THREE's keys to improving without training or trying harder
THREE is a lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE's mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?
Joe Maloy | 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete and Co-founder, THREE
• SWIM TOYS TO IMPROVE TECHNIQUE We’ve all heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder” but when it comes to triathlon, THREE’s advice is “think less, play more!” When equipped with the proper tools (think: toys!), this mentality can go a long way toward improving your efficiency and speed. As Joe Maloy demonstrates in this edition’s Triathlon Training by an Olympian, in the pool it’s much easier to change your swim technique by feeling it versus thinking about it or intentionally trying to fix it. Joe shares how a handful of pool toys — swim shorts, paddles, fins, a snorkel and drag parachute — can help swimmers make gains in the water.
• TIME-CRUNCHED CYCLING FITNESS Balancing training with work and family demands is a constant struggle for endurance athletes. The number of available hours in the day can often leave us feeling like we’re shortchanging something. Taking this into account, Road.cc recently published a feature that shows how cyclists can get the most from their limited training time. “Even 30 minutes is enough for a valuable session,” Anna Marie Hughes writes. The key to an impactful-but-short workout? Intensity. Hughes references a 2021 study and quotes a half-dozen coaches who describe best practices for building your fitness when you’re time-crunched.
• STAIR WORKOUTS FOR RUNNERS Could running stairs be the secret to more speed and power on the run? That’s the question Runner’s World asked last month. “Stairs, like hills, up the intensity of a running workout. But the intensity of the stairs’ elevation is often harder than a gradual hill, which increases the load.” RW talked to a USA Track and Field-certified coach who cites research concluding that, “Doing stair workouts consistently eventually leads to an improved VO2max ... because your body learns to use oxygen more efficiently—which means faster paces will feel easier on flat ground.” TL;DR: If you’re looking to pack a punch with your run workout, you might consider looking up — at the stairs! Click here for four workouts that add incline to your running.
• THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RACING VS. PACING There’s a common thought among athletes that you tend to go faster when you’re racing against someone faster than you. And research indicates that’s true, up to a point. But what’s the tipping point and how big of a role do other psychological variables play when it comes to peak performance? Outside Online dug into the complex equation in March’s Sweat Science column by examining a recent study in the European Journal of Sport Science. “Running alone against the clock is very different from trying to beat other runners, but untangling how our minds process the challenge is 'like knitting with spaghetti.'” The takeaways aren’t straightforward, but the research is fascinating.
• FOCUS OR FAIL? From training to racing, triathlon requires several types of mental focus. Although tri is an endurance sport, it would be simplistic to say the sport requires a singular focus on one thing. Triathlete magazine recently published a member-exclusive article on the topic, writing: “Focus is the most misunderstood mental “muscle” in the sports world and this misunderstanding can be a real challenge for triathletes.” (Editor’s note: If you’re a USAT annual member, you have free access to Triathlete magazine’s member articles.) Focus is both internal and external, and Triathlete outlines the value of so-called Prime Focus, as well as the obstacles you’re likely to encounter when trying to achieve this level of focus that can impact performance.
• PURE EUPHORIA There are a myriad of reasons why people get involved in triathlon — everything from achieving an ambitious goal and finding community with a like minded crew, to racing in an exotic location or overcoming a personal challenge. On that side of the spectrum, the short documentary Pure Euphoria: A Journey of Consciousness chronicles the story of Todd Crandell, a former drug addict who used triathlon to push through a period of depression. Crandell is now a 30-time Ironman finisher who has reached his higher purpose by pushing his body, mind and spirit to the limit.
THINK LESS, PLAY MORE
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy
2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Sometimes thinking can get us out of trouble, but sometimes thinking can get us into trouble. It’s an interesting thought, isn’t it? When we think less and play more, we give our minds a chance to relax. A relaxed mind allows the body to simply act.
The inspiration for this week’s topic came while I was looking at the baby toys scattered across my living room floor. Instead of thinking, “I should pick these up” (that’s rarely my first thought when I look at them...Sorry, Jenn!), I thought about how our one-year-old daughter, Brooke, explores the world through play. She has toys to teach her numbers, colors, animals, peek-a-boo, and all sorts of other amazing lessons. These are things most of us have known for so long that we’ve forgotten we needed to learn them. Many of us learned these first lessons through play. Connecting to that sense of “play” is a way to accelerate your athletic progression in the same way that playing helps toddlers learn the world.
Let’s use swimming as an example. For many triathletes, swimming is a weakness relative to their bike and run. This makes sense. If we had evolved to be coordinated in the water, then we’d have evolved scales and fins instead of fingers and toes. We didn’t evolve to be the world’s fastest swimmers, that honor belongs to the sailfish. For humans, swimming is movement through a foreign environment.
Here’s where I return to my daughter, Brooke, using her toys to explore this foreign world. She’s constantly learning and figuring things out, exploring colors, shapes, textures, language and numbers. Connecting to a sense of play allows her brain to unconsciously absorb lessons that will someday become automatically accessible. Someday when she’s driving, she won’t have to think about what color the yellow light is, she will just know that color and know what it means in that context. What’s new to her today will someday be knowledge she “just knows” without needing to consciously think about it.
Swimming at the highest level is a great example of thinking that’s become automatic for athletes like Katie Ledecky and Michael Phelps. Listen to what they say about their record setting performances, though, and you’ll see these athletes are not thinking; they’re playing. Here’s an example from an old interview with Katie Ledecky: When asked, “How did you feel about that race?” Ledecky responds, “I felt so relaxed. It felt very easy, and that’s why I was surprised I broke that world record.” Her reaction when she touches the wall is a smile and a shrug.
Swimming, to Ledecky, is like us when we see a yellow light. We process information and make a decision immediately. Consciously putting words to what we see becomes an unnecessary step. Ledecky’s stroke looks smooth and natural because it’s the result of countless thoughts automatically strung together. While none of us is likely to swim as fast as Katie Ledecky, we can aspire to her example by turning off our brain and getting back to playing.
In the same way Brooke uses toys to learn her world, I’m a huge fan of swim “toys” to encourage proper technique and speed in the water. I share some of my favorites in this week's THREE training video, but remember the key to making progress is turning off your brain and learning to trust your body to figure out how to move through the water. As I describe in the video, different training toys will encourage different adaptations, so choose your favorite toy and get to play!
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This edition’s THREE Things to Know focuses on what you need to know about triathlon at the upcoming Olympic Games in Tokyo this summer. Although spectators from overseas will not be allowed this year, the Olympic torch is finally on its way and you’ll want to know about the new triathlon mixed-gender relay event making its debut.
What race are you excited to participate in this year? Reply to this email and let us know. One lucky respondent will receive a THREE water bottle for sharing their excitement. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
THREE on finding success by factoring in your body's genetics
THREE is a lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE's mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?
Joe Maloy | 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete and Co-founder, THREE
• DON’T SKIP THE STRETCH In our last edition, our TRAIN section focused on the importance of strength training, in addition to swimming, cycling and running. Since this edition is a continuation, this week we’re focusing on the gains you can get from stretching. Sure, it’s easy to look at the clock and decide that you only have time to squeeze your run in, but not your warm-up or post-run stretch, or maybe you’ve ruled out stretching altogether because you’ve heard that it’s better for runners to have a certain level of tension. Women’s Running recently reported on why you shouldn’t cut corners when it comes to incorporating stretching into your running routine.
• FOAM ROLLING TO FLEXIBILITY Foam rolling can also be a valuable part of a healthy runner’s warmup and cooldown routine, according to this month in Runner’s World. RW published a quick guide on how to use a foam roller to warm up before your run and cool down after.
• WHEN TO STOP STRENGTH TRAINING (BEFORE A RACE) Even as we’ve advocated for endurance athletes to incorporate stretching and strength training into their workout routines, Outside Online wants to make sure athletes also know when to stop strength training, specifically ahead of a race. As we emerge from a year of hibernation and start to figure out our spring and summer race schedules, the magazine’s Sweat Science column references a new study in the journal Sports and asks the question, “How and when do you taper your strength training routine?”
• THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON RUNNING With gyms and pools closed on and off for a solid part of the past year, there’s a good chance running has helped you sustain your physical and mental health over the past year. Triathlete Magazine recently resurfaced an article that looks at the neuroscience of running’s calming effects—and how to enhance them.
• MAINTAINING MENTAL FLEXIBILITY While running is seen as a sport that can help with mental health, Canadian Running recently looked at the concept of mental flexibility, which it describes as “the ability to disengage from one task and respond to another, or to think about multiple concepts at the same time.” Why is this important in sport? “Mental flexibility is a skill that the best athletes in the world possess, and it can make you an overall better, more resilient runner.”
• A DAY IN THE LIFE OF TEAM CHARLES-BARCLAY While there’s no such thing as a routine ‘day in the life’ of a professional athlete, there’s a lot to respect and enjoy by watching what one single day looks like. Lucy and Reece Charles-Barclay recently published a YouTube video that opens a window into what their lives are like. In this video they give a look at their nutrition, swim and track sessions, and their setup for a Zwift Pro race.
Cyclist acknowledges there’s more wind to contend with on Fuerteventura when compared to “its cousins Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote,” but as this photo slideshow demonstrates, the sights are worth it.
HOW TO USE WHAT YOU’VE GOT
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy
2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Has it really been two weeks since our last edition? It seems like just the other day that I wrote about genetics and how it can shape one’s athletic strengths and weaknesses. Even though some of this is common sense, it’s fun to think about the miracle that is the human body. We share so much in common, yet we’re each a different combination of genes. Last edition’s topic can be summarized: “Part #1, Genetics: What You’re Born With.” This week’s sequel is “Part #2, Genetics: How to Use What You’ve Got!”
Every one of us has a miraculous combination of genetic code that’s our unique recipe for life. Still, we may think of our genetics as something that’s not quite good enough for everything we want to achieve. Last edition explained that genetics determine your individual proportions of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers. Some of the differences are outlined here:
Understanding the strengths and limitations of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, reflect on your past athletic wins and losses. They don’t have to be actual wins or losses, but ask yourself, “When or where did I do something that really made me shine? What strengths did I utilize to make that happen?” What athletic challenges have come naturally to you, and where have you struggled?
I never felt like I was a good athlete until I reached middle school. I remember being picked last for kickball and grade school gym basketball games, but then I ran a 1-mile time trial in 5:22. I was in 5th grade and recorded the fastest time of any student from 5th through 8th grade. I thought, “Hm, I suck at basketball, baseball, kickball, wiffle ball, and a whole bunch of other stuff, but that mile was pretty darn good.” My older self remembers that moment as the first time I gained self-awareness about my athletic strengths. Prior to that realization that I was good at something, I just thought I wasn’t very good at sports. Every one of us is an athlete; we just have to be persistent enough to keep searching for our talents.
Endurance sports came naturally to my abundance of slow twitch muscle fibers. I continued to struggle in sports that asked for speed, but I started putting myself into events and challenges that better showcased my skills. Since each of us has a different muscle profile, each of us is going to find athletic challenges relatively easier or harder. What comes easy to some may be hard to someone else. Athletes with more slow twitch muscle fibers will struggle to compete in workouts that train speed. Athletes with more fast twitch muscle might underperform in “long” sets or events.
Fortunately, success in endurance sport requires a combination of speed and endurance, so most of us have the genetic ingredients to achieve some level of success. Not all of us will race in the Olympics, but odds are your potential to improve is greater than you think. Achieving greater self-awareness of your strengths by understanding this concept of different muscle types will give you insight for more targeted training. For example, I include much more speed training in my endurance exercise program than many of my competitors. I do sprints with a parachute in the pool, frequently do 1:00-5:00 efforts on the bike, and love running hill sprints. While I still need long aerobic sessions to maintain my endurance, my speed is a greater weakness, so it demands more attention in training.
When we specifically identify our strengths, we better understand what’s holding us back. Shake hands with your athletic limiters—get to know them. We all have bad days or bad sessions, but think of your previous experiences as a whole. Where do you outperform expectations? Where do you underperform? When you know where you struggle, you can address it with training. Progress depends on our adaptations to discomfort, yet too often we gravitate towards physical and emotional comfort. If you want to take your performance to the next level, you need to be thankful for your strengths and thankful that you know your limitations.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This week’s THREE Things to Know celebrates a return to racing. Last weekend we saw Jan Frodeno dominate Challenge Miami, cheered on by second place Lionel Sanders. Further north in Sarasota, USA Triathlon reports that Olympic hopeful Kevin McDowell and up-and-coming elite triathlete Gina Sereno claimed gold medals Saturday at the Sarasota-Bradenton Triathlon Elite Cup while five members of the Toyota U.S. Paratriathlon National Team had gold-medal performances. And there’s good news for age-group athletes: USAT has announced that Age Group National Championships will return this August.
All of this positive race news has us feeling like a spring renewal is in the air. So get stretching and into a positive mindset. We look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE on the athletic approaches to pushing past genetic limitations
THREE is a lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE's mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?
Joe Maloy | 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete and Co-founder, THREE
• IMPROVING RUNNING PERFORMANCE When attempting to make strides on the run course, triathletes can often be a bit literal — either focusing on running to improve running or focusing on lower-body strength training because that has the most obvious correlation. But Canadian Running magazine points out that “working your upper body can make you a better runner.” A recent article identifies three key benefits of upper-body strength training for runners and shares seven specific exercises that may go a long way toward improving your arm swing, reducing risk of injury and making the muscles in your back and shoulders stronger, something that will help you maintain a good body position while you run, even as you get tired.
• DRYLAND SWIM WARM-UP Most experienced athletes recognize the importance of warming up regardless of the sport they’re participating in, but swimmers can find it challenging to get in a full-body warm-up, whether it’s because of limited pool time or the inability to get in the water ahead of a race. With that in mind, USA Triathlon’s Multisport Lab Blog is out with a primer on How to Swim on Land. USAT outlines a simple 8-minute land-based warm-up for swimmers that focuses on mobility, posture and stability.
Last summer, THREE’s Joe Maloy shared key tips for integrating a more effective dryland fitness into your overall plan, as part of our Triathlon Training by an Olympian series on YouTube. Check out Joe’s video below:
• STRENGTH TRAINING FOR CYCLISTS Like running and swimming, cyclists can benefit from a specific set of strength training exercises. VeloNews and Road.cc both recently published articles that featured workouts, as well as the rationale for weight training for cyclists.
Road.cc has a smart look at how sport-specific athletes often treat strength training — as something we only do in the off-season. If we approached our bike training the same way it would seem absurd.
The article features six YouTube videos to demonstrate key components of its approach to strength training for cyclists.
• DO BIRTHDAYS DETERMINE ATHLETIC SUCCESS? There’s a lot that goes into becoming a successful athlete, as Joe Maloy outlines in this week’s editor’s letter. And yet, could it be possible that the common denominator among pro athletes is their birthdays? FiveThirtyEight published an article titled Why Athletes’ Birthdays Affect Who Goes Pro — And Who Becomes A Star that digs into a phenomenon called the relative age effect. It has to do with the advantage young athletes may gain as a result of the cutoff date that determines which age-group teams are picked, which is normally the school year, according to FiveThirtyEight.
• SHOE TECHNOLOGY ARMS RACE Over the last five years nearly every endurance running record has been broken, according to sport and exercise university lecturer Jonathan Taylor in a report published this week in The Conversation. A key contributor to these shattered records — from the 5,000m to the marathon — could be major advancements in shoe technology. “This has divided opinion in the athletics world,” Taylor writes, “with some arguing the shoes are unfair while others argue they’re just like synthetic running tracks: an inevitable technological leap for endurance runners to capitalise upon.”
• RIDE LIKE THE WIND The climate in Fuerteventura, part of the Canary Islands in Spain, tends to be hospitable for triathlon training year around. It’s been described as “eternal springtime” and why triathletes gravitate to training centers like Club La Santa in Lanzarote or T3 in Tenerife. Fuerteventura is less-traveled but that’s exactly why Cyclist magazine has featured it this month and describes it as “the perfect cycling destination.”
Cyclist acknowledges there’s more wind to contend with on Fuerteventura when compared to “its cousins Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Lanzarote,” but as this photo slideshow demonstrates, the sights are worth it.
THE GENETICS PARADOX
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy
2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Have you given any thought to how your athletic ability is shaped by genetics? I’m betting most of you have, at some point, thought about what it would be like to have different gifts. It’s only natural to think: “If only I were taller…” or “If I didn’t put on weight so easily, then…” Successful endurance athletes are too busy working towards their goals to spend time thinking about limitations they cannot change. They’ve learned to shift their mindset to frame their unique genetic profile as something that helps them achieve their goals.
No amount of training will change your genetic profile. Since you’re stuck with it, you might as well change the way you think about it. Accepting one’s own limitations is an exceedingly difficult challenge in a culture that’s quick to say, “Have it your way” (Burger King) or that you can be “Everywhere you want to be” (Visa). These slogans glorify limitless options and possibility, but genetics do not work that way. You can’t just “Have it your way” and grow six inches! Any endurance athlete who wishes to improve greatly must begin with accepting his/her genetic limitations.
Once we stop dreaming about what we don’t have, we free mental space to employ the talents we possess. Chicago Bulls journalist Mark Vancil said of Michael Jordan, “His gift was not that he could jump high, run fast, shoot a basketball. His gift was that he was completely present, and that was the separator.” MJ learned to hone the gifts he did possess, and it allowed him to become the greatest basketball player of all time.
The self awareness that allowed MJ to excel on the basketball court is the same type of self awareness I’m encouraging you to learn. Beginner athletes and elites similarly confront limitations when they toe the starting line. Sport forces athletes to confront limitations at every level, and while the athletes who achieve the most often have genetic gifts, they're also the ones who are most curious about what they might accomplish. We should use limitations as guideposts, not stop signs.
Understanding one’s breakdown of fast twitch versus slow twitch muscle fiber is a good place for endurance athletes to begin learning about their genetic profile. Some of you may be familiar with the concept of fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, but others may not. Lets begin with a quick overview. Both are muscle fibers that respond to our nervous system’s impulses (the brain and the spinal cord), but they are either fast or slow to respond to that electric impulse. That difference in response time has to do with a difference in how fast twitch and slow twitch muscles store their energy. Fast twitch muscle fibers store energy in the muscles themselves. This makes the energy easily accessible but also rapidly depleted. Slow twitch muscle fibers source energy from blood. Since oxygenated blood needs to constantly flow from the heart, slow twitch muscles are slower to respond to the nervous system’s impulses, but they are much harder to fatigue. One type is not better than the other—we need both—but it’s helpful to understand the strengths and limitations of each type.
An easy way to distinguish the two is by thinking about the light and dark meat in a chicken or turkey. Dark meat is the slow twitch muscle fiber that doesn't tire easily (the legs the bird stands on all day). The white meat in the bird’s chest is fast twitch muscle fiber—needed to quickly contract when the bird flaps its wings. Like these birds, each of us is a unique combination of fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers, but these muscles need to be trained differently and used in a way that plays to their strengths. Our next edition will explore how to understand or discover one’s individual profile (without paying for a genetic test!). We will also offer training advice based on that profile. Stay tuned, and as always, please share our message and help us grow the THREE community!
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
Spring is just about a week away and we hope that the season of rebirth brings with it new opportunities to return to racing. While IRONMAN’s CEO recently shared an update that most of its races would be moved to later this year, sparking renewed controversy about refunds, Super League Triathlon is planning an arena race in London later this month that combines real life and virtual racing. According to Reuters, “Olympic medal hopefuls such as Jonathan Brownlee, Georgia Taylor-Brown and Alex Yee are already confirmed for the London event.” Meanwhile, the other Brownlee brother, Alistair, has established his post-Olympics intention. In what’s described as an “insane endurance attempt,” Brownlee is looking to beat the current Ironman record held by Jan Frodeno by a full hour — aiming to complete the full race in less than seven hours. When asked if he believes it’s possible, Brownlee told EDGAR, “Of course it’s possible. … I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. It's going to be interesting to find out the limits of what’s possible.”
Regardless of whether you're attempting to go sub-7 or just looking for a race to keep your training on track, we look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE on the best ways to use fitness data, find your sweet spot and build your base
THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE's mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?
Joe Maloy | 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete and Co-founder, THREE
• FINDING YOUR TEMPO In this early-season phase of training, incorporating tempo work into your running routine can help improve your cadence and pace. But a lot of age-group and amateur triathletes find tempo runs to be a bit confusing to plan and execute. This is sometimes because a tempo run lies in the murky area between aerobic and speed workouts. To bring clarity to this often-asked-about topic, in this week’s Triathlon Training by an Olympian THREE’s Joe Maloy shares how you can use tempo run training to hold your race-pace speeds more comfortably over a longer period of time.
• STRENGTH ‘PERIODIZATION’ Many of us are still in the training phase where we’re focused on building our base, and strength training plays an important part of that. Tony Rich, an Ironman-certified coach who holds the Guinness world record for the fastest time to complete a 140.6-mile indoor triathlon, shared this six-exercise strength workout for triathletes with The Wall Street Journal. Rich, who also hosts a podcast called “The Endurance Experience,” tells the Journal he “is a proponent of strength periodization, a concept developed by sports scientist Tudor Bompa where you vary the specificity, intensity and volume of your workouts throughout the year.” When it comes to strength training, the volume decreases as the season progresses — generally the inverse of your swim, bike and run training.
• BIKE BASE TRAINING Completing our trifecta of base-training briefs, Cycling Weekly digs into the best ways to build bike fitness during the winter months. With lockdowns a plenty, many of us had already shifted to more indoor bike training even before the weather turned inclement across much of the country. The question Cycling asks is whether you should continue your habit of Zwift racing through the winter or if you’re better off shifting to base training. The short answer? Don’t forego base training.
• BORN TO RUN Why is it that our heads remain stable and upright when we’re running? A new study finds that human evolution may be to thank for the reason so many of us enjoy running as much as we do. An article published last week in The New York Times reveals takeaways of a new study that “finds that an unusual coordination between certain muscles in runners’ shoulders and arms helps to keep heads stable and runners upright.” According to the Times, the findings, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, “may answer lingering questions about the role of our upper bodies in running and why we, unthinkingly, bend and swing our arms with each stride. They also add to the mounting evidence that, long ago, distance running began shaping human bodies and lives in ways that still reverberate today.”
• GOALS VS. PRINCIPLES We’re now more than six weeks into the new year and, taking that into account, there’s a better-than-even chance that if you set a new year’s resolution it’s already fallen by the wayside. What’s the best way to achieve a goal? Rather than making definitive plans, you might consider establishing guiding principles. According to The Growth Equation, focusing on principles doesn’t mean avoiding setting goals. Think of principles as goals with flexibility built into them, which may ultimately make you more likely to achieve them.
• BREAKING THE “SWIMMING UNDER ICE” RECORD A Czech freediver is looking to break the Guinness world record for swimming under ice. Later this month, David Vencl from North Bohemia in the Czech Republic will try to break the under-ice swim record of 76.2 meters. According to Euronews, Vencl has previously swum 141 meters underwater and has already proved can hold his breath underwater for eight minutes. The difference with this world record attempt is the cold. Vencl’s “aim is to swim under the ice for 80 metres, that's about a minute and 40 seconds underwater. The swimmer will be tied to a rope and will be secured by divers with equipment. There will be about five holes in the ice in the event of an emergency. In order for David Vencl to break the record officially and enter the Guinness Book of Records, he must swim under ice that is 30 centimetres thick.” Vencl is planning to go to Austria at the end of February to meet all of the world-record caveats.
THE ORIGINAL SUPERCOMPUTER
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Take a deep breath. Relax your shoulders. Most of us are overwhelmed with more information than we can process at any given time. Today’s endurance athlete has so many more data inputs than even 5 or 10 years ago. Garmin, Whoop, iWhatever, and Peloton all want to tell you more than you can process. Companies may want to sell you on how much their product can measure, but most athletes are training for the same reasons now that they were before smart gadgets existed. We want to lose weight, look better, compete, and/or have better energy. Now we just have more to measure this progress. Is all of this additional information motivating or stressful? If you’re like most endurance athletes, the answer is probably a combination of helpful and overwhelming. Here are THREE’s suggestions on how to engage with your fitness metrics in a way that makes the numbers work for you!
1. Focus: Know what you’re measuring
Collecting data for the sake of having more information is like trying to read every book at the library. It might be informative, but who has that kind of time? Processing every piece of data from every workout is a fool’s errand. Focus on a specific metric, and forget the rest.
That metric can change from workout to workout, but focusing on a specific target will reduce anxiety that everything needs to be strong in every workout. If your goal is a hard swim set where you’re going for max speeds, then go for fast times and ignore how high your heart rate is after each interval and give yourself plenty of rest. When running, sometimes you should target a goal distance and sometimes you should target a goal time because each focus allows for different training effects. Maybe you’ll end up running hills for 50 minutes because you’re not focused on the average pace per mile!
2. Evaluate: Correlation is not causation
Once you’ve decided which data deserves your focus (and you’ve thrown out the rest of the data!), it’s time to engage carefully. As discussed in our last edition, our brains love to tell ourselves stories (correlate data), but just because numbers seem to tell a story doesn’t make that story true. This is where an outside perspective, like that of a coach or training partner, can be helpful.
Think about a tempo run where your goal is to run at a slightly uncomfortable effort for a certain amount of time. You complete the run, but your average pace has you feeling discouraged. If you completed the session at your target effort, then the average pace is only feedback. Contextualize the data and consider alternate causes/effects before making judgments. Consult an expert or advisor for perspective.
3. Trust yourself: Your body is the original “supercomputer”
Think about how your body counts calories. It doesn’t need to look at every label to measure what goes in—it just knows when it needs more and when it’s had enough. Sure, sometimes we fool it into taking in more or not taking in enough, but you probably agree the human body is pretty darn smart.
Being an athlete means getting in touch with the messages your body is sending. Data can inform this process, but remember these numbers come from your body to your gadgets—not the other way around. The body’s messages are harder to measure and contextualize, so this takes practice. The human body is a supercomputer far more complex than even the smartest of watches. Listening to its messages takes practice and being intune with its emotions and feelings.
For a long time, success meant knowing something that somebody else didn’t. We went to school to learn about something, to become an expert in a certain field by obtaining expert knowledge. The correlation that knowledge is power is no longer true. The watch on your wrist or the phone in your pocket collects more data than you possibly can use. Knowledge is knowledge. Power is learning where to focus your attention, how to contextualize that information, and remembering that one’s body is the ultimate judge provided we listen to what it says.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This week, our THREE Things to Know is focused on persevering in the cold. Sure, some of us have the luxury of living and training in California or Florida. But the rest of us are more likely living through a cold spell.
Outside Online has a piece about How Your Body Does (and Doesn't) Adapt to Cold; Cycling Weekly is out with a comparison: Zwift racing vs. Base Building: Which is the best way to build fitness over winter? And Canada’s Running Magazine looks at the science behind cold weather and running performance.
As for the THREE team? We’re dreaming of warmer races like the Ironman World Championship in Kona this fall. Wherever your training and racing takes you this year, we look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE on supercharging the next six weeks of winter by training with a limitless mindset
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• CORE POWER Whether swimming, cycling or running, building and maintaining a strong core is a key part of performance for triathletes. Because it’s easy to get bored doing static exercises such as planks or repetitive exercises like crunches, Bicycling magazine has reupped its guide to 8 Kettlebell Moves That Strengthen Your Core Without a Single Crunch. Bicycling describes this workout as one that will “smoke your core and up your cadence” and uses a kettlebell to “boost your performance on the bike while building some serious strength in your core.”
• NUTRITION MYTHS It goes without saying, another key factor when it comes to athletic performance is diet. There are all sorts of myths when it comes to nutrition — we’ve all seen different variations of the “protein/fat/carbs/red meat (fill in the blank) is good/bad for you” storyline. As we start to fuel our performance for the approaching season, Examine.com is dispelling many of those myths in its evidence-based analysis: The top 21 nutrition myths of 2021.“Taking advantage of the full pedal stroke builds an efficient spin so you’re getting greater power through the whole cycle,” says Frank Baptiste, certified strength and conditioning specialist and creator of FranklyFitness. “If you’re not working that recovery phase, you’re missing out on the potential power of your hamstrings and hip flexors, and also risking injury.”
• FUEL UP TO GO LONG When it comes to long-distance running, the approach in competition is different from other endurance races. We’ve talked a bit in previous editions about RED-S, otherwise known as relative energy deficiency in sport, and diet is especially crucial in warding off RED-S for long-distance runners, both during training and in competition. The Conversation recently published a sports dietician’s outline on what to eat for long-distance running.
• THE QUEST FOR SUCCESS If you’ve been intentionally steering clear of Twitter in recent weeks, you might have missed these insights from Brad Stulberg, author of Peak Performance.
In a series of tweets that’s been favorited by more than 2,000 people, Stulberg shares 10 insights he’s learned over the last five years coaching executives, entrepreneurs, and athletes on the topics of sustainable success, peak performance and career advice. “Everyone wants to be SUCCESSFUL,” Stulberg tweeted. “But few people take the time and energy to define the success they want. As a result, they spend most, if not all, of their lives chasing what society superimposes on them as success. Define your values. Craft a life around them. THAT is success.”
• DOES DNA DICTATE PERFORMANCE? When you look at an elite athlete, you might wonder whether their ability to perform at the top level was influenced, at least in part, by their DNA. Are we born to run or made for the pool? Scientists have tried to get at this question in earnest for at least the past decade. And while the consensus seems to be that elite athletes don’t have a universal genetic pattern that could be tested for at a young age, it’s a bridge too far to say that genes don’t affect your athletic potential. “Quite the opposite,” a new piece from Outside Online tells us. Although “any single gene … has a negligible effect on athletic potential,” Outside’s Sweat Science columnist writes, “Studies have now identified dozens of genes associated with speed/power and endurance performance.”
• 10 TRIATHLONS, 10 DAYS For some of us, completing one Ironman triathlon in a season is enough to keep us motivated and at the peak of performance. But former U.K. Army soldier Darren Hardy decided to test his limits and set the seemingly-daunting task of completing 10 Ironman distance triathlons in 10 days. Hardy found success using extreme ultra endurance events to cope mentally with PTSD and, according to Advnture, set out to complete his 10 in 10 challenge to raise money for the Help for Heroes charity. Good news for us, Hardy’s journey is chronicled in the new documentary, Perseverance. You can watch for free below and at endurancesports.tv
THE BRAIN’S STORIES
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this past Tuesday. When I was a kid, I really bought into the idea that Phil could somehow communicate meteorological patterns. That groundhog was going to tell me when spring would arrive—and boy was I pissed at him whenever he told me six more weeks of winter! Now, before judging my naivete, I suggest looking in the mirror. Each of us makes similarly idiotic connections because making connections is what our brain does. The human brain loves to connect things it doesn’t know to things it has already experienced. It’s the brain’s way of making sense and creating order. This week, our topic is the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.
There are two categories of stories which we tell ourselves: energizing stories and draining stories. As the names might suggest, energizing stories are ones that inspire us to action, whereas draining stories discourage us from taking action. Going back to Punxsutawney Phil’s example, I related that groundhog’s shadow to a longer winter, my least favorite season. Phil’s shadow put me in a bad mood because I loved being outside and enjoying the Jersey Shore beaches. I told myself a draining story.
Absolutely nothing external had changed—not the weather, the weather forecast, nor my plan for the day or upcoming weeks—but I felt worse. I was less energized and less optimistic about the next six weeks because of the story I told myself about the groundhog’s shadow. You might be thinking this is a childish example, “What does this have to do with me?”
Athletes tell themselves stories all the time! Endurance athletes might assert:
“I’m a great biker,” “I’m stronger as the race gets longer,” or “I respond well to strength training.”
These are energizing stories that encourage us to make additional contributions to that narrative. We tell ourselves negative stories, too. You’ve heard them:
“I’ll never be a good swimmer,” “I can’t keep the weight off,” or “I don’t have the energy to workout before (or after) work.”
Whether the story is positive or negative, it’s a judgment based on past experiences—a story we tell ourselves! In his Harvard Business Review article “Disrupt Your Own Narrative,” renowned high performance psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais writes, “There are many practices that can help you become aware of the stories that limit you: Mindfulness, journaling, thoughtful conversations. Once you identify those stories, write them down. Ask which ones are serving you and which ones are no longer working.”
I decided my happiness and optimism during the six weeks following Punxsutawney Phil’s forecast was too valuable to leave it in the hands of a groundhog. That rodent’s judgment had nothing to do with my weather! I challenge you to critically evaluate the stories you tell about yourself as an athlete. Ask, “Is this story serving me? Is this story giving me energy to pursue what’s important to me?” If the answer is no, then change the narrative. Life is too short to make it a draining story.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
In this week’s THREE Things to Know, we’re looking to the future. USA Triathlon has announced dates and locations for two Olympic-Distance World Championship Qualifiers to qualify to compete on the amateur world stage in Edmonton this summer.
The Professional Triathletes Organisation announced its first-ever Collins Cup will take place in August in Slovakia. Reasons to watch: A $1.5 million prize purse and an innovative team-based multi-race format. And this year’s Summer Olympics will be different for all the reasons you’d expect. This week the International Olympic Committee announced that hugs, high fives and handshakes are banned. If you’re thinking of watching from the stands, you can’t sing or chant. Clapping is allowed.
We’ll be cheering you on, no matter where you end up racing this year, and look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE on transitions in triathlon and life
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• ACTIVATING YOUR RUN In this week’s episode of Triathlon Training by an Olympian, Joe Maloy demonstrates the benefits of plyometric split squat jumps. You can incorporate these into your warm-up session before a run. The exercise mimics the feeling our feet have when we’re running and works to limit ground contact time during the run. “Any time your foot’s on the ground, you’re not moving forward,” Maloy says. Plyometric split squat jumps are not only intended to improve your performance but also awareness of things going on in your body, helping to identify imbalances that can signal an injury.
• BOOSTING PEDAL-STROKE POWER Improving your pedal stroke is one of the most significant things you can do to make gains on the bike. To many athletes this only means focusing on the part of the stroke when you’re pushing down on the pedal. We often think about pushing as the power part of the pedal stroke. “But that recovery phase is just as important if you want to truly tap into your full potential,” according to Bicycling magazine. Their recent article looks at all of the muscles that work during a complete pedal stroke and offers 6 Exercises to Boost the Power in Every Part of Your Pedal Stroke, “mimicking the angles and ranges of motion you move through while in the saddle.”
• CORE-TRAINING MYTHS During the off season triathletes tend to increase the amount of time they spend on core training. Even though the benefits of core training are widely accepted, Triathlete magazine reports that “the actual evidence from scientific research looking at its influence on performance and injury is very limited.” This has led to myths and misunderstandings around the best ways to train one’s core if you’re looking to improve performance in triathlon. Dave Cripps, who holds a master’s degree in sport science and is a U.K.-based strength and conditioning coach, tries to address these by explaining how your core works as a triathlete and translating that knowledge into a handful of exercises that can benefit multisport athletes.
• HOW TO STOP THE NEGATIVE CHATTER IN YOUR HEAD We’ve talked a lot in the THREE newsletter about the role your mental outlook plays when it comes to athletic performance. Training the brain is just as critical as training your muscles if you’re looking to reach your full potential. The Wall Street Journal talked to experimental psychologist and neuroscientist Ethan Kross, who specializes in emotion regulation, to better understand how you can replace “negative thoughts with ones that are both more positive and true. People who control their self-talk in this manner have better mental health, more life satisfaction, and even better-functioning hearts, research shows.” Kross says that we spend a significant portion of our waking hours talking to ourselves silently, and that this self-talk can sometimes result in self-sabotage. While the article doesn’t get into sports specifically, he provides tactics to address self-talk broadly, including a technique he calls distanced self-talk.
• A DAY IN THE LIFE If you’ve ever been curious what a day in the life of a professional triathlete consists of, Super League Triathlon recently published this profile of French Pro Triathlete Leo Bergere. In the video posted to YouTube, Bergere describes how he spends between 25 and 34 hours a week training, not including visits to the physio and stretching. Bergere also provides tangible takeaways for amateur athletes, including the importance of listening to your body, tactics to improve your running pace, and avoiding injury. Watch below:
BEWARE OF THE TRANSITION TRAP
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Change is one of life’s only constants, but transition, for most of us, is an uncomfortable experience. This has been a week of transition for the United States of America. We’re not going to get political, because athletics can sometimes be a refuge from polarized politics, but the week's events sparked a thought about other transitions in sport and life.
At the elite level, seconds earned or lost during transition determine the outcome of a race. The stakes are not quite as high for triathletes competing at the non-professional, or age-group, level. For age-group athletes, it’s sometimes tempting to dismiss time spent in transition as unimportant or inconsequential. Beware of that trap! Those seconds or minutes spent transitioning count the same as the seconds you spend working your butt off in the swim, bike, and run. They just don’t fit as neatly into our mental construct of what constitutes a triathlon.
Change is part of the game. Navigating change from one sport to another is challenging both logistically and mentally, and it’s an underappreciated skill that’s developed through triathlon. It takes time to remove a wetsuit and put on the helmet. It takes time to rack a bike in its proper position and to put on running shoes. The right equipment sets you up for success in the same way that trained skills contribute to your race-day success. The mental challenge of transition is even more interesting!
The space and time between sports can be a temptress that lures athletes into thinking about either the past or the future. Sometimes, a transition will be an unconscious reminder that your best event is over. Other times, you’ll enter transition eager to get onto the next discipline. How many of you succumbed to the temptation to think back or look ahead during your transition? If not in triathlon, can you think of a real life transition where you made it harder on yourself by looking back or looking ahead with the mind’s eye?
We’re tempted to neatly organize transitions in both sport and life, but transitions take time. Once that’s accepted, navigating transitions requires presence of mind and body so we can dedicate ourselves to the task at hand. Eckhart Tolle, whose teachings on presence helped me understand transitions not as time between disciplines but as part of the race itself writes:
“People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.”
I challenge you to move toward your goals on and off the race course by focusing on the task at hand without memory or anticipation.
Thanks for getting this far! I hope you enjoy this edition’s articles to inform your “Train, Brain and Break.” We are always trying to grow our reach, so if you know of anyone who might enjoy our message please pass this along.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This edition’s THREE Things to Know is actually five things to know about triathlon at the upcoming 2020-turned-2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The triathlon competition kicks off almost exactly six months from today and the Olympic Channel counts down to race day with a rundown of the top athletes likely to be in contention, a look at the course distances and venue, as well as the history of triathlon at the Olympics and the full schedule which introduces mixed relay for the first time.
While social distancing and travel restrictions are likely to keep us from seeing you in Tokyo, we look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE on making habits sticky, improving technique and avoiding injury in 2021
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• IGNORE THE FINISH LINE Whether it’s improving your pace or power, or choosing a race distance that you haven’t attempted before, it’s OK to be ambitious but don’t let the gravity of your goal keep you from accomplishing it. This sports essay in The New York Times documents a swimmer’s attempt to swim 12 miles across Lake Tahoe with a friend. Even after six months of training, when the day came the seven-hour swim in 65-degree water still seemed daunting — until their escorts, former Coast Guard members, gave them some advice: “If you want to make it across the lake, don’t look at the horizon,” they recommended. “If you look at how far away you are,” they told us, “you’ll never make it.” The writer, a computer scientist, processed the Coast Guard’s data in a simple way that can be applied to most goals: break the goal down into chunks that your brain can comprehend and that your body can accomplish.
• BUILD A BETTER BIKE If a new bike wasn’t on your Christmas list or you’re doing the prudent thing and committing to saving more this year, the good news is you can unlock your cycling fitness goals by fixing up your existing bike. WIRED is out with a new write-up that outlines how you can avoid buying a new bike by learning how to better maintain, upgrade, and fix the bike you already have. The writer reached out to performance cycling experts including Calvin Jones, a former US National and Olympic Teams mechanic, “to make the most out of whatever two wheels you have underneath you.”
• AVOIDING LOWER BACK PAIN WHILE RUNNING If you’re a runner who sometimes experiences back pain while running or shortly after a run, you might pay closer attention to your form and ask whether you have too much motion or too much stiffness. Colleen M. Brough, DPT, assistant professor of rehabilitation and regenerative medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, talked to Men’s Health to try to answer the question, “Why the heck does your back hurt?” and provide tangible exercises to consider if this sounds like you. (Of course, consult your doctor before starting a new training regimen.)
• SIX EXERCISES TO IMPROVE SWIM SPEED & TECHNIQUE In the same way that your run might be suffering because of a lack of core and hip stability or tight hamstrings and calves, swimming requires proper conditioning on land, particularly when it comes to “tiny connector muscles, ligaments and tendons” that get overlooked training in the pool, Ironman-certified coach Wendy Mader told The Wall Street Journal. Keeping these muscles, ligaments and tendons healthy and strong can translate to improved stroke technique and increased swimming speed. Mader showcased six exercises designed to “strengthen the upper back and boost core stability and shoulder mobility.
• EMBRACING DISCOMFORT When we’re training and racing, many of us push right up to the point where we feel uncomfortable and then dial it back, whether out of fear of bonking during a race or getting injured during a training session. The start of a new year often leads athletes to up our ambitions, but we often lack a plan for pushing through difficult plateaus. With that in mind, Runner’s World writer and licensed strength and running coach, Jess Movold, has published a piece to help guide athletes through the mental and physical challenges of a hard run.Self-talk: While positive self-talk is extremely powerful, negative self-talk can be exceptionally destructive – it’s important to have a strategy on how to deal with the negative self-talk.
• RESOLVE TO LOOK BACK ON LAST YEAR This month, instead of making a New Year’s resolution you might consider conducting a past year review. The concept gained renewed popularity when Tim Ferriss published a blog about the benefits a few years ago. The process takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour reviewing all of the people, activities and commitments that triggered peak positive and negative emotions over the past year, with the goal of scheduling more of the positivity-driving people and activities in the coming year. According to Ferriss, “It’s not enough to remove the negative. That simply creates a void. Get the positive things on the calendar ASAP.”
• THE WORLD’S DEEPEST POOL You probably can’t travel there right now, but if you’re a diver looking to add a destination to your bucket list this pool probably deserves to be high up on it. According to CNN, “Scuba divers can plunge to brand new depths without setting foot in the ocean thanks to a multi-million dollar facility that's just opened in Poland. With a depth of over 45 meters (around 148 feet) Deepspot is claimed to be the world's deepest swimming pool, containing 8,000 cubic meters of water — more than 20 times the amount as a 25-meter pool.” The pool is intended to be a training and practice site “and even contains a small shipwreck, as well as artificial underwater caves and Mayan ruins for divers to explore.”
• PRIORITIZE SLEEP There’s one resolution we can get behind — and that’s prioritizing sleep. WIRED published a video featuring sleep scientist Aric A. Prather, PhD, who explains the importance of sleep and all of its phases, from light slumber to deep sleep. Not only is sleep a critical part of athletic recovery, Prather says “sleep is so critical for so many parts of our body and our mind.” WIRED’s report concludes that “sleep strengthens the immune system and helps regulate metabolism. It can clear out toxins that build up in the brain and prevent neurodegenerative diseases.” Watch below:
WHY BEHAVIOR CHANGE IS ELUSIVE
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Happy New Year, everyone! It’s been one week since we closed the door on a crazy 2020. No matter if you made a resolution or if you think resolutions made on New Year’s Eve are stupid, this edition explores why behavior change is so elusive and how we can get better at taking the actions which lead us closer to our goals.
Think of behavior change as a tug-of-war between the equal powers of “what you’re currently doing” and “what you want to do.” The behavior change team needs help! The “what you’re already doing” team has that big kid on the end who is so freaking hard to move. His name is “Habit,” and he doesn’t want to move anywhere. For a resolution to become lasting and create the intended change, it needs to get Habit to switch teams.
The first few days and weeks of behavior change are hard and the rope doesn’t move too much. Habit is not sure what to do, so he keeps pulling for his current team. As you keep pulling on the “behavior change” side of the rope, though, Habit starts to think “Hey, that team is pretty cool.” He starts to stop pulling so hard. The behavior change team makes some progress. After about 21 days of tugging, Habit switches teams. It’s important to remember that Habit is always on the winning team. Here are two suggestions to help you habitualize your resolutions in 2021:
1. Ditch the “all or nothing” attitude by setting goals with target ranges to increase your chances of success.
Messing up in the early stages of behavior change is as common as writing “2020” instead of “2021.” People who accomplish lasting behavioral change don’t let these missteps take them too far from the path they want to walk. They keep pulling because they know, eventually, Habit will join their team. Set goals with “target ranges” instead of using words including “always,” “every,” and “never.” Success is addictive and failure is discouraging. “Range-based” goals should seem ambitious yet achievable. They say what you want to do, but they leave a little “wiggle room” for life to get in the way.
ACTION: Set goals with ranges (“Workout every morning before 8am.” becomes “Workout 4-5 weekdays before 8am and at least 1 weekend morning before noon.”) You could even be more specific with the workout by giving it a time and place. “Do yoga in the living room 2-3x per week and run outside 2-3x per week, depending on the weather.”
2. Use “habit stacking” to cue new actions by piggybacking on already-formed habits.
“Habit stacking” is a term coined by Stanford professor B.J. Fogg. Fogg studies behavior change and recommends pairing the desired action with a habit you’ve already built. This essentially convinces Habit to switch teams faster.
For example, let’s say your goal is not to eat after 8pm. You already know you don’t eat after you brush your teeth, so try brushing your teeth at 8pm. It’s already your “cue” to close the kitchen, so use that to your advantage.
ACTION: After or Before <Insert current habit>, I will <Insert new habit>.
Of course there are plenty more tactics you could implement, but remember the main idea that behavior change is hard, and the only way it works is by making the new behavior a habit. Ditching the “all or nothing” attitude will help your plan be more resilient to obstacles and missteps, and “habit stacking” can help you accelerate the change you’re aiming to create. Feel free to use one, both, or one of your own strategies to stick with your next resolution to change.
Our impact will grow proportionately with our reach. If this biweekly newsletter is something you enjoy, then please help spread the word by sharing it with your friends and teammates!
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This week we’re bringing back three articles from the archives about mindfulness which, experts argue, should be part of any serious athlete’s regimen.
Do you meditate or focus on mental strength as part of your training? Reply to this email and let us know how it’s impacted your wellbeing or performance. We’ll share the best insights in our next edition.
We hope this newsletter helps you start the new year on the right foot. We look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
THREE explores the pros and cons of cold recovery
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• CAN CRYOTHERAPY HELP YOU RECOVER? At this time of year, most of us in the northern hemisphere are settling into the off-season, which usually means dialing back the volume and focusing on technique, strength, and recovery. Although ice-cold therapies, like ice baths, haven’t been proven to give athletes an advantage when it comes to aerobic training or speed and power performance (see this Bicycling magazine report from last month), research indicates that cold could be beneficial for post-season recovery and relieving sore muscles. With that in mind, THREE’s Joe Maloy decided to test whole-body cryotherapy for the first time, and recorded his experience for this week’s edition of Triathlon Training by an Olympian on YouTube.
• COLD BENEFITS Even if you’re not eager to enclose yourself in a cryo pod set at -190 degrees fahrenheit for three minutes, simply spending time outdoors in the cold could bring a different set of adaptive benefits. The Wall Street Journal reports that “getting uncomfortably cold is good for you.” WSJ interviewed Christopher Minson, a physiology professor at the University of Oregon, who “studies the body’s response to extreme environments and works with professional and Olympic athletes and sports teams.” While the elderly and people with pre-existing health conditions should take extra care, Minson says there are benefits to getting out of your “thermostatic” routine.
• THE ARGUMENT FOR STAYING OUTDOORS Now that the weather is changing, you’re probably adapting your training sessions to account for the cold. As daylight hours shorten and temperatures fall, Cycling Weekly assesses whether it’s really necessary to keep doing high-intensity sessions outdoors. Writer Anna Marie Hughes compares the arguments for training outdoors and indoors at this time of year. Her verdict won’t surprise many die-hard athletes: outdoor sessions remain important but indoor cycling training “can bring greater strength and power to your sessions outdoors.”
• THE MENTAL GAME Pushing through a tough training block is as much physical as it is mental, and this mental training can help you push through on race day. USA Triathlon certified coach Justin Chester posted a blog about the importance of working on your mental game in triathlon. “Without a strong mental game, all of the fitness gained during training will be compromised on race day,” he posits. “As Yogi Berra noted with baseball, ‘(this game) is 90% mental and the other half is physical,’ the same is true with triathlon.” Chester focuses on three key areas that can help improve your mental skills: Self-talk, visualization and dealing with setbacks.
Self-talk: While positive self-talk is extremely powerful, negative self-talk can be exceptionally destructive – it’s important to have a strategy on how to deal with the negative self-talk.
Visualization: Visualization is another powerful tool in the mental game. It begins the days and weeks before the race.
Setbacks: There is no reason to let a minor issue ruin a race and it’s possible that your goal may still be achieved.
Chester teaches that “a strong mental game will ensure that all of the fitness gained during training will be evident on race day.” Click here to read his full write-up.
• BREAKING TWO (HOURS) Although most of us aren’t trying to achieve what was once seen as an impossible feat—a sub-two-hour marathon—we can still benefit from what researchers have discovered about athletes who have come close to achieving that elite pace. Runner’s World breaks down researchers’ findings and shares the good news for everyday runners and elite runners alike: that running economy—or how much energy you spend when running a certain pace—and lactate threshold are very malleable with consistent training. Beyond that, amateur athletes can also work to mirror the elite athlete mindset that exhibits high levels of mental toughness and self-efficacy. “Just as you’re training your body for endurance and performance, you have to train your mind as well,” Geoff Lovell, the lead for Hartpury University’s Sport and Exercise Research Center in the U.K., told Runner’s World.
• WHY YOU’RE TIRED We’ve talked a lot about recovery in this edition and, in order to fully recover, it’s important to pay attention to whether you’re tired from training, in a rut where your mind is tricking you into feeling tired or if your mind-body system is truly exhausted. Performance coach Brad Stulberg writes Outside’s Do It Better column and recently looked at the differences between two types of fatigue — so called “real fatigue” and “fake fatigue.”
• SEASON ENDER Last weekend marked the unofficial end of this year’s very limited race season. Professional and amateur athletes took to Daytona Beach, Fl. to compete at the iconic Daytona International Raceway. The pro athletes competed for a million-dollar championship purse. You can check out the race finishes below and watch a replay of the full race on the Professional Triathletes website.
HOW RECOVERY MAKES YOU STRONGER
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
When’s the last time you looked at the stars? Can you imagine those twinkling pinpoints of light, floating in that sea of darkness? Hold onto the image. The night sky is going to be our metaphor in order to better understand training and recovery. You can think of the stars as your workouts. They command your focus and draw your attention from one to the next. The bright ones—even the moon itself—are your big races. The North Star, the Full Moon—you can talk about these and everyone will know what you’re referencing. Now, consider the space between those stars. It’s the emptiness that allows those stars to shine. The emptiness that gives the night sky definition is the recovery for your training and racing.
In the same way that stars shine brighter on darker nights, better recovery sets the tone for more consistent training and faster racing. Even if you accept this truth, it’s so damn hard to focus on that emptiness! Therein lies the problem with recovery. Many athletes have a decidedly boring idea of recovery, viewing it as the space between workouts and races. Remember, it’s the darkness which allows stars to shine. This space must not be overlooked or dismissed as unimportant.
My long-time triathlon coach, Paulo Sousa, preached “I’m a big recovery coach. We only train 4-5 hours per day, which leaves 19-20 hours per day for recovery.” It wasn’t until I was 25 or 26 years old that I learned to appreciate the importance of those “other” 19-20 hours. The recovery and the workouts need one another.
Achievement-minded people are used to moving from one task to the next. It’s the only way to get a lot done! Focus darts from star to star without giving much thought to that space in between. Training is the necessary stimulus, but recovery is what actually makes athletes stronger and faster. Training sessions injure muscle tissue. The injured muscle tissue then demands resources from the body to heal itself stronger than it was before. This process channels increased blood flow to the muscles, which creates inflammation, which ultimately leads to training gains. Our bodies learn what they must adapt to during training. Recovery is when our muscles make those necessary adaptations so we can come back stronger.
For anyone looking to improve recovery, I’d start by encouraging them to look at the big things. What are you doing during the rest of your day? The single largest part of that is likely either the 8-10 hours you spend at work or the 5-9 hours you spend sleeping. Then, look at hydration and nutrition. Exercise and progression is all about things you do over and over again—there are no “silver bullets”—so how can you be better at work, when you’re sleeping, or with your nutrition to help your body better adapt to training?
The final piece of the puzzle is what I’d call the 1%. Foam rolling, massage, cryotherapy, ice bath—these methods all “jump-start” adaptations associated with recovery, but the amount of time they take up is such a small percentage of one’s day or week that their impact is negligible if you don’t first look at how you’re spending your big chunks of time. Then, think of the additional recovery methods as activities which outline your stars and help them shine brighter.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
A little R&R can go a long way, particularly in the off season, which makes the holidays a perfect time to put your feet up and read a book. Since that type of seasonal transition can be tough for athletes, for this week's THREE Things to Know we’re re-upping this list of endurance-related books that might capture your personal or gift-giving attention. On the recovery list is Rebound, there’s some running wisdom in Out of Thin Air, and if you’re looking for a deeper dive into the science of running, the aptly titled Science of Running might be a good fit.
Take a little time to read and relax this month. We look forward to seeing you on a starting line soon.
Triathlete Joe Maloy’s post-workout recovery shake recipe
Triathlete and THREE co-founder Joe Maloy shares the five simple ingredients in his post-workout recovery shake:
1/2 cup almond milk or water
1/2 cup frozen cherries
15-20 grams of vanilla protein powder (whey protein isolate)
1/2 frozen banana
1 tbsp cacao nibs
Add ice to create your desired thickness, blend and you’re set.
THREE on fueling your workout and recovery
“THREE is a new lifestyle community for triathletes, by triathletes. In this bi-weekly newsletter, we share training insights, curated articles and videos, new gear and tech. THREE’s mission is to help triathletes thrive on and off the course. Will you join us?”
• DINNER AT HOME In this week’s YouTube video, THREE’s resident Olympic triathlete and editor-at-large Joe Maloy shares a simple ‘taco night’ dinner that goes heavy on the fish, fats and veggies with limited carbs. While nutrition is ultimately a personal decision, Joe explains why he tends to frontload his carbs earlier in the day and focuses mostly on protein and fats in the evenings.
• HIP EXERCISES TO IMPROVE RUNNING By now, many of you have probably decided to transition into the off-season with the hope of a return to racing in 2021. The off-season allows us to focus on making changes to our form and improvements to our technique that might get less attention when we’re focused on training for a race. One often-overlooked component of running is the role the hips play when it comes to running mechanics and stride. For the article To Improve Your Running, Try These Six Hip Exercises, The Wall Street Journal interviewed a physical therapist with USA Track & Field who detailed how to strengthen the most crucial—and often overlooked—area of the body for runners: the hips. “The hips are the linchpin of every runner’s body, says Jerrica Thomas, an Orlando, Fla.-based physical therapist with USA Track & Field.”
“‘You can lose a lot of power if you have weak hips,’ says the 31-year-old former University of Louisiana-Monroe track star. When you run, your legs aren’t only moving forward and back. The thigh bone, or femur, rotates and tilts in the hip socket. Any weaknesses make the joint unstable and can contribute to poor running mechanics and a restricted stride.”
• RUNNING VS ROWING As we head into fall and the season leaves us with fewer outdoor training days, you might be inclined to shift toward indoor cycling or treadmill running. But there’s an open question as to whether indoor rowing can provide a more effective workout than running in a shorter amount of time. Well+Good compares and contrasts the benefits in this month’s column Rowing vs Running: Which One Gives You the Best Workout. Like most debates, it depends on what you’re trying to achieve. “Both rowing and running can provide an extremely beneficial workout in many different ways,” writes Well+Good’s senior writer and health coach.
• BIKE HARD FOR BETTER MEMORY New research suggests that a 15-minute bike ride could be all it takes to kickstart better brain health. Bicycling.com sums up research published in the journal Scientific Reports that concludes that “hopping on your bike—even if you have a limited amount of time in your schedule—can result in some pretty solid benefits for your brain.” First, the caveats: the study was done on a small number of relatively-inactive men in a short time frame. Now, the takeaway: cycling at a high intensity for a short period of time resulted in better memory performance, according to the study’s lead author.
“Because researchers also did blood tests and functional MRI scans, they were able to determine that the hippocampus and the caudate nucleus—parts of the brain associated with memory and motor processes—were fired up after the more intense cycling session.”
• 2020’s UNEXPECTED BRAIN BENEFIT If you’re ready to push fast-forward on 2020, don’t give up just yet. Health and wellness publication Elemental suggests that All This 2020 Tumult Could Make Your Brain Sharper. The publication interviewed Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman, who also hosts PBS’s The Brain and serves as a scientific adviser on HBO’s Westworld. Eagleman says there is a potential silver lining to this year that has tested all of our adaptive abilities: It knocks us all off our hamster wheels.
“All of us have spent our lives optimizing our function in the world. And what this year has done is force us all off the path of least resistance. And that’s what the brain needs all the time. Challenges force it to rewire itself and push what it can do.”
• ICONIC POOLS AROUND THE WORLD Who doesn’t appreciate a picture-perfect pool? While our local gym and community pools keep us in shape on a day-to-day basis, it’s always inspiring to check out architectural pools in exotic locations. Arch Daily has published a collection of a dozen prized pools that go beyond an aquatic center’s typical form and function. “These structures explore ideas of light and space spanning millennia, from Pakistan's "Great Bath" at the site of Mohenjo-Daro and Ancient Greek palaestras to contemporary swimming complexes.”
• ODE TO THE REST DAY This week marked USA Triathlon’s National Athlete Recovery Day — encouraging triathletes “to take recovery as seriously as their training — not only after a season-culminating race, but as a key element of their overall training cycle.” To mark the occasion, longtime triathlon coach and endurance-training writer Will Kirousis penned a blog post for USAT’s Multisport Lab. In the post, Kirousis writes that athletes should honor the rest day just as they would a training day.
“Do NOT turn the rest day into the ‘I missed a session, so I’ll move it there day’! If you have a long bike-run or a tough interval run, would you slide a missed workout to that day and just jam it in there? NO! Do NOT treat rest as less valuable than work – doing so always leads to problems.”
FOOD = FUEL
The THREE Letter by Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
Nutrition can be a polarizing topic. This week’s newsletter addresses diet and nutrition, but we will never tell you what you should or shouldn’t put into your body. Food should be both enjoyable and functional, but society’s messaging is mostly focused on food’s enjoyment. As athletes, we need to start by recognizing that messaging and saying, “I need more than enjoyment from my meals. I need to know how this food is going to work for me!” There is solid research surrounding carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Even if we all can’t agree on how something tastes, knowing how these macronutrients work will inform your decisions on which foods to “hire” in order to meet your individual energy demands.
Hunger is only one cue that triggers an individual’s decision to eat. Taste, smell, emotions, availability, affordability, advertising, and habit play a much greater role in one’s food selection process than most realize. These additional influences make us more likely to make nutritional decisions based on information other than a certain food’s nutritional profile.
My experience as an elite athlete has taught me to think of food in the same way that most people think of drugs—something ingested to create an intended effect. Knowing a food’s caloric value is central to this process. Calories get a bad rap because they hang out on hips, bellies, and butts when they’re not put to use, but we'd be powerless without them. Calories fuel daily functions like breathing, pumping the heart, moving around, and even thinking. Obviously, athletes move around more than the average individual, so we need to consume more calories.
Calories are provided through the macronutrients carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Now here is where things get interesting! Carbohydrates and proteins each provide 4 calories per gram, while fat offers 9 calories per gram. Our bodies use that energy differently depending which macronutrient provides the calorie. Imagine for a moment that there is no more COVID and you’re attending a big party:
Carbohydrates: These are the partiers on the dance floor. You go to them when you need an injection of energy. They come and go. Carbohydrates will jump to action shortly after being consumed, giving an energy boost, and then wear themselves out until they’re exhausted. But if you don’t wear them out, they’ll convert to fat, chilling until the songs start playing again. Make sure the DJ keeps them dancing!
Proteins: Imagine proteins as you would drinks during your night of revelry. The human body can’t efficiently digest more than about 20g of protein in a single serving, so it’s best to spread protein intake throughout your day. You wouldn’t order all your drinks for the night on your first trip to the bar, so remember that the next time you see 40+g in a protein shake. Proteins drive physical changes within your body, and their primary function is to build and repair tissue, especially muscle tissue.
Fats: These are the staff at the event. They help everything run smoothly and hang around long after everyone else is gone, making sure the venue is ready for the next party. At 9 calories per gram, fats contain the most energy per gram, take the longest to pass through our system, and you don’t usually notice them until there are either too many or too few around. Fats are crucially important to keep endurance athletes healthy and consistently training since they provide energy reserve, and work to support both organs and connective tissue. They also help us feel “full” after a meal and work to help our brains sustain focus.
Research on nutrition in athletics has evolved over the years, and it would be naive to think we’ve finally got it all “figured out.” Begin to recognize the variables that are influencing your nutritional decisions, and pay a little bit more attention to how a given food’s nutritional profile impacts your work. You may work better on a diet that is slightly higher in fat, and another athlete might work better off a diet that is higher in carbs. That’s fine. Trust your experience.
This is complex stuff, and I’ve only fed you an introduction. While there are plenty of dieticians, nutritionists, and gurus out there ready to sell you the “next big thing,” at the end of the day, you are the expert on your own body. Awareness, experimentation, and enjoyment should drive this process. Nutrition is a lifelong journey.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
Here are three of Joe Maloy’s favorite food rules:
• Refuel from a workout within 30 minutes
• Target approximately 4g carbohydrate: 1g protein for post-workout recovery meals, limit the fat during this meal (click here for the recipe to Joe's 5-ingredient post-workout recovery shake)
• Consume 150-400 calories per hour during exercise, adjusting to the higher end for more intense activity and to the lower end for aerobic workouts
Of course, as the saying goes, consult a professional or your doctor before starting any nutritional or training regimen. Enjoy the fuel. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
THREE on training without weights: Run faster, Sprint harder
Finding your "sun" through fitness
Our last edition questioned the importance of an offseason break given 2020’s lack of racing opportunities. How many of you thought about the question after you deleted the email? Did some of you decide on a course of action? I was grappling with that same question while writing our last edition: “Do I train for something right now, or do I use this opportunity to focus my energy on a non-athletic goal?” It’s important to live what you preach. Actions, after all, are votes for the person we desire to become.
There is enough information out there already; you don’t need more of that. THREE succeeds insomuch as it inspires you to take action toward the things that matter to you. I took a bit of my own advice. I grabbed my training partner (Brooke, 6 months old, loves running!) and we went for a jog and thought about how pursuing an athletic goal fit into my life right now. Immersing myself in nature has always helped put my decisions into perspective. There’s an instructive quality to nature that we miss if we rush without noticing.
The trees lining our jogging path, quite literally, showed me the way forward. It's easy to forget that trees are living things, and it’s the nature of living things to strive towards that which gives them life. I thought, “How miraculous is it that trees know to grow towards the sun?” Of course growing all the way to the sun is a goal the humble tree will never achieve! Still, it grows up. Think of all the great things—shade, fruit and foliage, to name a few—we wouldn’t enjoy if the tree just looked to the sun and said, “Eh, I’ll never get there, forget it.”
Are those trees so different from one of us who desires to achieve a lofty goal—athletic or otherwise? No, they’re not.
I continued running, Brooke passed out, and I started to think of the trees as wooden philosophers. They don’t forget to distribute resources to their underground roots. Without that network, they know they could not continue reaching higher. They also know the importance of a strong, stable core. I even saw one tree that looked as though it had it all figured out until it sensed an electrical wire!
Of course I can’t tell you which actions to take, but you can pay attention to what makes you feel more energetic, excited, and motivated. Our goals do not need to be the same, but we can be inspired from one another’s processes in the same way trees share nutrients and support through their root systems. I’ve decided to get into better triathlon shape—not because I have a ton of free time or because I want another medal—but rather because that dedication to challenge and fitness is my “sun.” It makes me feel inspired to reach higher and dream bigger, even in areas of my life that have nothing to do with sport.
Now, returning to last edition’s question, just because I’ve decided to train does not make you wrong if you chose to take some downtime. The point is the choosing and the distribution of your resources. Remember, trees grow both up and down. I look forward to sharing bits of my process over the next few editions. I hope it will inspire you to connect, engage, and most importantly, act.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• STAND TALLER, RUN FASTER Clamshells are a simple exercise that doesn’t require weights or even much time that could help improve your run. In this edition’s Triathlon Training by an Olympian on YouTube, THREE’s Joe Maloy demonstrates how clamshells work your small, stabilizing muscles. These supporting muscles stabilize your core and help bigger muscles perform, potentially allowing you to run faster.
• RESISTANCE BAND CYCLING WORKOUT Continuing the theme of keeping things simple, a new column on bicycling.com shows how “resistance bands can help you build and maintain the muscles responsible for sprinting, powering up steep climbs, maintaining your overall position on the bike.” This week’s demo highlights a 30-minute resistance-band workout to activate the muscles you need to ride strong. Here is a great option if you’re motivated to add the versatility of resistance band training to your routine.
• IT’S (VIRTUAL) MARATHON SEASON In a normal year, we would be heading into fall marathon season. But, alas, most races remain canceled and many runners are struggling with whether and how to maintain their training regimens. This week, The Wall Street Journal published a Personal Journal column on How to Motivate and Safely Train for Marathon Season During the Pandemic. The report looks at the growing trend toward virtual racing, including the New York City Marathon which will allow runners to complete their 26.2 virtual miles between October 17 and November 1. The article also features experts weighing in on how to stay motivated and get across the virtual finish line injury free.
• TRAINING FOR A RACE THAT MIGHT NOT HAPPEN As a few races get scheduled that are intent on taking place IRL, there’s a certain mental outlook required to properly train for an event that may get canceled before race day. Triathlete.com talked to a sports psychologist who shared tips for training in this era of uncertainty. “Like many aspects of the pandemic, it’s best to think of uncertainty as a permanent fixture, and develop ways of managing its negative effect on motivation,” the author writes.
“To stay motivated to train for events that may not happen, athletes need to get back to what they love or value about the sport, aside from competition,” said Tommy Fritze, a sport psychologist with Premier Sport Psychology. “Whether that’s the camaraderie of training partners, favorite running routes, the flow of a long swim, or feeling very fit.”
• TRY HARD NOT TO TRY This mind-body conclusion may surprise some: The harder you try, the more elusive the goal becomes. Outside Online’s Sweat Science writer, Alex Hutchinson, looks at how this hypothesis applies to runners in his column The Myth of Synchronized Breathing.
“In the game of Mindball, two players compete to push a ball whose motions are dictated by their brain waves, as measured by electrodes on their scalps. The harder you try, the weaker the force you exert on the ball. This (as the author and philosopher Edward Slingerland noted in his 2014 book Trying Not to Try) is a modern incarnation of the ancient Chinese paradox of wu wei, or effortless action. And it’s strangely reminiscent of the challenges we encounter in pursuit of running well.”
The writer uses the synchronization between breathing and stride rate while running to demonstrate the point some researchers are making. “Whether we’re talking about breathing patterns, running cadence, or the content of your thoughts, the characteristics of good runners all seem to contain an element of effortless action.”
• HOW MUCH DO THE BEST REST? The past two editions we’ve delved into the question many athletes struggle with this time of year: How long should your end of season break be? To help give context to your answer, or at least make you feel OK taking a few weeks off, Sweat Elite’s co-founder, Matt Fox, lists The End Of Season Rest Periods Of The World’s Best Athletes. “There is no right or wrong answer to this question,” Fox writes. “It depends on many things. Like, how long until your next important competition?” TL;DR: Usain Bolt takes between four and eight weeks off, depending on the year.
• GIVING UP AT THE FINISH LINE What would you do if you were in fourth place, rounding the corner towards the finish line, and suddenly the third-place athlete took a wrong turn catapulting you to a potential podium finish? Spanish triathlete Diego Méntrida Zamarra faced this exact situation earlier this month and decided to do what he thought was the sportsmanlike thing: wait for the wrong-turn runner to catch up. Méntrida Zamarra explained his quick decision in an essay for Newsweek titled Why I Gave up a Triathlon Medal at the Finish Line. Would you do the same?
“I then slowed down because I felt that I didn't deserve third place, it wasn't the way I wanted to get a position on the podium. Although I would have liked to have stood on the podium and had a photo with Javier Gómez Noya and Kevin Tarek Viñuela, who had finished in first and second position respectively, I stopped and I waited for James at the finish line. I wasn't sad, because I was satisfied with my race, but obviously I was a little disappointed not to stand on the podium as a medal winner.”
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
Time flies. The end of summer marks 20 years since triathlon debuted at the Sydney Olympic Games. This Sunday marks the first-ever London Marathon taking place inside a biosecure bubble. (If you’re in the U.S., you’ll need to wake up early to watch.) And if you’d like a bird’s eye view of the new women’s world champion road cyclist, check out this helicopter tracking shot that’s making its way across social media.
Enjoy the ride. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
THREE on triathletes' looming 2020 offseason question
To train or not to train?
Most people use “exercise” and “training” interchangeably, but there is a difference. Exercise is something your doctor recommends for 30 minutes/day, but training is intentionally working towards a predefined goal or event. Training involves stretching, mentally and physically, beyond one’s comfort zone. 2020 has offered obvious challenges surrounding mass-participation events. Now, fall’s shorter days and cooler weather are on the horizon, and it’s natural to ask, “Should I take an offseason even though I haven’t had any races?” I'll offer guidance, but only you have the answer to your question.
Begin with an honest self-evaluation. Since athletic performance is both mental and physical, evaluate both your mental and physical states. “Am I tired from activity, or am I tired of inactivity? Am I too stressed to take on anything else right now, or am I hungry to work towards a physical goal?” Where’s the opportunity?
Stress and rest are both necessary for growth. Growing as an athlete means becoming more tuned-in to the messages your body is sending. And speaking of being “in tune,” a helpful image as you ponder your decision might be a guitar string. Guitar chords need to be tuned with just the right tension in order to perform. Our bodies the same way. If we are too stressed to assume the work required of a training plan, then we risk overtraining or injury. Conversely, if we commit to a goal or event but fail to do the adequate preparation, then we will play like a guitar string with no tension.
It’s good practice to relax the mind before making any big decisions. Go for a run, spend time in nature, walk the dog, do whatever it takes to take your mind off the question. Just don’t run from the decision altogether. Your ability to move forward with intention, no matter the direction you choose, will lay a foundation upon which you can build. Coincidentally, “intent” shares a root word with the “tension” we discussed when imagining the guitar string. “Tendre” is the Latin word for “stretch.” When we do something with intent, we are “stretching towards” that objective.
It’s natural to feel like you’re being pulled towards both taking an offseason and continuing to train for an event that will have you fit before the holiday season. You’re likely motivated and driven. Those qualities benefit pursuits both in and out of sport. They’re also qualities that can get you into trouble if you fail to give yourself a break once in a while.
Joe Maloy 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• BAREFOOT STRIDES Running barefoot isn’t something we recommend as a primary part of your run training, particularly if you’re limited to concrete sidewalks or asphalt. Wear shoes! But, you might unlock a handful of benefits by incorporating barefoot strides (on grass or another safe surface) into your post-run warm down or before a hard run session. As THREE’s Joe Maloy demonstrates in this YouTube video, barefoot strides can help you connect with nature, strengthen smaller muscles in your feet, work on the way your foot hits the ground, and increase your “sixth sense” of movement and body position.
• FIND YOUR “GEARS” When heading out for a run, it’s important to determine ahead of time what you hope to gain from that run session and calibrate your speed accordingly. In fact, if you’re running fast most of the time you could be working harder than you need to and might be doing yourself a disservice. This Lifehacker article from the archives has some pointers about how to Run Smarter, Not Faster. “You need several ‘gears’ in slow, medium, and fast speeds to get the most out of different types of workouts (and perform better in races).” Here are key takeaways from Lifehacker:
Slow running builds your “aerobic base,” and most coaches agree it should be the foundation of your running program, making up most of your weekly miles.
Fast running builds strength and power.
Medium pace runs include tempo and lactate threshold runs, which are a key part of training for experienced runners: they help you train your body to hold an uncomfortable pace for long periods of time.
• THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEW ADIDAS RUNNING SHOE You've undoubtedly seen the press around Nike’s Vaporfly running shoe. Ahead of what was supposed to be this year’s Olympics, Nike’s competitors were racing (pun intended) to deliver a shoe that provided a similar speed advantage to runners. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal explained the controversy behind the Nike shoe. Now, Wired examines the science behind Adidas’s new world-record running shoe. “Almost every running shoe company is building carbon-fibre plates into its top-end trainers. Adidas has done something different – it's created energy rods.” The Adizero Adios Pro is described as “a performance running shoe that’s designed for long-distance racing and running.”
“Running throughout the shoe are a series of curved carbon-infused rods. These are wedged between two chunks of the company’s energy-returning Lightstrike Pro foam. … The rods run down the length of each bone in the foot and are curved to follow the shape of the foot. These rods have been stiffened to help give the greatest possible energy return when combined with the foam and other parts of the shoe.”
• OLYMPIC SWIMMER CODY MILLER’S MINDSET It’s easy to look at an Olympian and assume that their success in sports translates into confidence out-of-the-pool or off-the-track. Olympic swimmer Cody Miller dispels that myth. In a recent article from Olympic Channel, the gold and bronze medal-winning athlete reveals confidence issues he’s faced and shares how he learned to become mentally resilient. He describes how he found his “zen” ahead of competition, which includes being expressively optimistic.
“Some days I'll wake up, I'll feel like crap, and like I don't really want to swim, and I don't really want to make a video. But on those days if you force yourself to do something and you put on a smile, it makes things easier. Then you see progress. A sense of positivity goes a long way.”
Miller’s sense of positivity is on display on his personal YouTube channel, which has amassed nearly 150,000 subscribers who tune in for swimming drills, nutrition tips, and insights into the life of an elite athlete.
• IRONMAN IN A PANDEMIC Almost every amateur and pro race since March has been canceled — including this year’s Ironman World Championship in Kona. And while elite competition is starting to get back on track, amateur races are still hard to come by. Which is why triathlete and writer Nick Busca traveled to Estonia to compete in the first Ironman race since March, which he chronicled for the New York Times article, In a Pandemic, Getting to the Triathlon Is as Hard as Finishing It.
“Athletes were given individual time slots for tasks like registration and gear check-in. Their identities and check-in times were tracked electronically; health information was taken, too. The standard race briefing was provided via YouTube, and the traditional prerace pasta party was canceled. At aid stations, volunteers wore gloves and face masks; at the finish line, medals normally handed to the competitors were put in bags that athletes had to collect themselves.”
• BEHIND THE SCENES OF SUPER LEAGUE PRO TRIATHLON Indoor triathlons are nothing new, of course, but the Super League Triathlon took indoor racing to a new level in Rotterdam last month, with a hybrid IRL swim in a 50-meter pool and the bike and run legs done on Zwift. DC Rainmaker writes that “unlike a typical Super League Triathlon Series event, there were virtually no spectators, no cheering crowds, and the non-watery parts were done entirely in Zwift.” So how did Super League pull off the event? They organizers used Tacx NEO 2T bike trainers (Tacx is one of the event sponsors) and self-powered Assault AirRunner treadmills. Then came the technology required to connect all of the equipment and track athletes over three stages, especially challenging considering Zwift doesn’t have a triathlon setting. You can read DC Rainmaker’s behind-the-scenes review or watch in this YouTube video:
THREE THINGS TO KNOW
This week our THREE things to know is three places our founding team trained this summer. Joe trained in Arizona, Anthony in California and Matt made the trek to Capitol Reef National Park in Utah where this photo was snapped, taking social distancing to the extreme.
THREE on the power-priming potential of warming up
Warming up for success
Preheating an oven, setting cycling equipment out for the next morning’s workout, and taking a few quiet minutes to start the day all have something in common. Each activity establishes conditions for success. The recipe is more likely to work when the cook starts the oven at the correct temperature. The bike is more likely to be a good ride when you have your helmet, bike shoes, nutrition, and clothes! Your workout warm-up should similarly prepare you for success, but most athletes give less thought to their warm up than to their morning coffee.
Performance has physical, mental, and emotional components. A good warm-up should touch on all three, transforming you from whoever you were before you started into a person whose physical, mental, and emotional states are primed for the upcoming task. Maybe athletes skip this step because they are time-crunched and results-oriented. It’s hard to quantify “workout preparation” on a training log. It could be more simply explained by impatience. No matter the reason for discounting its importance, let’s devote more attention to “getting ready.”
There is a pervasive attitude in triathlon, since it’s an endurance event, that the warm-up doesn’t matter. I’ve even heard triathletes say, “It doesn’t matter how you start; what matters is how you finish.” That’s terrible advice. The clock counts seconds the same, no matter the section of a race. Physically demanding races require warm-ups that prepare your body for those physical movements you’re about to ask of yourself. Beginning a swim or run workout without first opening up your muscles/range of motion is akin to putting dough into a cold oven and expecting bread.
Before any coach can tell you how to warm up for a workout or a race, you need to know what physical, mental, and emotional states of readiness best unlock your individual potential. Reflect on times when you felt like you really had it going. It could have been either a race where you surprised yourself or a work presentation that went exceptionally well. Ask yourself, “What was I doing just before that started? How was I feeling? What was I thinking?” If the activity was first-thing in the morning, ask, “Did I go to sleep feeling relaxed? What did I think when I hit my alarm clock? Did I listen to music? What emotions did the music trigger?” The answers to these questions provide insight on your optimal mental and emotional state for performance. It’s impossible to hit a target that’s not defined, so identifying your optimal physical, mental, and emotional states for performance defines you at your best. From there, the challenge becomes repeatedly accessing this zone.
Elite performance is a product of consistently unlocking your potential. The late Kobe Bryant was legendary for his work ethic. After observing one of his warm-up routines, performance coach Alan Stein asked, “You’re the best player in the world, why do such basic stuff?” Kobe responded, “Why do you think I’m the best player in the game? Because I never get bored with the basics.” The warm-up is a necessary transition from wherever you are to the physical, mental, and emotional state you need in order to execute the challenge ahead.
Now that I’ve warmed you up for this week’s newsletter, I wonder if you’ll enjoy the Train, Brain, and Break links we’ve been reading this week! Special thanks to our subscribers who completed the THREE survey. We’ll be shipping you a custom THREE hat early next week, and we hope you’ll share your style by tagging us on Instagram!
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• JOE MALOY’S WARM-UP TIPS It’s easy to rationalize skipping the warm-up and going straight to the main set. You’re crunched for time before work or rushing to squeeze a workout in before dinner. But, by cutting the warm-up, you could be limiting the benefits of the entire training session. In this video, THREE editor-at-large Joe Maloy demonstrates how simple a running warm-up can be and how it can effectively improve your performance.
• HOW TO BREATHE If you’re looking to make strides with your run, no pun intended, Outside Online has a rundown of expert tips for breathing techniques that may help you run strong. Their write-up provides advice from pro runners, coaches and sports PTs about controlling your breathing, breathing efficiently and how to change your breathing as you run faster.
• CARDIO ISN’T ENOUGH In the same way that you shouldn’t skip the warm-up, you also shouldn’t exclusively focus on swimming, cycling and running on your training days. The Washington Post is out with an article that extolls the heart-healthy benefits of incorporating resistance training into your regimen. “Your ideal training plan depends on myriad factors, including goals, genetics and lifestyle,” WaPo reports. “That said, we know that even a minimalist approach to strength training can pay dividends for your long-term health.”
“Resistance training … should always be performed with enough effort to induce muscle fatigue. Although you don’t need a bodybuilder physique to see the benefits, you do need to be intentional when you lift. As you get stronger, your workouts will get easier, so adjust accordingly to keep building muscle mass.”
• INSIDE THE SWIMMER’S MIND What do you think about when you’re swimming? A new book by competitive swimmer Bonnie Tsui shares her mindset and the perspectives of other swimmers, like Michael Phelps, who have found that the simple act of being underwater can turn a pool into “a place of sanctuary and renewed mental health.” Tsui’s book, “Why We Swim,” explores the ways that immersion can radically shift our outlook.
“Sometimes swimming is a wormhole through which to escape the grinding machinery of everyday life. I get in a lake and swim away, as far as I can. When I get far enough away, literally and figuratively, I know it, because I find I want to go back. It’s an exercise in thresholds. How much I can take, how much distance I need, how far I can get from shore before I feel afraid, at what point I desire to return to land. I brew and brood over things that seem to be of consequence, but by the end of a swim, the water has washed much of that away. I come out with my mood and mental clarity improved by a minimum of 48 percent.”
• ACHIEVE YOUR MOST AMBITIOUS GOALS We’ve talked a lot about goal setting in previous editions of this newsletter. It seems everyone has their own take but one thing seems universal: it generally comes down to taking that first step. In this TEDx talk by investment manager Stephen Duneier, who literally wrote the book on achieving more, doing better, and reaching higher, “what stands between us and achieving even our most ambitious dreams has far less to do with possessing some magical skill or talent, and far more to do with how we approach problems and make decisions to solve them.” In his TEDx talk posted to YouTube, he suggests that “even a marginal improvement in our process can have a huge impact on our end results.”
• RACING IS BACK Here’s something to add to your weekend watch list: ITU elite competition resumes this weekend with the Hamburg Wasser World Triathlon in Germany. According to a Team USA announcement, this event “has been designated as the World Championships for both the individual and mixed relay race categories” and will feature reigning world champion Katie Zaferes, Tokyo Olympic qualifier Summer Rappaport and eight other U.S. elite triathletes. THREE’s humble editor-at-large, Joe Maloy, was the anchor in the mixed relay competition in Hamburg back in 2016. “After all other WTS events in 2020 were canceled due to COVID-19, the ITU announced last week that the individual race in Hamburg would now also crown the individual world champions,” USA Triathlon reports. Both events will be broadcast this weekend on triathlonlive.tv
• TOUR DE FRANCE Stage seven of the postponed Tour de France takes place today. On Thursday, 24-year-old American Neilson Powless took fourth place in the sixth stage of the race. NBC Sports has been posting daily Tour updates on YouTube. Here are highlights from yesterday's race.
If you haven’t had a chance to tune in, don’t worry, the race continues through September 20.
THREE on how setting goals changes your brain
Goal-setting optimizes your brain to achieve that goal
Rationalizing behavior is a pretty good way to distract from your goals. “I needed the sleep” after snoozing through the alarm clock, or “We’re celebrating, open the next bottle of wine” when you promised yourself an early night are two examples. This past week, I caught myself rationalizing watching playoff hockey at 1:00pm on a workday. “I’m not procrastinating my work; I’m researching goal achievement!” The Philadelphia Flyers were energetic, aggressive, and focused on putting the puck into their opponent’s net. We should pursue our goals with the same levels of clarity and focus.
When a hockey player takes the ice, his or her efforts are focused on a goal which is always in sight, never more than 200 feet away. Endurance athletes, on the other hand, chase a finish line that’s unseen for 99.9% of the race. Endurance sport is like life in that sense. Rarely are the things we want right in front of us. Rather, those “wants” are only achieved through long-term, focused effort.
Endurance athletes must define concrete goals with their minds-eye since there are not hockey goals stationed every 200ft during a triathlon. Instead of standing on the starting line and thinking about winning the race, an endurance athlete should be thinking, “There is the first swim buoy about 200m ahead. I’m going to control my breathing and keep a high body position, and I’m going to kick a little harder than I normally do until I reach that buoy.” Without smaller, incremental goals, endurance athletes will fall victim not to their competitors, but rather to distraction. This is true not only for racing, but also for daily training.
Scientific research affirms the importance of specific and measurable goals as the path to achievement. The linked article “What Goal Setting Does to your Brain” details how pursuing ambitious, specific goals changes the composition of your brain. Identifying and then working towards a specific, actionable goal will actually turn you into someone who can accomplish that goal. It’s powerful stuff, but it only works when you resist the urge to rationalize yourself onto an easier path.
When you have a clear idea of the goal that’s driving your action, your brain will link its problem solving and emotional centers to help you become someone capable of achieving that goal. Even when the finish line is out of sight, specific goals, like lanterns along a walkway, will guide endurance athletes to the finish.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• SWIM TRAINING FOR TRIATHLETES Summer is a perfect time to take advantage of open-water swimming and outdoor pools. With most races on hold, there could be a silver lining when it comes to focusing on technique, improving endurance and tracking your progress. U.S. Masters Swimming recently published Seven Effective Drill and Pace Sets for Triathlon Swim Training That Won’t Bore You. In the workout, USMS writes that “there are defined best practices when it comes to getting the most bang for your buck with swim training. What you need most is certainty that the time you’re putting in and the work you’re doing is going to pay off. And a little fun along the way won’t hurt, either.”
Sample U.S. Masters Swimming triathlete workout: 4 x 100s (first 50 catch-up drill, second 50 build to race pace freestyle); 4 x 100s (odd 25s, head-up freestyle); 8 x 50s (odds breathe every 3, evens breathe every 5); 4 x 100s (negative split by 50, build kick into finish); 4 x 100s (upper body-up kick without a kickboard, arms extended in front); 8 x 50s (no-wall turns under the flags without touching lane lines or bottom); 4 x 50s (take as few strokes as possible under a set time)
• NO POOL? NO PROBLEM If you don’t have access to a pool to execute yard or meter-specific training sessions, Triathlon Magazine Canada has an open-water swim training plan. “With pools across the country still closed, the good news for triathletes is that lakes are warming up.” The TMC article talks about the benefits of training alongside others, particularly for people who find the close proximity of competitors in the water on race day to be disorienting after months training solo in a pool.
Triathlon Magazine Canada sample open-water training workout: Warm-Up — 10 min easy swim; Main — 4×40 seconds at start speed/rest 30 seconds between each effort; 400 m (6 to 7 minutes) moderate/45 seconds rest; 800 m (around 15 minutes) of steady draft work. Exchange the lead every 50 strokes-the leader pulls over and the others swim past. This is best done in groups of three or four. 40 x 40 seconds surge/30 seconds easy between each effort; Cool-Down — 400 m (7 to 8 minutes)
• CONSISTENCY IS KEY Maintaining consistency is a key part of any training. While all of us have occasionally been caught up in the moment and decided to push beyond our plans for the session, as a regular practice that type of training mentality could be doing more harm than good. USA Triathlon’s Multisport Lab recently published an article focused on consistency in training and asked the question, “as an athlete, can the idea of constantly outworking yourself and those around you backfire?”
"Consistency of good training beats sometimes spectacular training any day. Yes, one can lay down massive work, and finish workouts empty and done ... and for a while they will improve, often a lot. A gifted athlete will improve a whole lot for a while. But at some point, and it may only be six to eight weeks, that constantly pushing strategy will stop yielding positive gains and things will stagnate."
• LUCY CHARLES-BARCLAY’S MIND HACKS If you’re the kind of person who finds it hard to stay motivated, or someone who trains consistently but lacks confidence on race day, Red Bull has Lucy Charles-Barclay’s best advice on how to get mentally ready to race. In the article, Charles-Barclay shares tips on how to keep yourself motivated, how to eat and sleep well, and how to own race day.
“Nerves aren’t necessarily a bad thing – if you can control them in the right way.”
• CHANGE YOUR BRAIN As Joe wrote in his editor's letter, pursuing goals forces us to combine our brain’s problem solving and emotional centers. This unique combination is unlocked through focused effort, and it actually changes the physical composition of one’s brain to optimize it to perform the desired action. Late last month, Inc. published a piece on What Goal-Setting Does to Your Brain and Why It's Spectacularly Effective. Summing things up, the article says that “Goal-setting literally alters the structure of your brain so that you perceive and behave in ways that will cause you to achieve those goals.”
“The part of your brain that creates emotion (your amygdala) evaluates the degree to which the goal is important to you.The part of your brain that does problem solving (your frontal lobe) defines the specifics of what the goal entails.The amygdala and frontal lobe work together to keep you focused on, and moving toward, situations and behaviors that lead to the achievement of that goal, while simultaneously causing you to ignore and avoid situations and behaviors that don't.”
• TWIN PEAKS POOL As a result of gym and community pool closures, many of us went months without swimming in a pool. A stretch of dormancy is OK for amateur athletes, but it’s a different situation if you’re training to qualify for the Paralympic Games. The New York Times tells the story of how Swimmer Rudy Garcia-Tolson searched for a pool until actor David Duchovny offered to let him use his.
"I was still trying to find a pool when I got one of the great messages of my life. It was from a woman who said she worked with the actor David Duchovny, telling me to get in touch with her about finding a pool to train in. She gave me his number and told me to reach out. When I did, he told me he had a 25-meter, one-lane pool in his backyard. I was welcome to use it whenever I wanted. I just needed to give him a little notice."
• ECO-CHALLENGE VS. IRONMAN For triathletes, oftentimes long-course racing is seen as a highlight of endurance sport. So what would long-course athletes have to say about a race that “is fun, it’s gritty, and it makes the Ironman Triathlon look like golf.” Outside Online reviews Amazon Prime’s World’s Toughest Race, a streaming series featuring Bear Grylls. Set in Fiji, the review states that “‘Eco-Challenge’ Is the Adventure TV We Need.”
“It’s the toughest, longest, most extreme, baddest adventure race in human history. Period. Nothing else even comes close.” - BEAR GRYLLS
THREE on connecting with the playful nature of sport
Train like a kid
THREE’s newsletter turns eight editions old today! It’s an extra-special Friday for your editor because my daughter, Brooke, turns 20 weeks old! Even though it’s another week until 21, all she does is drink bottles (...okay, my dad jokes are still a work in progress!). That said, isn’t it interesting how we count things? Numbers create structure and define progress through otherwise messy periods of growth and development. The early stages of THREE, along with Brooke’s early months, have been full of learning experiences. We can number and label things for the sake of marking moments in time or to better organize files, but labeling ourselves stunts both progress and one’s ability to continue developing.
Kids are incredible learners. From birth until the time they turn two, they’ve learned to walk, talk, eat, sleep, and use the bathroom. Talk about a 24 months! One thing they don’t learn during this time is shame. They haven’t learned to fear messing up or looking funny, so they just do their thing. Brooke doesn’t know a single word, but that doesn’t stop her from mumbling, gurgling, and giggling the day away.
Eventually, her mumbles will form words, and her kicks will become steps. A few stumbles over both words and feet are to be expected! At no point in the process will she look in the mirror and tell herself, “I’m no good at talking, I’m going to stop,” or “I keep falling over, so I’m going to find another way to get around.” Rather than judging failure as an indictment of herself, she learns from feedback and keeps trying. Her identity is not tied to being a “talker” or a “walker.” Instead, she’s living, learning, and laughing through the moments. Her language and mobility will be a byproduct of that process.
We all start like that. Somewhere along the way, though, we tidy up the messy process of growth and define who we are. Does “I’m a bad swimmer” or “I’m not built like a runner,” sound familiar to anyone? Be like a kid! Embrace the mess and keep doing your thing. Every year the Ironman World Champion pees his/her pants on the bike! When you’re tempted to make judgments about yourself as an athlete or as a person, remember that we’re all just works in progress. In the absence of racing, there’s never been a better time to connect to the playful nature of sport and embrace the learning and growth that follow.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• LET’S TALK BIG DATA By now, your Garmin should be finally working again. And, if you didn’t notice anything amiss, you probably haven’t been trying to sync your watch with Garmin Connect for the past two weeks. The popular GPS watchmaker was crippled by a ransomware attack but the good news is, according to the company’s CEO, “we have no indication that any customer data was accessed, lost or stolen.” The Garmin outage may have led you to question how essential your watch is to having a successful workout. THREE co-founder Matt Connelly won’t run without a watch, while THREE’s resident Olympian-editor Joe Maloy customizes his screen to include only essential information. As it turns out, when it comes to running there may be a benefit to training without real-time data. Former D1 track and field athlete Dan Roe spoke with three professional running coaches for the Spartan blog “to find the merits and detriments to training with today’s onslaught of wearable data.”
“The flagship Garmin Forerunner, for instance, measures pace, distance, steps, calories burned, VO2 max, heart rate, vertical oscillation, ground contact time, cadence, lactate threshold, and more. Processing those metrics while you run, or adjusting your training by analyzing them post-run, is a huge task for the average runner.”
What's a good rule for running if and when your watch gives out? Joe Maloy shares his thoughts about duration and distance in this week's YouTube post:
• BENEFITS OF VIRTUAL RACING While you may not always benefit from wearing a watch while training, in the absence of in-person races, you could make strides in your training by signing up for a virtual competition. In the article “The Competition Is Simulated, But the Gains Are as Real as it Gets,” Men’s Journal outlines how virtual races can help with motivation and effort.
“There’s something called the Köhler effect: People tend to work harder when they’re performing a task alongside others versus on their own, explains Eric Bean, a San Diego sports psychology coach. It may be enough just to know that a bunch of other people are competing to give you a bump.”
If you're looking for a virtual race, there's still time to compete in the virtual Chicago Triathlon.
• MENTAL IMPACT OF THE PANDEMIC In addition to the Olympics and Ironman World Championships being canceled, it’s highly likely that all of the competitive events you were planning to participate in this season have also been canceled or postponed. Sports Illustrated reports that many elite athletes are dealing with the psychological impact of the pandemic — and finding different ways to cope.
“A global pandemic like the novel coronavirus isn’t good for anyone’s mental well-being, Olympic legend or not, but experts say elite athletes face a unique challenge. They may feel anything from anxiety and uncertainty to fear and anger to sadness and even grief over the postponement and cancellation of their competitions. Coping, often through trying to re-create some semblance of routine, is its own challenge.”
• QUIET THE BRAIN Improving your athletic performance may not simply be a matter of training longer or harder. At the end of last year, The New York Times reported on a study of elite competitors and how they process sound. The study’s conclusion? “Top athletes’ brains are not as noisy as yours and mine.”
“The brains of fit, young athletes dial down extraneous noise and attend to important sounds better than those of other young people.”
• YOU CAN’T STOP SPORT If you need a bit of motivation while waiting to reconnect with teammates and training partners, check out this video produced by Nike. We’re not being paid to share this — just found the overall message and precision of the production and editing worth passing along to our community. Because of distancing restrictions, the video was reportedly produced entirely from archival sports footage. 4,000 clips were whittled down to 72 and then split-screened to create this video with a resonant message: Nothing can stop what we can do together.
• MINI-TOUR DE FRANCE Although the Tour de France has been postponed, one cycling fan was not content to wait for the delayed race to take place later this month. The BBC reports that “A cycling fan who was ‘inconsolable’ about the Tour de France being postponed has recreated scenes from the event in miniature in his back garden.” The superfan transformed his backyard paddling pool into the Mediterranean and the roof of his home into the mountains. Peter Martin has “posted numerous scenes online featuring his 1,400-strong collection of models and has been helped by his eight-year-old son Henri Desgrange, named after the event's founder.”
THREE on finding your way forward during a summer of sports cancellations
Today should have marked the start of the 2020 Olympic Games. While my heart goes out to the athletes who cannot be competing this year, many of the athletes with whom I’ve spoken have been okay with the postponement. Shouldn’t they be angry that their opportunity to shine has been pushed another year away?
Olympic athletes are entirely consumed by their athletic pursuit, so I was surprised to see so many of them comment that postponing the games was the right decision. Their reactions to the postponement seemed so, for lack of a better word, positive. Here are a couple examples:
“All in all a very wise decision to postpone the Olympics until 2021. I look forward to come back to Japan to defend my Olympic title next year and look forward to witness a wonderful event. I wish everybody good health in these challenging times.” -Eliud Kipchoge, Olympic Champion, Marathon
“See you in 2021, Tokyo. First, we have to win a huge fight.” -Teddy Riner, 2x Olympic Champion, Judo
I struggled to understand the “accepting” perspective until I remembered Olympic athletes are trained to overcome challenging circumstances. While we are not celebrating the beginning of the Olympic Games today, there is still life to celebrate. Grab someone you love, share a meal with your quarantine crew, enjoy a workout that challenges your body. Action begins with acceptance, so accept the uncertainty of this environment and find ways to move forward. Continuing to work for the things that matter to you is the best way to honor the unofficial “start” of these Games.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• IRONMAN WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS CANCELED The iconic annual sports event, the Ironman Kona World Championships, was officially canceled this week after already being postponed from October 2020 to February 2021. This is the first time since the championships started in 1978 that they will not be held. The 70.3 championship event in New Zealand was also canceled. NBC Sports reported that triathletes who had already qualified would be eligible to compete in 2021 or 2022.
“Based on the schedule, the continuation of existing travel restrictions worldwide, and other circumstances beyond our control, Ironman’s world championship events cannot proceed as rescheduled.” - IRONMAN
• SUMMER CYCLING AT HOME Although we're still holding out hope for a return to competition this year, just as fast as we started to get excited about reopened gyms and community pools, many of us were sent back to working out in the comfort of our own homes and local parks. There’s a good chance that if you were bike-training indoors with a cycling or tri group, you also haven’t been able to get together in the same way for that dedicated training time. As more and more people start to rely on indoor trainers, they’re increasingly turning to stationary bikes, smart trainers and connected apps. Peloton reported a 66% increase in sales in its most recent quarterly report and a 94% increase in subscriptions to its workout classes. If you’re looking to turn your bike into a smart, at-home exercise machine or find ways to improve your smart-trainer setup, THREE's Joe Maloy, shared his tips with The Wall Street Journal’s personal technology columnist.
“My biggest tip would be to check the gear you’re in. You want to be in the smallest chainring in the front and then you want to be in the smallest chainring in the back. It’s not a gear you would normally ride in.”
• HILL RUNNING TIPS Cyclists may have heard of the Everesting challenge which, according to Runner’s World, is “riding the equivalent ascent of Mount Everest” but doing it on a local climb as most international travel remains limited. Canadian adventure racer and Obstacle Course Racing (OCR) World Champion Ryan Atkins took a page from that challenge and became one of the 154 runners who have made the 8,848-meter ascent on foot. “As the season’s races began to disappear off the calendar,” Molly Hurford writes, “Atkins was faced with a dilemma: What to do with the fitness he had built up over the winter and spring.”
“I had all this fitness and motivation, and nowhere to put it,” Atkins said. “I’d been planning to try for a fastest known time on the Long Trail in Vermont, which I’d been wanting to do for years, but I couldn’t even cross the border to get to the U.S. So, I was like, well, what else can I do?”
Runner’s World reports that Atkins completed the challenge in record time for the unassisted run — 11 hours and 30 minutes. Atkins has useful training advice for those of us who aren’t looking to complete an extreme 70k run: Do what you can with what you have, pace yourself on hills, find a rhythm, adopt power hiking, recruit friends, work the weights and expect ups and downs.
• THE LAST FOUR MONTHS may seem like a blur in your mind. Outside Online columnist Brad Stulberg writes, “One day bleeds into the next. Time feels hazy and surreal. Multiple friends have told me that, as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns, they no longer have any real sense for what day of the week it is.” But, in this moment, Stulberg posits that having a solid routine is even more important than ever. If all of your days are a blur, Stulberg offers some suggestions for how to change that. In Outside Online’s column he quotes Scott Kelly, a former NASA astronaut who in 2016 spent 340 days on the International Space Station, as saying:
“Focus on what you can control—taking care of yourself, your family, your schedule, your environment.”
• VOCALIZING YOUR GOALS can also lead to accomplishing great things, even if they take a year — or years — longer than you might have liked or anticipated. In this column for USA Triathlon, former USAT ambassador Anthony Galloway writes about his THREE co-founder Joe Maloy’s journey to represent the United States at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “Maloy says he was able to reach his full potential, and affect the way people perceived his ambition, by focusing his attention and vocalizing his goal. In his mind, he knew he had reached a point in his athletic career where he had gone as far as he could – working a full-time job and taking Master’s classes at Boston College. As an English major, he understood the power of storytelling. In 2010, Maloy told his family and friends that he intended to go to the Olympics.”
“I think each one of us has moments where you kind of go all in and you have to take a bet on something. The nature of that is you stare at failure and you're like, ‘Yeah, I'm okay with that.” - Joe Maloy
In the interview, Maloy talks about the way we perceive successes and failures and referenced the Rudyard Kipling poem, “If.” “It talks about treating failure and success as the same and it calls them imposters because, the truth is, success or failure is just our interpretation of an event,” Maloy said. “There's a lot of different ways to say what a win is and, at the end of the day, it's really up to you and how you decide to look at it.”
• IN A SIGN OF THE TIMES Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch before the Nationals-Yankees game, marking baseball’s opening day on Thursday evening. ABC News reports Fauci is “a huge Nationals fan besides being the nation's leading infectious disease expert.” Baseball is returning with “completely empty stadiums, cardboard cutouts as spectators, piped-in sound effects to mimic crowd noise, masked players, and pitchers with personal rosin bags,” according to the ABC report. The NBA plans to officially resume next week on Thursday, July 30, and has been keeping players sequestered in Orlando for training and exhibition games. Sports Illustrated interviewed six-time NBA All-Star Paul George to learn how the L.A. Clippers star spent his quarantine getting back into training shape, prepping physically and mentally for the so-called NBA “bubble.”
• STADIUM SPREAD Like baseball, the NBA games will also be played without fans, although Deseret News reports “The NBA bubble arenas in Orlando, Florida, won’t exactly be empty. NBA players will be able to attend games they aren’t playing in.” The Wall Street Journal recently explained why sports stadiums are incubators for the spread of the virus.
“Sports fans are longing to return to the stands, but health experts say stadiums are one of the highest-risk areas for coronavirus transmission.”
Looking forward.
As athletes publishing this edition of the THREE newsletter on the same day as the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games were supposed to begin, we’d like to make use of our platform to share an initiative that the USA Triathlon Foundation announced this week to support triathletes and paratriathletes over the coming year as they delay their Olympic ambitions until 2021. In announcing the launch of The Giving Games, which begins today, the foundation stated, “Now more than ever, our triathletes and paratriathletes need our support. Unlike most of our competing nations, U.S. Olympic and Paralympic sport organizations and their athletes do not receive government funding. Therefore, our elite triathletes and paratriathletes are required to self-support through donations, sponsorships, and event winnings.”
“The Giving Games will allow us to walk with our triathletes and paratriathletes and show them our support during this uncertain and emotional time. We are raising funds to support our athletes and will sustain them, and their dream, during this critical next year.”
Supporters can learn more about and participate in The Giving Games using this link.
Until next month, be well. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
THREE on the benefits of cycling, no destination required
There’s an age-old battle between drivers and cyclists. The car driver is usually on a mission to get somewhere. There’s something to be accomplished, an appointment to be kept, or a job to be done. The cyclist, on the other hand, is usually less concerned with the destination and more interested in the going. I’m generalizing with the distinction between drivers and cyclists, but there’s a critical distinction between focusing on the destination and focusing on the ride.
Psychologists have researched this distinction and concluded healthy individuals strike a balance between desiring to reach a destination while enjoying the journey. When we focus entirely on the destination, we risk training our minds to focus on what’s lacking. That can lead to feelings of depression and unhappiness, and it could cause us to ignore the benefits of one’s current circumstances. Focusing exclusively on the journey carries its own set of risks. Imagine enjoying a bike ride so much that you had no destination in mind. You could end up in the middle of nowhere, exhausted, wishing you’d given some thought to where you were pedaling.
This lesson is very much like the act of riding a bicycle. In order for the bike to work, it needs to be pedaled forward. There is necessary change with each passing moment. Each moment positions the rider for the next. If you look too far down the road, then you might ride yourself straight into a pothole. Conversely, if you look straight down for the pothole, then you could miss the incredible view.
You might read this and be thinking of the balance on how you spend time between your work and your family. Maybe this example made you think about your current fitness and how it’s not where you want it to be. It’s a beautiful struggle. Turn your eyes up the road, careful to look ahead just enough to see where you’re going, and start pedaling.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• Do cyclists need to strength train in order to improve on the bike? The contrarian view is that strength training isn’t necessary because the sport relies on cardiovascular fitness which, they argue, can be trained on the bike. The viewpoint in favor of strength training argues that even though cycling is primarily a cardiovascular sport, “leg strength is still imperative.” According to USA Cycling’s article Strength Training for Cyclists: A Practical View From a Cycling Coach, “Cycling is a power sport. Power equals force times speed. Force is the amount of effort you put into the pedal stroke and speed is your leg rpm. And while some say strength training for cyclists is not required, it can be a beneficial component of a cycling training program.” Coach David Ertl writes that strength training can simulate the effect of a long ride.
“One rule of thumb is that the day after a good lower body workout, your legs should feel like you’ve just ridden a hard 70 miles.”
• Generally the off-season is when we focus on building strength. If what would normally be the middle of race season has turned into an extended off-season for you because of race cancellations, Bicycling magazine has identified 10 Essential Strength-Training Exercises for Cyclists as a starting point. If you’re into kettlebells, kettlebellsworkouts.com put together this list of 8 Kettlebell Strength Exercises for Cyclists. Of course, the usual advice applies: seek professional guidance or talk to your doctor before starting any training program.
• Last month we shared a few articles about acclimating to training and racing in the heat. This month, Outside magazine continues the discussion in its Sweat Science column titled, The Benefits of Heat Training, Reconsidered. Alex Hutchison, author of the book Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, looks into research that indicates, “Sweaty workouts do enhance your endurance, according to a new theory, but it may take longer and function differently than previously thought.”
• Whether you’re training outdoors or working out inside a recently-reopened gym, you’ve probably contemplated whether or not you should be wearing a mask while exercising. (Some gyms require everyone to wear them, while most states and communities with mandatory mask orders have exemptions for outdoor exercise.) GQ waded into the debate, talking to a handful of athletes and experts. How 5 Serious Athletes Are Handling the Coronavirus Mask Dilemma. If you’re inclined to wear a mask while working out, they also have recommendations.
• Although most amateur swimming, cycling and running races have been canceled for the second half of this year, professional athletic organizations are moving forward with plans for a controlled return to competition. NBA players arrived this week in the so-called "bubble" in Orlando. Engadget reports their plans include keeping players and team personnel in isolation. NBA players will also have the option of wearing an Oura smart ring, according to The Athletic’s Sham Charania who first broke the story. On Twitter, Charania posted that the ring “could help with early detection of coronavirus” by tracking temperature, respiratory and heart rate.
• As the summer wears on, you may start to feel pangs induced by the lack of race events to participate in. But there’s more to life than a podium finish. Take it from John Candy’s character in Cool Runnings:
“A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.”
This made-in-Hollywood lesson for athletes can serve as a mantra for how to keep a positive mindset, especially in the absence of competition. “I’d made winning my whole life. And when you make winning your whole life, you have to keep on winning, no matter what.”
• China’s ‘Bicycle Skyway’ in Xiamen looks like something out of Zwift, but it’s real. The 5-mile-long elevated bike path, which hovers nearly 17 feet above the road and can handle 2,000 bikes at a time, has been open for three years. Still, this Business Insider article deserves a second look. At the time of its opening, the Danish firm that designed the structure, Dissing + Weitling Architecture, told Business Insider that the cycleway is the longest of its kind in the world.
• The Tour de France should be underway right now. With the race delayed until the end of August, the Tour partnered with Zwift and Amaury Sport Organisation to produce a virtual Tour de France on YouTube. The video mirrors an actual race broadcast, complete with helicopter aerial footage, graphics and race announcers. “We couldn’t have July without a celebration of the world’s biggest bike race,” the announcer says. “We start today with the first-ever virtual Tour de France.” Stage 1 started on July 4th and the virtual races continue for the next two weekends. All of the events are fundraising for five global charities.
THREE on the benefits of creating structure in training and in life
Most people who lived before the digital age will remember penning (or No. 2 penciling!) lecture notes into a ruled notebook. The evenly spaced horizontal blue lines guided how big to write, and the red vertical line indicated how much space to leave on the left-hand side of the page. If you remember this setup, then it’s likely you took that page organization for granted. Structure, whether it be on the page of a grade school notebook, in a swimming pool with lane lines, or through a typical summer competition season, is something most of us don’t fully appreciate until it’s gone.
Adding some self imposed structure becomes even more important when framed in the context of the 2020 race season. Without the familiar construct of races most weekends, training meetups, and pool swims, it’s likely your fitness is not where it normally would be at this point in the season. You might even be grateful that social distancing doesn’t allow for others to get a close-up of your summer body!
In the absence of structure, we must create it ourselves. Open water swimming, for example, can sometimes feel like taking notes onto a page with no lines at all. Without lane ropes to keep you straight, walls to keep your distance accurate, and a clock on the wall to consistently monitor your effort, open water offers far less help in structuring a set or a workout.
Check out my tips in the “Train” section for 3 of my favorite open-water swimming workouts.
There is little certainty that this season’s remaining races will go forward as planned. You need to step up and take this opportunity to create your own goals. Sure it would be easy to chalk this up as a lost season and to let your fitness drop a few rungs on the priority ladder. Athletes do not chase what is easy—we chase progress. Progress cannot be achieved in the absence of a structure—a goal, a timeline, and a plan of action. Reflect on the core desires that drive your training, and identify goals that speak to those desires. Introducing structure to your hourly and daily actions will give you certainty through these uncertain times.
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• Swimming in the open water can be disorienting for any swimmer. It's an uncontrolled environment that provides completely different feedback when compared with swimming in a pool. In a special training column published this week, THREE Editor-at-Large Joe Maloy outlines three guidelines to keep in mind if you’re looking to make progress outside of the pool, along with three sample workouts to get back in the water, become more efficient and boost your aerobic swimming capacity.
• Summer officially started this past weekend and the weather is starting to heat up. Most of us tend to have an optimal outdoor training temperature and usually that temperature starts to fade away in the summer. In fact, several studies have shown that the perfect marathon running temperature for non-elite runners is somewhere between 49 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit (~10 degrees Celsius). If you’re an athlete who hates the heat, Trail Runner Magazine put together this heat acclimation guide to prepare your body for warmer temperatures.
“Heat stress can begin at relatively low temperatures for unacclimated individuals.”
Trail Runner’s heat-acclimation tips include making use of a hot tub, hot yoga, wearing extra layers, using the sauna and even training in peak heat. Still, it’s important to note, “heat stress provides a big cardiac strain, so even more than other training discussions, heat acclimation should be discussed with a health professional before undergoing any protocol.”
• As we touched on in the introduction, the benefits of goal setting can be realized in many aspects of our lives, not just athletics. Positive Psychology outlines five proven ways that goal setting is effective. “In the end,” they write, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t improve upon something that you don’t properly manage. Setting goals can help you do all of that and more.”
• If one of your goals is to take advantage of reopened pools and beaches this weekend, you may be encouraged to know that there are mind-body benefits to pushing through the initial discomfort of a cold, open-water swim, or reconnecting with the community at your local pool. In fact, The New York Times reports, in these times of protests and pandemic, the basic act of swimming is an act of perseverance that “can ease the struggle through an uncertain time.”
“Resilience is about sticking your head in water every day, for an hour or more, year after year. That’s the challenge right now — not to put your head down and ignore the world, but to put your head down and absorb it. To remember how to float, in spite of the burdens you carry.”
• Last week’s column on sleep interested a lot of you, so we’re posting a new sleep analysis from Team USA: Why Sleep Is Key In Letting Both Mind And Body Recover For Athletes And Non-Athletes Alike. In a recent article, sportswriter Todd Kortemeier writes that “sleep has more than just physically restorative benefits. Keeping a good sleep schedule can improve mental health. Gold medals are not won through physical strength alone.”
• Not only is sleep important for peak physical performance, according to United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee Senior Sport Psychophysiologist Lindsay Shaw, it helps with the intense focus and mindset that athletes require. Shaw recently interviewed Paralympic swimming gold medalist Mallory Weggemann and Olympic BMX racing gold medalist Connor Fields to discuss how sleep impacts elite athletes in this YouTube video.
Tell us your story.
Reply to this email with your most memorable open-water swimming experience or a great story of resilience. We’d like to share it in our next edition. Until then, be well. We hope to see you on a starting line soon.
Olympic triathlete Joe Maloy’s open-water swimming tips
By Joe Maloy
2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, THREE Co-Founder and Editor at Large
Swimming in the open water can be disorienting for any swimmer! It's an uncontrolled environment that provides completely different feedback when compared with swimming in a pool.
Let’s start with some guidelines:
1) Accept the things that are out of your control. All the worrying in the world will not make the choppy water calm down, bring the buoys closer, or draw a line on the bottom of the ocean for you to follow. Accept the reality that your route will not be perfectly straight or that your breaths might sometimes come with a gulp of water. At the end of the day…it’s just swimming.
2) Direct your thoughts to the things that are under your control. Your challenge is always to employ the talents you’ve trained. Focus on those familiar actions which are 100% under your control. Focusing your thoughts on what you can control reduces anxiety and helps channel emotional energy to your advantage.
3) Remind yourself that emotions are just energy that needs to be channeled. Open water swimming is a little bit wild. See the beauty in that difference. Be grateful that you have the skill and ability to interact with the world in such a unique way.
Now, you’re ready to swim, but these sets only work when you do!
Most of the workouts below are designed to be 30-45 minutes long. In the pool, pushing off the wall each lap cuts down on the actual distance you swim each lap. Open water swimming is a more efficient use of your time (than swimming in a pool) because you spend more time swimming and less time gliding.
Workout #1:
Here’s a good workout to start with if you’ve been out of the water for a while and need to get back in swim shape!
Begin with the following set 4x:
Optional 1:00 additional rest b/t rounds.
:30 swimming + :15 rest
:40 swimming + :15 rest
:50 swimming + :15 rest
1:00 swimming + :15 rest
5x:
1:00 swim + :30 rest + :15 MAX! + :30 rest
2:00 rest
2-4x:
2:00 swim + :30 rest
Workout #2
This workout is designed to increase speed by making you more powerful and efficient in the water.
10:00 choice warmup. By the end of this warmup, your heart rate should be elevated and you should feel mentally and physically prepared to swim FAST!
10x (:10 tight streamline kick + 25-50 strokes MAX! + 25-50 strokes easy + :20 rest)
5:00 choice swim, broken up however you’d like
10x (:10 tight streamline kick + 25-50 strokes MAX! + 25-50 strokes easy + :20 rest)
5:00-10:00 choice swim, broken up however you’d like
Note: During the streamline kick, work on keeping a high body position in the water. Then, keep that body position high during the 25-50 strokes MAX! by engaging your core and keeping your head low in the water.
Workout #3:
This workout is designed to boost your aerobic swimming capacity.
60 strokes swim + 10 strokes backstroke + 5 breaths rest
80 strokes swim + 10 strokes backstroke + 5 breaths rest
100 strokes swim + 10 strokes backstroke + 5 breaths rest
60 strokes swim + 20 strokes build to 7/10 effort + 5 breaths rest
80 strokes swim + 20 strokes build to 8/10 effort + 5 breaths rest
100 strokes swim + 20 strokes build to 9/10 effort + 5 breaths rest
Aerobic Swim Pyramid: Swim all of the following @ moderate 4/10 effort, and take 3-4 deep breaths as recovery between each swim.
50 strokes
100 strokes
125 strokes
150 strokes
200 strokes
150 strokes
125 strokes
100 strokes
50 strokes
**Begin with the pyramid 2x through and progress this set by adding strokes to each swim (or time to each rep if you prefer to go by your watch). Keep the rest short…less than :15 seconds or 3-4 breaths and try to maintain speed or get a little bit faster as you go.
Editor’s note: This information is designed for educational purposes only. You should not rely on this information as a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. You should consult your physician or other health care professional before starting this or any other fitness program to determine if it is right for your needs.
THREE's summer kickoff: Jumping back in the pool
Have you ever arranged to meet a friend who you hadn’t seen in a couple years? If so, were you excited for the opportunity to catch up but nervous that things wouldn’t be the “same” as you’d remembered? Pools across the country are currently reopening, and going back to the pool reminds me of meeting an old friend. After eight weeks away, the longest I’ve been away from a pool since I was seven years old, walking back onto the pool deck feels one part familiar, one part self-aware.
The physical setup at the pool (or the office, if that’s your thing) is likely unchanged from the way you left it two months ago. Your perception of that environment, however, is likely different. Zen Buddhists call this “seeing with a beginner’s mind,” and it’s essentially the idea that beginners (in anything) can develop rapidly because they are open-minded. You’re suddenly more aware of actions which you used to unconsciously automate, and that awareness creates an opportunity. This is true for both your swimming and your other daily processes.
As you get back into your swimming routine, there will be movements that feel different. Avoid the temptation to immediately judge your swimming technique or to condemn your lack of fitness. Instead, take advantage of your heightened awareness. You may have lost some of your good swimming habits during the lockdown. Odds are you lost some bad ones as well. Adopt that “beginner’s mindset” and see this moment as an opportunity to correct a bad habit which you had previously automated. There’s never been a better time to work on improving your body position or being smooth through the water. If you always kept your head too high (your eyes should be aimed at the bottom of the pool), then now’s your time to break that habit. Strive for progress, not perfection. Let’s capitalize on the awareness of this moment and work towards progress, both in and out of the pool.
THREE co-founder and USAT age group triathlete, Matt Connelly, had this to say about his first swim back:
"The first 300 yards felt like a 1650, but I was determined to power through...feeling like a brick. …Nonetheless, whenever I take time off from swimming I appreciate the meditation aspect it brings to your morning. I am happy to be back, never had so many kudos on Strava for a slow, barely over 2k yards swim!"
How was your first swim back?
Joe Maloy, 2016 U.S. Olympic Triathlete, Co-Founder and Editor-at-Large
• Taking that first plunge back into the pool is turning out to be a summer rite of passage for triathletes who have been under Stay at Home orders and shut out of gyms and pools for most of the spring. San Diego State University’s associate head swimming coach, Stephen Allnutt, shares advice for getting back into the pool in a special guest column for THREE: Getting back in the pool: A swim coach’s guide to the first 5 minutes, 5 days, and 5 weeks in the water. “Technique should be your #1 focus during this time," Allnutt says. "With no races on the horizon, this could be a once in a lifetime to develop new habits while your old habits have been temporarily suppressed.”
• If you’ve developed a preference for swim training on dry land or simply want to continue to develop strength and technique above ground, THREE’s resident swimmer turned Olympic triathlete, Joe Maloy, demonstrates ways to overcome resistance or put power to the water using a Vasa trainer in this YouTube video.
• The transformative events of the past few weeks have renewed movements for racial justice and raised awareness about diversity and representation in all aspects of our lives. This past weekend, the 2020 Endurance Conference was held virtually and featured a panel discussion about diversity in triathlon and endurance sports. Zafiri’s Will Ross wrote a post summarizing the diversity discussion, which included triathletes Angela Naeth and Chris Mosier, Dr. Tekemia Dorsey of the International Association of Black Triathletes, as well as USAT diversity and inclusion manager Megan Ritch.
• As you start to reboot and retool your training plans, one thing we can learn from Olympic athletes is that “some of the most successful athletes aren’t necessarily the strongest or fastest, but simply the ones who are best at staying motivated.” The Atlantic recently outlined “seven ways Olympians stay motivated through the training slog.” They write that “Mindfulness, self-talk, and an obscure chunk of the brain help elite athletes get through the training grind.”
• This analysis of how fish swim up to 70 miles per hour won’t really help you improve your swimming technique, but this article is worth bookmarking for when you have a moment to process how “fish demonstrate an effortless grace and power that humans can only dream of.” MIT Technology Review’s summary of research published by the Beijing Computational Science Research Center in China reveals, for the first time, “how fish generate thrust and even why certain anatomical structures, like tendons, are so important.”
• Lack of sleep has commonly been referenced as one of the side effects of the pandemic, but getting good sleep is also known to be a key part of training-recovery for athletes. Athletes like Lebron James and Roger Federer are known to sleep for 10 to 12 hours a day. Aside from physical health, The New Yorker describes how sleep is key to brain function in the article, The Work We Do While We Sleep.