THREE on transitions in triathlon and life
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• 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.
