#12 Coaching Questions with Tim and Emz

In this episode, Tim and Emz tackle a wide range of triathlon coaching topics, from heart rate zones to training stress scores, and share practical insights for athletes at all levels. Whether you're a seasoned triathlete or just starting out, you'll find valuable advice to enhance your training and race performance.

Key Topics Covered:

• How to interpret and stay in heart rate zones during easy and hard sessions
• The impact of experience on heart rate and speed range
• When to chase power versus heart rate during intervals
• Understanding TSS (Training Stress Score) and CTL (Chronic Training Load)
• The importance of listening to your body over data
• Power testing vs. FTP ramp tests for assessing fitness
• The role of strength training in increasing power output
• How to approach swim training with minimal tech and focus on feel
• The mental and emotional benefits of ditching your watch

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Team, welcome to Cartel Coaching. I'm 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's 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_01 1:01

Welcome back to Cartel Coaching. So today, today's a little bit of a different episode because uh we don't have one of our crew here with us today. So Cal is off. He's just raced his 70.3 in Cairns, so he's taking a well-deserved little break. So today you've got Tim and I, and uh we are gonna talk all things coaching questions. So we um we've been live in cartel coaching for how long has it been now, Tim? How long have we been doing this?

SPEAKER_03 1:31

About six weeks now, I think.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Six weeks, wow, look at us go. Um, and we've got our little community going in school, and um, we've got a bunch of um athletes training on lots of different events, and so we work through a lot of questions every week, and we thought that it might be a good idea to actually share some of those questions here today on the pod because if our crew are asking them, I'm sure there's other people out there in the triathlon universe who are also interested. So I'm gonna pick your brain today, Tim. But um, before we do, how are you going? How things been?

SPEAKER_03 2:06

I'm good. I'm not exercising as much as I'd like, and I'm still waiting for the snow to arrive, but I'm pretty good otherwise. So yeah, life is life's pretty peachy. There's no complaints down here. And uh looking forward to our first camp in Noosa, which will kick off in around about 10 days, which is pretty exciting.

SPEAKER_01 2:24

Yeah, first camp for us, uh huge milestone. That's gonna be really exciting. I'm um I'm super pumped to to join. Looks like it's gonna be a a pretty pretty big week for us, though, Tim. You've got our work cut out for us.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Oh yeah. You can't make a camp easy, right? You've got to come work for it. The problem that we do have, him, is like, and if anybody's watching on YouTube, they'll see there's like a space behind him where there's normally a bike. Is will you even have your row bike there ready for camp?

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Well, it's hard to know. Um, so yeah, backstory team, I've had a bit of a cycling issue. Uh so last week I learned a valuable lesson about chain waxing. So for anybody listening who's thinking about waxing their chain, uh, something that you need to know is that the quick links are not reusable on your chain. So if you tend to reuse them a little bit, they can just fail mid-ride. And that's what happened to me. So I had a chain failure in a Bunchie going up a hill, and it was quite a dramatic situation. So I have um scratched my beautiful pink Barbie bike, which is very sad, and um, and yeah, she's going in for a service, but um, lesson learned, expensive one. That seems to be the way that I do it.

SPEAKER_03 3:35

Way more expensive than a chain link, eh?

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So much more. Like, why? And it's so bad because the the shop, when I when they set me up on waxing, they told me. They told me don't reuse the quick link. And it just seemed like it was working. So I don't I even had another quick link, but anyway, you live and learn.

SPEAKER_03 3:55

Oh, there you go. But for those of you out there running about train waxing, it is a really cool thing to do. Um it's actually a lot simpler than you think. The hardest part really is getting the chain on and off your bike and putting it back on with the arrows pointing in the right direction and chain on the right way. But the waxing part itself is real easy. You just can need to clean your chain off and then melt down some wax in a bag and dump your chain into it, basically. Like it's it's not that difficult. And you will find that you know, you probably get 200 plus K out of a wax chain without having to lube it or anything, and it runs smoother with us away.

SPEAKER_01 4:34

It's so much better. So I I much prefer the wax chain. I'm I'm definitely a converted. This isn't gonna stop me from doing it, and this was a a me error, not a a wax problem. Uh and yeah, it's it is quite easy, and once you've got the chain off, if you've got the right gear, you can just do it at home, and it's just so much cleaner. So I never get those marks on my legs. You know how you'd used to get your socks all dirty? That doesn't happen. And then to clean the chain, you just sort of put some boiling water over it and it all just cleans off. It's it's it's really easy. So yeah, totally endorse that. Anyway, shall shall we get get into the questions?

SPEAKER_03 5:12

Oh, hit me with some questions.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

So many questions for you, Tim. And I've I've categorized them. I've tried to be a little bit organized today.

SPEAKER_03 5:20

So now you're making me nervous that there's quite a lot. There is a little crack in and we'll see how we go.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So we're gonna talk zones, heart rate, and pacing first, because that's something that comes up quite a lot in our group because we're doing a lot of easy running. We're doing we do things either really hard or really easy. We try and stay out of those grey zones. Um, but obviously for our gang, sometimes it's tricky, right? So you think about when you're trying to do those easy runs, we're on a different train, things can get um, you know, it it is hard to kind of stay in um in in sort of a lower heart rate zone. So that's been probably the predominant question around running has been those easy runs. And one of them that we had was really around that zone one and zone two work. And I think it feels kind of rough. So, you know, why why do these runs feel so difficult? Why is it so difficult to actually run in zone one and zone two? And why does it feel so weird, Tim?

SPEAKER_03 6:19

Yeah, I think the first and foremost, generally the least experienced runner you are, the less range you have in zones. So, you know, we talk to an experienced runner and they're pretty happy sometimes just chipping away at five to five thirty per K. And that's really easy for them, you know, and and they're a person that can run 5k, you know, holding 250s per K. So their range is really big. You know, that what they can have for 5k, and then they might might go out and do an easy run at for an hour is is quite a big separation. And what we find is less experienced runners don't have that range, and then it nearly feels the slower they go, it starts to feel like a walk. And so their range condenses down because they might even be able to run 5k holding five minutes per K. But yet you know, when they start to get down, you took the same gap, you know running 730s per K. It starts to feel very, very slow for everybody, um, and a bit of a trudge, and it chang can change our mechanics a little bit. So first and foremost, there is a bit of a lack of range there, but you do have to find that sweet spot where you're not getting above around about 89% of your lactate threshold heart rate for heart for your heart rate. And we prescribe a lot of heart rate, and that's purposeful, because the heart rate is the work that you're doing, it's how your body's responding to the work based on the environment, uh, the conditions, and how you've come into that run with your fatigue level as well. So really important to use heart rate all the time accurately too, using a heart rate strap, not just your watch, because we all know how far watches can be off. Um, and giving yourself a little bit of scope so you can go up to the top of that range, but you're still trying to keep aerobic. Now you might find as a less experienced runner who's muscular and mechanically not as efficient, you know, lacks the range of speed, you might be sitting in more of that upper zone two more frequently than a low zone one, just to feel like you're running in a nice rhythm and with a good good form and technique. And that's that's a big one. And as we grow and develop as a runner, our muscular efficiencies become better, and we start to be able to develop a bit more range, and then we start to have that ability to run slower and faster, and that's a bit of experience too, that develops with that.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

I like Kay used 530 as the slow pace. That's like my fast pace, Tim. So thanks. Make me feel really good about that. Um thinking about heart rate and power, right? So we use a bit of power and a bit of heart rate, and I think sometimes it can get a bit challenging when a workout is sort of demanding things from both. So one of the questions we had was when an interval is set to zone five power and the heart rate only reaches zone three, do you chase the power or the heart rate?

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Yeah, well, look, in the end, there's more than likely something wrong with your settings. Like if you're doing zone five, if we're doing a high zone five power workout for say two to three minutes, then our heart rate should be rising into zone five to meet that. So we should see our heart rate elevate into that zone, and we've got both of them lining up. Now, the two cases where it might not be, is you haven't set your threshold right for your power, and therefore the bite power that's been told to you isn't relevant enough to where you're actually at. And so you think you're in a zone five power zone, but your heart rate's only zone three, so the power is set too low. You need to either you need to bump that up. The other thing we can see, and people will get this a little bit, if you're doing short VO2 max intervals, there is a lag in your heart rate being able to come up into zone five, and so you'll be banging out 30 seconds, a really high effort power. The heart rate's creeping its way up through that 30 seconds, doesn't quite reach the top of the range, and then you stop, and then you drop back off. And often you'll see a session's like 8 by 3030s or 3015s, and you actually see an average heart rate through those that whole block of which sits in zone four, maybe top of zone four and dropping to zone three, top of zone four, never quite gets to zone five, maybe until the back end where you've got a little bit of stacking. Those those are the reasons where you may see zone five bitepower versus zone three heart rates.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So technical glitch. So in those situations when that's happening, are you really sort of reverting back to feel until you set your zones correctly?

SPEAKER_03 10:55

Yep, yeah, totally. So reverting back to feel. Um, and that's where those short VO2 sessions, it's important to understand feel as well. Like what is the best effort I can manage and execute across eight 30-second reps and going out and attacking that. And then using the previous sessions data to help inform you going forward of what hours you might chase. If you blew up after six, you know you've got to back down a touch. If you got through eight super comfortably, okay, I could probably push five or ten watts more per 30-second interval. So using that relatable information that's relative to yourself to inform your changes going forward.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah, cool. And what if you can't actually get your heart rate into like a zone four or five? Is that is that a thing? Is that like a fitness thing or is that something else?

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Well, look, I mean, it's probably a whole lot of fatigue going down, to be honest, if you can't get your heart rate up really high. Like most people will be able to start spike their heart rate. Some people might struggle, you know, if they can't mechanically run fast enough. You know, they might struggle to get there. But generally, there's probably a lot of fatigue and underlying fatigue which isn't allowing you to spike up and really get your power your heart rate up into those top zones. Um yeah. And if if you're in the or hitting all the right boxes and you're still not getting your heart rate up there, maybe can s consider seeing a medical professional avoid. Exactly. You know, the same's going on.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Hmm. Yeah, okay. So let me hit you with pop quiz, and this is a real life situation of my own. Um say you've programmed an aerobic ride, but the bunch is doing hills. Do you just aim to have sort of an average heart rate in that aerobic zone, knowing that you're probably gonna have some spiky beers, or do you attack and change the workout?

SPEAKER_03 12:52

Where are you, you know, again, where are you on your your path towards a race? Like if you're just if you're just trying to stay fit, you know, and and you you're just enjoying yourself, go and attack and have fun on the ride and and let that roll out and just know that the next day, when it comes to this key session you've planned, you're gonna have to modify that or change that. Um or you may feel really s horrible the next day and just accept that as what you've delivered off that day's training. You know, if it's a you know structured build-up for a race and you still want to keep your bunch races in there, then it'll be trying to or bunch rides in there more so than races. Um you're trying to keep your heart rate down as the aerobic zone as much as possible, and then when you do spike, it's not like sending it through the roof, it's just a gradual increase in power, no, through that hill, trying to just maybe work your way back through the bunch. So you may be on the back of the bunch by the time you finish the hill, and you haven't expended as much energy and you can just stay with that bunch. So if you're planning, if you know the ride, you can be at the front, come to the hill, you know, then ride your tempo, let other people come past, and then just sort of draft off them on the rest of it. But you do want to try try and keep to your zones with specific build-ups for events. And then for if it's in a real last acute phase into an event, you'd probably look at it and go, you know what, I'm not gonna go with a bunch. I've just got to hide my way away. I can't I can't not be competitive, so I'm gonna hide my way away from this. And you know, I I probably put my hat on, somewhere like that, if I go out on a bunch ride with a bunch of mates. There's no way I'm gonna get dropped.

SPEAKER_02 14:31

No.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

I'm gonna commit and be part of it and enjoy it for what it is. So I know my strengths and weaknesses, so I definitely wouldn't do that a week before the race.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

Yeah, no, fair play. I um I went on a bunch here not that long ago where this situation happened and I thought about it and I was like, I'm just gonna really take it easy and I'm gonna, you know, just spin in a easy gear up these hills and I'll catch them at the top. You know, they'll they'll wait for me. Honestly, I cop so much shit, you know. Like I felt like I was doing good um in my own mind, but yeah, it was it was it was a tough ride. So um, yeah, sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 15:06

Maybe you just gotta cop the shit sometimes or ride with a different bunch.

SPEAKER_01 15:10

Yeah, yeah, that's it. All right, so now so that's kind of our pacing and and heart rate zone section. Um, but we have some interesting questions around um TSS and CTL. So I might get you to give us a bit of a rundown on what are these things, why are we looking at them and why are they important, Tim? Or are they even important?

SPEAKER_03 15:37

Sometimes they're the bane of my life, Emma. TSS and CTLs. I'm gonna be honest with you. Um some people are so reliant on them, but yet they won't invest in keeping those numbers clean and the information tidy. And you know, you spend a lot of time actually cleaning up the numbers. You know, chronic training load could be two athletes with the same chronic training load, okay, and they could be made up of completely different stimulus to get there. You and I could both be sitting there at 90. You know, you could have done a lot of short, hard sessions, and I could have gone a lot of long, steady sessions. Now, depending on the race, who of us is actually more prepared for the race? Yeah, the the ninety is irrelevant. Um you know, the type of work that you've done is the most relevant piece of information. How you've done that type of work, how you've ramped your training, how you've developed your training over time to get that point, another more important piece rather than the CTL number itself. So CTL to me is a guide of progression that you are stepping forward and stepping up. It's a guide that we don't want to see your CTL jump more than five or ten at a time on a regular basis. And that helps with the ramping of our training, but the absolute number really means nothing. Like it's it's quite irrelevant. Um, the type of work you've done to help you build it, as I just talked about, is the most relevant thing. So it's really important to understand that. Now, CTL itself is comprised of training stress scores. Training stress scores per workout is is a relevant number of a hundred points. So a hundred points or a hundred training stress score points is like doing a ride at threshold for an hour. So if you rode at 50% of your threshold for an hour, you'd get 50 points. And that's how the algorithm works across swimming, biking, running, kayaking, whatever sport you're using, make making sure that you've actually got your threshold set up correctly in training peaks that it can reference from. Because if they're not set up correctly, you're gonna get some banging big numbers or really small numbers as a as a reference to those. And so they sort of the relevance then of CTL and training stress score if those aren't set right, is minor. You know, that the numbers don't matter because it's not a reference to yourself and what you can really do. So you have to have your zones set up to make them worthwhile and to get the stress scores appropriate. Okay, so those stress scores then start to give you a guide to how much laying layering you're doing every week in training. So, well, this week it had 700 points, next week it had 800, next week 900. Okay, now I need to drop down and do overall four or five hundred TSS for the week. Um people can also use TSS as a guide for a race. So say we're doing a half iron man on the bike we want to sit somewhere between 160 and 180 TSS points. You know, there's a guide again for people, how am I going to execute this ride? I'm gonna use TSS to distribute my energy throughout this whole ride, especially if it's a big Hilly course. It's a nice way to look at things as well. There's different ways you can use it, but again, it's it's a number and it's a reference point to you, to your thresholds, and helps guide you ramping and developing your training and your sessions through each week. And then all those TSS points get gathered up into an algorithm which creates your training, chronic training load. Okay, and remember those points are done off time times intensity to get that number. Okay, so that's again when we come back to the first point we made. You know, you could do a lot of time with a low amount of intensity, similar TSS points, you could do short amount of time, high intensity, similar amount of TSS points, and then that stacks up your CTL. Okay, so and that's where things can impact. So that's uh that's a brief rundown of those two, and just really want to say to people that if you're either going to invest in those numbers, you keep it clean, you keep it tidy, you invest in them, because if you don't, then they become irrelevant. Um so there's no point using it.

SPEAKER_01 19:54

Yeah. Um I think for me personally, I don't see a lot of point in tracking this sort of stuff. Um, you know, it's it's not something that lights my fire. And I feel like I know how I'm doing just based on how my sleep is going, based on just other metrics that I can see general health and also just how I'm feeling. I I much prefer, I don't know, I'm going through a bit of a phase at the moment. I think you know it's sort of it's driven you're rubbing off on me, Tim. Um, you know, like really sort of focusing in more on how things feel in t instead of the technology. And um, I don't know, sometimes I think this is a bit overcooked. It's just my my two sense.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

I totally agree with you. You can invest so much time and energy in this. But really for most of us, you know, it's waking up in the morning, seeing how we feel, and executing appropriately.

SPEAKER_02 20:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

And I and I and I bet you most people will wake up and be like, I feel pretty rubbish today. Look down, their resting heart rate's pretty rubbish, and there you go.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:55

Um, like you'd be ahead of the curve. And there'll be some people who need a bit of guidance and to understand that over time. But once you've developed a portfolio of experience, you you you can be pretty ahead of your numbers um just on listening to yourself and engaging with what's in front of you.

SPEAKER_01 21:12

Yeah. The one that I do like though, and it's not to do with um uh CTL or um uh TSS, is um is the heart rate variability. I feel like that's the only thing that metric that I see when something's going on with that. I can tell that I'm getting sick. I I know it, I can see when it's starting to drop. That's the only one that I do actually when I see something there. I can tell that either I'm I'm maybe a bit overcooked or or I'm getting sick.

SPEAKER_03 21:40

HIV is a really good figure, um, along with resting heart rate. I find for me, resting heart rate's really good. Um HIV seems to jump around a bit. But HRV's a a really good one as well. And there's plenty of research now out there that shows both those two figures are a pretty good guide to how you're going and how you're tracking.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Yeah, I like it. Now back on the more technical sides, because you are a little bit technical, Tim. So you're you're a bit on both sides of the fence as a coach. I see you're very much about how does it feel and what do you, you know, go go by your gut. But then when we're when we are getting into the sciencey stuff, you're you're pretty precise. And uh we do power testing. So we do a five-minute and a 20-minute power test on the bike. And I think that was one of the surprising things to me. Surprise, two tests, um, when we started working together, was that I used to do, say, like a ramp test in in Swift to understand my FTP. And now we're doing a five-minute and 20-minute critical power test. So you talk us through what the logic is around that style of testing and um and what the difference is between that and say a a ramp test in Swift.

SPEAKER_03 22:53

Yeah, well, a ramp test or a FTP, you could argue, just tells you one figure. It gives you one understanding of one parameter of fitness, which is threshold. Um, fitness is built up of a lot of different building blocks and different building blocks for different events, or different building blocks for different times of year, or where the athlete's at and what they're trying to develop. Um and one of the key things we always want to look at is what is our utilization of our capacities, because we all have a ceiling, and that ceiling in running, they talk about it as a speed reserve. You know, in cycling it's nearly like a power reserve. Like if your max power, your max aeranaerobic capacities are here, you can only ever use about 90% of your VO2, your threshold, and then you're sort of stuck. So you're gonna need a drive up your threshold to create sprout drive up your VO2 to create space to grow your threshold. So, well, what's the VO2? How do we understand that sort of side of things? Well, five-minute testing is a really good one for that. And with the critical power testing, the five-minute test helps to give us an understanding of the anaerobic capacity, which they label as your W prime. Oh yeah. W prime is is reported as a kilojoules number. Um, generally, the higher the W prime, the more anaerobic capacity you have. So if you're going to be a sprint cyclist, you want something to be pretty high to be able to deliver on that. But if you want to be a triathlet, especially a long course triathlete, you want your W trion to be quite low. But at stages of your year, you might want to drive that up because you're trying to lift that ceiling that we just talked about. Okay, so by understanding the two numbers, we can start to understand as well what percentage of your anaerobic capacity you're using for your threshold, how t close are those two numbers basically. You know, and is there any room to grow? Okay, or do we need to lift this side, the anaerobic capacity, before we can lift the threshold side? And then it starts to guide us on what sort of training we're gonna do and how we're gonna attack your cycle training, rather than just going, well, this AFTP, we want to increase that. So we'll go to FTP work. Um or we'll go to anaerobic capacity work, but we don't really know where it's at. So recently you did a just a five-minute test this week because I wanted to see has the work you've been doing helped to improve your five minute power? And we've seen over six weeks a four and a half percent increase.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

I know.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Perfect. That's been fantastic for someone who's really pretty a aerobically charged. Like that's yeah, that's been your jam. So that that's sort of what critical power testing is. Now, people who want to understand between critical power and FTP or functional threshold power, critical power is about 96% of your FTP. Sort of that value you might be able to hold 40 or 50 minutes versus FTP is an hour. It's a little bit more relevant at times when you're doing reps that are shorter to be using that critical power than your FTP number. But with training picks set up, everything around FTP, we often refer back to use that number within training picks itself.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

Hmm.

SPEAKER_01 26:10

Yeah, that's been super interesting for me. Um I've always wondered, uh you know, I've always felt like I I'm just bad at this. You know, I never have been able to, I guess, improve my my power output. And again, it's similar with the swimming as well. Like I've just sort of been that one one one speed wonder. Um, and it's been so apparent over these last six weeks that it's actually just because I haven't necessarily been focusing on the right training stimulus, right? Like it's um yeah, it's been really good, Tim.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

It's all trainable, right? And you can train it in different ways. Like we're not only trying to train it through your workouts on the bike, we're also trying to train it through the gym and the strength work we get in the gym. Because power for everybody is strength times speed. So those are the two elements you're trying to develop, right? So you can go into the gym, develop strength. We can do specific strength-based exercises as well, whether whether we're doing hill reps or um some sled work running, you know, or whether we're getting big gear work on the bike, or whether we're using paddles and pullboy and bands in the pool, that's specific strength work. Or we can work on the speed element, you know, are we doing sprints, are we doing high cadence efforts? You know, what are those other elements? And then we can maybe bring them together to see if we're increasing power output. So it's not just about hammering the high power sessions, but we can attack it from some different angles.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Hmm. This method to the madness, and I like it.

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Yeah, generally, yeah. I mean this is the fine this is the fine balance that a lot of people will find with coaching, is it's it's is is we always chat about the art and the science of it, you know, and and throughout your coaching career, you you can come in, and I came in from quite a science background and started to learn the art of it, and then you start to merge the two together um as you get more experience and you see different things and you understand them different ways. And that's what we're trying to do with the athletes, right? Is we're trying to educate them to understand different elements of their performance from a feel perspective, from an arty perspective, if you can call it that, and then from a science perspective, and and weave them together to bring it out. And that's why we we also see that AI programming is not working because it's a science. It's a pure science-based approach through algorithms to create a program for that person. You know, you can then maybe bring the arty side in if you've got the experience to modify that and change it and adapt it to yourself and understand it. Um But if you don't, it just becomes this thing that you're using and it's not really relevant.

SPEAKER_01 28:55

Hmm. Yeah, no, that's really interesting. Um a big one we get to is around swimming because I think um I I maybe we share a little story about when I started um working with you and I asked you if my swims would load onto my garment watch for me to just swim against, and you kind of had a bit of a chuckle at me and said, absolutely not. Um so we get a lot of questions about swims and about the way that we do swims in cartel coaching. Um I I guess in the beginning was someone who used to just do the 50-meter like long sets, everything was in blocks, like there wasn't a lot of variation. But I was also someone who felt like there was no room to move in in my swims. Uh, since coming over um to you, Tim, I'm doing lots of really different things. We're doing lots of different lengths of things that don't necessarily marry up to something you can program in a watch. Like I think it would be actually impossible to program some of your sets into a watch, and it feels like that's a little bit by design. Um, so did you want to did you want to tell us a little bit about your sort of methodology around swims and what you're trying to do with us as triathletes who aren't um swim background folks?

SPEAKER_03 30:20

Yeah, well, I guess there's been some really cool learning for me lately, stepping into a slightly different space to what I have been operating in. And that I never even thought about taking the swims to the watch and building them up. Like it's just not part of my psyche from my background where it's been, yeah, with run workouts a bit, I can understand that and the biking. But with swims, you come into the end, you can see the program, you write it down, and off you go again. You know, and you you got the swimming clocks on the wall you can use, and that's pretty straightforward. Um so it hadn't really dawned on me until I started working in the space that people were doing that quite a lot. Um I have seen that with the form goggles, obviously, that people load in swims to the form goggles and use them for it. Um that's giving you that live pacing feedback in your eye though, which is quite neat. You're not just using a watch and not looking at pacing at all. You've got constant feedback around your pacing, which is quite cool, and quite a cool learning mechanism as well. Um but as an old school swimmer I always used the clocks on the wall. So I didn't need that as much. So it was quite interesting for me to start working in this space and understand that's how some people were delivering their swims on a regular basis. Um and also on that note, people having alerts set on their watch regularly for their running. Um so if they're stepping out of a zone that's not prescribed in the workout, it's beeping at them constantly, which would annoy the heck out of me. Like I just couldn't do it because I'm like, well, I'm feeling really good today. I'm feeling really on top of things. And I know that I can run this run today, my high zone two, and I'm gonna be able to back up tomorrow. So I'm just gonna ignore that watch beeping, and I'm gonna run within my zone two instead of having to stick within zone one, um, for example. So that's been an interesting explanation, but I guess from the swimming perspective, swimming has always got this mysterious feel about it, you know, the feel of swimming, um, feel the water. And what I have observed is a lot of people use the watch, they push off and they're pressing the button, and when they're coming into the wall, and they're pressing the button again, and they're in people's way, you know, and it's really governing their whole swim, and they're not actually thinking about what they're doing. You know, they're tumble turning at the wall, they're looking at their watch to see what their pace is. You know, I'm I'm used to like swimming as I'm gliding into the wall to tumble turn, I might be looking at the pace clock and grabbing a little number in my head and as I push off calculating that and then just focusing on what I'm doing afterwards. Um but people come into the wall, trying to look down at their watch, trying to get their time, trying to sort it out. And and for me it just dis it's a distraction because swimming is a is really technically demanding and our attention needs to be put into the technical demands of swimming and focusing on that all the time. Um and then using the clock when we need to, not every set and not all the time, you know, to govern ourselves. So, you know, we're doing 2100s course, you know, at CSS I'm gonna be looking at that clock and and dialing in and nailing that. And you know, I might look at it for the first three and then come in and use it for my send-off times and and be happy that I'm sort of maintaining my steady effort all the way through and then checking again after four or how my times are sitting and go from there again. But we want to take the attention inwards rather than outwards to devices, and I think that's really important. Um and it's something I've also played around with cycling as well, taking power numbers off people's screens. And I actually had one girl that I coach took a power number off her screen for a race because she'd been struggling to hit the numbers that we were constantly seeing in training in racing, and six weeks apart with basically a Wii recovery phase, maintenance phase, and small prep phase, we went 20 watts higher in a race for 90k that previous race by taking the power number off the screen. And there is no way, no way that was relevant to an improvement or a change, because we could see in the numbers and training of what she should have been hitting, what she wasn't, and then we just changed the stimulus. So just shows how the the what the data can get in our heads and hold us back as well. Um and just take that attention away from that process orientated what am I doing, what am I delivering, how am I delivering it. And get stuck in that mindset instead. And uh that's my spiel. There's my sermon M, which I gave to you a little bit and took that watch away. And you know, we've have seen a 30-second PB across 400 meters in six weeks. Yeah. Which has been that's significant for me. That's massive.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, after over two years of working on this, I put the watch down and I actually started thinking about what I was doing. And it's it's been it it's just changed the game for me, Tim. Like I I've I've hated swimming the whole time. I I just get through it and it has been awful, but I love it now. Yeah, I was very obsessed with the watch. I can even tell you that there had been times that I had not even attempted a swim if I couldn't get my swim loaded up on my watch because I if it wasn't on Strava, it didn't happen. So I just wouldn't do it. Uh, but now it's been not only, you know, am I seeing a huge improvement in my swims because I'm actually able to focus on what I'm supposed to be doing, but I just enjoy it so much more. I I actually am, you know, really in a flow state. And I think that's what the watch was doing to me personally, was that I was so focused on the pace that I actually wasn't thinking about what I was doing. I was forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. So I feel like I had to keep referring back to what my swim sets were because my brain was just full of something else. Whereas now I know what I'm doing. I actually don't need to keep looking at the swim sets. I know what's what we're what we're up to and and I'm really in that moment. And it's it's absolutely converting into results. So I'm I'm totally pro the no watch. I'm I'm flying that flag.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

Gotcha. It's great. Yeah. And we're slowly converting the the cartel coaching community and hopefully get them all there.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

I know. I had someone reached out to me on Instagram the other day and they're like, I tried it and it's changing it. And I just thought, yes, let's just get everyone, let's let's make a make a whole thing about it. So it's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Yeah. All right. Well, hey, we might leave it there. Um, we do have some other questions, so we might do a part two of this one. Um, we've definitely got some stuff around injury and training um around life events and things like that. So we might make this a bit of a a regular regular thing. But thanks, Tim, for sharing all your all your wisdom with us. 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.