going to talk all things strength. So I think in the triathlon world, there's lots of different point of views when it comes to strength training. I know for myself particularly, I've gone through lots of different phases thinking about strength. It's gone from a phase of nothing and a phase of lots of injuries. And then I'll get on to some strength stuff. And then as soon as things get better, I generally just sort of give it up. But um, over the last couple of weeks, I've probably spent more time in the gym than I have in my whole Iron Man build. And I can definitely see that there's been um a bit of a difference. So I really want to use today to pick both your brains to understand, you know, the importance of strength, uh what we do in the gym and and how it kind of translates to what we're doing out there on the course. Tell us all the things.

SPEAKER_03 1:58

Well, what I want to firstly know, Emma, is did you measure your biceps pre-starting your gym block? And will you measure them after six weeks? And get ready for the gun show.

SPEAKER_04 2:09

No, I I didn't, but now that you've mentioned it, I will. I think that would be a good good measurement. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

That's right. Yeah. Triathlets have massive guns, right?

unknown 2:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:23

I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

And that's where again most triathletes have noodle arms. That's right. It is a trade-off. But I feel like with the growth in high rocks and crossfit, there's a lot more people crossing over who actually are the opposite who are massive.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

And um but as we'll dive into, big is not always better.

SPEAKER_03 2:46

No. No, and big doesn't always mean strong either.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 2:51

There's plenty of people who are model themselves in the gym, but they actually can't pick up the 20 kg plate. They just look really good. Um so it doesn't help. And uh there's a lot of things I think, and it's misconceptions within the endurance space actually, and if we start to get a little bit more serious on it, where going to the gym doesn't often mean that you're gonna gain a whole lot of mass. And going to the gym doesn't mean that you're gonna be having to lift heavy weights. And it's gonna be different phases throughout your gym program depending on what you're trying to achieve and where you've come from. Um and one of the biggest reasons I actually send a lot of people to the gym to start with is what you've mentioned already, is actually it's like a tissue load capacity. It's an injury resistance, it's building some muscular tolerance to mechanical loading you're gonna have to actually undergo within training for endurance sport. And a lot of people I think get into endurance sport and they start to build and they start to build a really good aerobic capacity. And that sort of cardiovascular system advances quite fast, but the muscular system might lag a little bit behind, and then as they start to be able to push harder, the muscular system can't cap cope with the mechanical loading of it, and then we have lots of injuries occur, whether that's a tendon failure, um, joint instability start to become more apparent, um, or the strength just becomes a something that's actually leveling increasing performance because we don't actually have the muscular ability to push ourselves forward. So that's that's one of the prime drivers, and for your experience, even at the moment, that's where we sit, right? That's one of the key things we don't want to get back and return to. We don't want to be in the injury space. So how are we going to create that? And along the way, what you're starting to experience though is hey, cool, I'm now seeing some actual changes in my performance and my running, especially, which is a bit of a goal, which is coming off the back of this. Um, you know, and we're starting to see a few bit of elastic energy return in the system, you know, and we'll start to see a little bit more neuromuscular fatigue resistance and that sort of thing, is as you gather those motor patterns together and those muscles together to support the system.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Uh Tim, I need to ask you, what are a few common misconceptions about strength training?

SPEAKER_03 5:06

Yeah, a common one is you don't need to be in there for 60 minutes. So people don't like to go into the gym for long periods of time. They feel like they have to, but the reality is you can punch out something really good within 30 minutes and be in there two or three times a week at a maximum. It's also the reality as well, you don't have to go to a gym to be able to achieve some stuff. You can do that at home and be quite effective. Um, that's going to have a plateau at some stage as well, though, because you do want to push into some heavy strength loading work. And the the other thing around that heavy strength loading work is it's not necessarily going to mean you put on a huge amount of muscle mass and size, um, but you may put on some muscle size, and you know what, that's okay. Because you know, putting on that muscle is actually going to help propel you forward faster, it's gonna help you deliver more power on the bike, it's gonna help you deliver more power on the swim. So there's a there's a bit of a trade-off there of developing some muscle mass to enhance power across all three. Um and there's that's a real good benefit for everybody to to put on a little bit of muscle mass in terms of longevity as well, because we're not here just trying to, you know, execute just this performance, but also what are we going to look like later in life, what's gonna relate to, and and having strength is a really important part of that. Most of us start to atrophy at the age of 25 and muscle mass goes downhill from there, so if we can hold on to that for longer, then even better.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

So lots of good little gains there as well. And you're saying if you cannot get to the gym, you can still do stuff from home.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

And this is something that I've done throughout my career as well, where I very rarely got to the gym just because you might be time poor, it's sometimes the last thing you want to do at the end of the day. So I found uh a frequent 20 or 30 minute session at home doing prone holds, planks, you know, squats, step-ups, that kind of stuff, more for um injury prevention and you know, swimming in running form and bike form as well. So I think I used to find six exercises and you could literally just Google them these days and just run through them a few times each and try and find some variation. And I think even a little goes a long way, especially with you know activation around the hips and the glutes and anything for running form as well. I think uh uh same with uh on the bike as well. Obviously, you're trying to hold a position for so long, the stronger you can be at that, the better off you are. Likewise in the water as well. I always feel if you could uh find different exercises to help strengthen, especially through your core as well, because it's where you generate so much power. Um, there's a lot of stuff you can do at home uh to sort of tick that gym box. Em, have you had a history of doing gym stuff or how do you obviously you guys have spoken about applying this to your training now, probably more from injury prevention, but then it sort of transitions into making you stronger. Like what's your sort of background with uh gym and strength?

SPEAKER_04 8:16

Uh couch potato. So uh no no gym here. And when I jumped into triathlon or running, I I didn't really understand the correlation of of needing to be strong and needing to develop muscle. So I I went straight for the long, intense sessions uh and and just continued to pull up with injury. Even today, I feel like I understand it more, but potentially probably wasn't doing the right things, I'd say. I I, you know, I was kind of going off what I thought was right, um, phoning it in a little bit, and um and I've and I don't think I can honestly say that I've had a running block where I haven't had some sort of injury. Um, and so now now we are really working on it and we're doing lots of uh different things like the plyometric stuff and um the lifting, but also um actually having a good look at, you know, the way my body works and and where some of those deficits are. So even yesterday I learned that I have um sort of really flexible joints, so just some real instability in my hips, and so it's starting to make a bit more sense around why I keep getting some of these hip injuries and why I am gonna have to focus like a lot more on on actually building that muscle. And I guess now that it's a bit more important to me because I really don't want to be an injured runner all the time, like I hate it, it's it's not a fun time. Um so yeah, we'll put in the focus.

SPEAKER_03 9:44

What have you found the most challenging of this process? So we've been, you know, for a few weeks now, and there's been some you know, coordination required and to get going in this space, as well as pushing some bigger weights and and moving some tin. What's been the biggest challenge that you faced adapting to it?

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Do you know what? It's it's really just been learning how to do the movements. You know, I think about some of the things even with some of the running drills that I'm doing. So that Ace skip, that was difficult to try and learn how to do that. Um thinking about how to even uh let me tell you a story. So I'm I need to do deadlifts, right? But I never have gone into the gym and done any sort of lifting like that. So even to think about how I move the, like get the plates on the bar, that's the level that I'm at, is going, how do I even set this up? Like who who's here to help me? And and just sort of figuring out that that sort of stuff. But I think one of the exercises that you've got me doing, Tim, that was just such a wake-up call. It's the one I can't remember what it's called now, but you where I'm lying on the floor and I've got a medicine ball like um sort of between my legs and sort of rocking my hips back and forward. That is really hard.

SPEAKER_03 10:56

Rotational core work.

SPEAKER_04 10:58

Yeah, like that is so hard. And I I have yet to be able to do it with the medicine ball. Like I can just do it with my legs at the moment. And um, and yeah, so I I guess it's just highlighting all of these areas where I j I actually don't have the strength to do the things.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

So, what's a hot take on how does how do we fit strength training into our season? Are we cranking it up in the off season, in the on season? Do we put it in hiatus depending on how busy our lives are? Um talk to us, Tim, about how that fits into our calendar yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Yeah, I mean, off-season is naturally a best time that people go for it. And they chase gym a little bit harder. And it and that's right. Like you can probably start to program it a little bit more in the off-season, you can give up some time and volume and the other disciplines for it. And we can start to look at some it's probably some more strength, endurance, focus work in that off-season. So we're talking in reps of 12, 15, and starting to try and utilize the stabilizing muscles and address some of the niggles that may have come up in the on-season, and trying to get into movements as well that aren't linear in motion. So if we think about swim, bike and run, we're pretty linear, pretty straight line. But we're not actually challenging some of our lateral balance, some of our coordination work. We're not gelling all the stabilizers in around our shoulders often or in around our hips. Um, so it's really good to start to explore some different movement patterns as well in the off-season. And then as we start to move through, you might drop that down into maybe two, 60-minute sessions as you come into bigger prep work, and you're starting to hit some heavier strength work amongst that. And so when we're talking strength work, we're talking reps of four to six and sets of four. Really trying to get some prime movements going. And if you're new to gym, they might be more machine-based. If you've quite advanced in gym work, you might be starting to use more open chain motions and pulling together some movements like deadlifts or clean and jerks and some Olympic lifts, um, which are a little bit more compound movements in fashion. In behind the scenes, there, what I'm always trying to do though, is I'm trying to develop a basic plyometric ability and then try and advance that along as well, because most people haven't come from polymetric movements and they're new to them. So we're coming from real basic stuff like M's talking about like skipping, so basic poliometric movement, little hops, like pogos, basic polyometric, running drills, basic biometrics, and we're advancing that along to we can get to a place where we might be doing ice skaters moving forward, we might be doing drop jumps, and so in the background, we're progressing that along as well, because that's a really important part of developing our energy or our elastic energy utilization, um, and also our neuromuscular side of things of activating a huge bunch of muscles. And it's it's important that when we start to get in towards that end of the race season that we don't dismiss the strength training, that we do keep it in there. So whether that's dropping it right down to could be once or twice just shorter sessions and just some key lifting movements and some key biometric movements. And it might be you can just go to the gym for one of those and then you can start home for one of them. But you're keeping in touch with it because that's going to keep the neuromuscular recruitment going. Um, it's also going to keep some of your nibbles at bay because you're move using muscles that you may not be using as much when you're doing all this linear motion. Um and it's also just helping progress the strength side along so that your polymetric works progressing as well, and you can move into some more advanced exercises and get some more benefits from it. Um you can sort of start to cycle that round as your season goes, whether it's in six-month blocks, if you're doing two different race cycles within the year. Um, but I I've found too, the older the athlete, the more important it is. Um, because we are atrophying. We do lose coordination, we are sitting a lot more at our desks or on our bikes. And to to get that range of motion too in the gym is really important for the older athlete and to keep in touch with it. I think that's a really key thing, and something that, you know, especially if you're in the 40 plus category, and up now.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Okay. Not here. Not here.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Dodge, dodge, duck, dive. Yeah, it's just it's just crucial. And I I notice a massive benefit of it when I go back to it. And I if I have been a little bit lazy with it. And uh and any new athletes that are coming on board, I'm just straight in there now. And there's some really cool systems you can put in place which um Ems using even on training peaks, where there's lots of great videos and instructions that you can use with remote coached athletes.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

We can also look at a few different scenarios as well. I know there's a few schools of thought out there about uh specifity. Um so for people who are super time poor as well and just trying to fit something in, we can obviously still get a lot of strength uh developed through swim, bike, and run. Um, Tim, obviously, you're well versed uh in these areas as well. Just touch upon, you know, some of the stuff we can do in the pool to build strength, uh, and then obviously on the bike as well. There's a few things for me that come to mind straight away. And then on the run as well. So if you just want to run through those, I think, you know, I always feel like keeping things simple is the key for a lot of this as well. It's not necessarily always getting in the gym or at home, but you know, we can if you're super time poor, there's ways we can implement it into our training during the week. So what are a few of those?

SPEAKER_03 16:49

Yeah, I mean, like with summer research I've done in the past, my master's degree at university, we started trying to explore what's going to make the biggest difference, especially if this was for Summers, um, and actually progressing the transfer of gym work into the pool. And yeah, they got stronger in the gym, but what we weren't seeing is a transfer into actual speed. And so we started to look at things like parachutes, towing parachutes behind, like the dreaded band or tower work as well that you can tow behind. And then pull as an is another element of that, but just a lighter element. So M, look forward to some towel sessions or band sessions in your programs in a good amount of periods of time. But it's a really specific way to to bring strength and power work into swimming. And it's been it's shown to be really, really effective. Um and again, power work is across the board, whether that's swim, bike, or run has a is shown to have a massive effect on performance. There's a lot of research out there running specifically around the use of plyometrics and effect on running performance and even 5k performance. Um, and a lot of that comes from the neuromuscular neuromuscular changes that are happening from that polyometric work. So often when we're in the pool doing that work there, we want it to be short and we want it to be hard, so it is powerful. So if we're doing tower work or band work or parachute work, we're getting after twenties and fifties really short, hard, powerful reps. Now, if we're looking at at running, um I can't remember if we talked about this on other podcasts, but um hill reps beautiful for building some specific strength and power. Sand dune reps, even more beautiful, slash ugly. Um and slightly can cause a bit of chafe if you're not so good about keeping on your feet and you get sand in your running shorts. Um so avoid that rocky error. Um so really those are some really good ones for running, and even just you know, as a party running movements, doing plyometric drills like A skip, which Em was talking about, is a great basic plyometric run drill. And you can get into some variations of that where you're trying to gain more bit more vertical oscillation, but also little pogo drills or fast feet drills or hops, etc. A great one. So Artholytic uphill bounds is something that he used a lot of. So you'll see sprinters doing, but um, distance runners with Artholytia but doing big uphill bounds out in the the on the hills, it's a great one. And we can then segue back into a a tri-sutto special where you can grind away on the bike as well in a big gear. Now there's there's there's some real mixed schools of thought in here. Some people feel that and some research has proven that long big gear intervals don't necessarily see the biggest improvement in performance reflect it that well. Again, it's the short hard VO2 reps where you might be pushing 50 to 70 RPM, which are gonna give your biggest bang for buck, your biggest improvement in that area. So, you know, you could go down the hill rep route, seated, that obviously gets your glutes really well. That's really helpful too. But again, I'd be angling at doing shorter, harder hills to try and get the best out of that rather than grinding for 90 minutes up a hill at 30 rpm. I think if you're real time poor, you've got to go down the short angle.

SPEAKER_01 20:25

So a practical takeaway from that really is you know, swim, we're talking about paddles, pull, resistance, you can throw in butterfly or anything that sort of uh on Wednesdays we we wrap our legs around towels, we drag like a little towel, um, build strength. On the bike, we're looking at low cadence, sort of high torque stuff, big gear work, you can make it specific as well. A lot of people, um, if you live in a hilly area, you know, parts of Sydney are hilly, Auckland was very hilly by default, you're getting quite a bit of elevation without even really realizing it. On the run as well, I find, you know, hills, strides, um, plyometric stuff, as Tim said. Um, so a lot of stuff, again, you don't need to be confined to the gym. Um, on on during your on season, you might be able to still tap into a lot of strength stuff. And that does transition into speed in a lot of cases as well. It's just figuring out, you know, with your coach as well, how to apply that and when to implement it, how that looks around um race season. So lots of cool stuff. Em, do you have uh do you have anything to add to that?

SPEAKER_04 21:34

I think that it's a lot easier when you go in with some purpose. I think that was probably my biggest challenge when I started trying to do some gym stuff, is that I would go into the gym and I'd understand that I need to do something and I need to somehow get strong. But there was it was just a bit random, if that makes sense. So I'd go in, I'd pick a bunch of exercises, I'd do Them, I'd leave, and then I'd go back into the gym and I'd pick a bunch of exercises and I'd leave. And there was no real progression. And I reckon that's probably the difference that I'm seeing here, Tim, is that we're we're doing the same sorts of movements. I'm tracking what I'm doing and I'm looking at what I'm lifting and whether I can lift more or and and sort of progress on I'm actually building something. I feel like that's probably what I'm noticing most at the moment. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:30

Yeah. And tell I mean talk to the listeners about maybe what you the testing you did yesterday with the physio. And and uh and how you're gonna track that information.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

Yeah, that was um super interesting. So we had a really good look at my history, what my joints were like, what my uh how how sort of bendy I was, and um, and then did some uh like force testing. So I I got on these force plates to see um both on each one of my legs, like how much force I was getting sort of through my calves, and then I did some um sort of hopping on on one leg and um and we were able to see there was a huge imbalance um you know between um the strength I think in my left calf versus sort of my right hip. And um and and it's it's things that now we're gonna be able to really target um in terms of kind of leveling me up. And and I feel like I I knew this. I could I can feel it. I feel it when I fatigue, particularly in running, that where you know I start relying more on sort of a dominant side, which is my right side. But I guess yeah, it's it's cool to know, right, that um, you know, this is the science behind it. You actually do have those weaknesses and now we can go and attack them. And so I'm gonna be very keen to see how we actually do attack those, Tim.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

Yeah, yeah, we've got a conversation to follow with up with Sam in due course, and I'll catch up with him this weekend in Sydney actually and see what the go is. And I and I think the key thing here is you're able to start to track it and you'll be able to start to see the differences in the measures of what we're trying to achieve, which is really cool. Um and and I'd just like to encourage anybody who's had niggles or issues to find themselves a really good physio and get some testing done and use that information to inform your program. Like it's all good someone like myself writing you a strength and additioning program and we can make some good change, but if we're not addressing the core issues at heart, that program's pretty worthless to a degree. Um, because some of those issues are just going to come out in different ways. So really important part of the process and really hoping that um we can get some good gains from that. Hope not hoping. No, we will get some good gains from it. Yeah, and just want to encourage everybody out there to take those sort of steps if they're getting into running um before they crack into some big volumes.

SPEAKER_01 24:56

I think what might be interesting, because it's I think in terms of performance, it's like a it's a positive association. You're like you're trying to work on your swim bike and run. Generally, your technique and your posture, you're trying to get more powerful in the water, you're trying to push more watts on the bike, you're trying to uh run with more uh force and you know, you run tall and good posture. Uh the the longer you can hold that technique, the faster you generally go. But maybe we could focus on the people that uh permanently feel like they're injured, chronically injured. Uh where I mean, we just touched upon this with going to a physio. Is that the best place to sort of start for someone who's like maybe trying to start again and get back into it where you feel frustrated and you're like, I'm always broken with shoulders, knees, whatever it may be?

SPEAKER_03 25:48

Yeah, um look, you can start off yourself by doing some really good basic movement patterns. You know, getting back in the gym, squatting, achieving good range of motion, just doing some nice overhead work, trying to get through a good range of motion of that, whether that's squats with overhead weight, whether it's shoulder presses, good bench pulls, bench presses, it's a real basic work you can start to work through before stepping into that space. But I I for me I'd say it's the best port of call to really understand your body and really know where you're weak. And like anything, there's gonna be some physios that that may not step into some of that space, and there's there'll be some physios that do. So it's seeking out the people who really want to understand it in depth and and take some sort of probably a next level approach to it, and and they'll help you step forward with some other exercises that you can put into the program to address some of those issues. And the way I actually look at it is it whilst it is injury work, and you touched on it before, Carl, it's it is performance. Like going to the gym is performance because we're not injured, we can train more consistently. Train more consistently, we get better performance. So everything we're doing in the gym is trying to build and enhance performance. Um and and I think that's uh changing the mindset of it is part of that. Um people's approach to the gym. Um so when yeah, and you get some some rubbish exercises which you'll hate doing the dynamic clamshell on your side, you know, lifting and floating your leg up and down the air repeatedly. And some of those are really key and important, but also some of those can just be put into a warm-up movement routine. Um so then you know, mainlifts and you can feel like you're doing some more productive stuff throughout the workout. So there is there is going to be invariably, like in any sport, some of those niggly things that you don't want to do within that gym program, but it's all valuable and it's it's value add towards improving where you want to be.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

You know, one thing I always found is you get an injury, right? You maybe let's say you strained your calf. So you you'd go to the physio and they'll give you a range of exercises to try and figure out where your deficiencies were. And I always found that do that obviously be targeting your glutes. And I don't know anyone whose glutes are crazy strong to be able to pass a single leg squat test. And I'm like, when the hell are you ever doing like single leg, you know? Like, I know there's a few people super strong with that, but I feel like that's the other thing as well, right? You can still be a really good athlete, but not be super strong in some areas. I guess we only really pay attention to it once we get injured and like uh you went through M, you start to get something that wears you down a little bit with your form or your muscles. So it's like then you still gotta start fishing around. But then if you look at like a lot of the Kenyan runners and that and Boston Marathon's just been on, um, there's a people a lot of people that are not that don't look that functionally pretty, but for some reason it works. Look at Lionel Sanders, the way he sort of has a hitch in his run. Um, and I know he has a lot of injuries, but I would I would argue that's a lot of it's because he pushes his body to the absolute limit. But he's uh he's one of the best runners going around and it doesn't look the prettiest, but it works. So it doesn't have to, you don't have to look awesome to get it done still, but um yeah. Yep, yeah, totally. Any of the conspiracy theorists, you can win clean, you can do everything legit. We've been around the likes of Craig Alexander, Cam Brown long enough to know that hard work does pay off. And look, there's always exceptions to the rule, but I think you do the right thing with you know, you swim bike and run, do the fundamentals right, you'll be able to achieve what you want to achieve. Yeah, totally.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

You know, and we layer in we layer in strength work on top of that. And you uh you'll have some good performances and you'll get some better longevity too.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

Well, that's a wrap, but if you want to keep the conversation going, come find us on Instagram at cartel.coaching. And for coaching camps and community, you can check out our webpage. I've linked it in the show notes. See you next time.