The Upside of Injury: Getting Faster

Most triathletes will have to deal with an injury at some point in their training and racing lives. It can be demoralizing, debilitating, frustrating, and of course painful. But there can be an upside to injury too: Speed. All too often as Type A triathletes, we fixate on mileage, intensity, heart-rate, wattage, and other easily measurable and trackable outputs, sometimes at the expense of the less-quantifyable but important aspects of sport like technique, flexibility, and core strength.

An injury is a setback, sure. But it can also be a benefit when you use your injured time to focus on these overlooked areas of training to make yourself stronger, more flexible, and more efficient (not to mention more injury-proof for the future, since poor technique, lack of flexibility and low core strength are big contributors to most training injuries)

Unfortunately, I speak from all too much experience with injury, especially in the last few years. But as much as it has upset my training, my injuries have had some unexpectedly positive consequences. Coming back from three years in which I broke my hand, my arm, and my arm again (at the elbow), you would think that my swimming would be far worse than it was, say 5 years ago. But instead, I'm faster now than I've been at any time since college. I used the last few years to work steadily on the things that truly matter to speed in swimming: technique, flexibility, and utilizing my core more in my stroke instead of my arms and shoulders.

 The result was evident the other day when I swam a series of 200s in 2:20, a training time that I haven't hit since my days of swimming two workouts a day, six days a week (I'm only swimming 3x a week currently). I can't pile on the yardage that I used to, but I can make every yard count.

This year with a knee injury from a biking incident, I faced much the same problem with running. From last April, two months before Ironman Coeur d'Alene until now, I haven't been able to run more than a couple miles at a time, and until the last few weeks I've been holding my mileage down to 1 - 3 three mile runs a week, hardly an inspiring amount of mileage. Also, no speed work, no track workouts and no tempo runs. Those are three-mile jogs, not anything with intensity or difficulty.

So how is it that on a run with my sister yesterday, she came to comment "You're a lot faster than you used to be!"? I simply applied the same principle to my running that I have to my swimming over the last few years: work on the things that you can, instead of focusing on what you can't do. With running, this has meant a focus on holding good Chi Running form, working on a light and quick turnover of over 90 per minute, and putting a big emphasis on body composition. I've been tracking calories using an Android app called LoseIt, and have very gradually dropped over 10 pounds in the last year. I figure this makes it easier on my injured knee, as well as making me a little bit faster.

So if you find yourself staring an injury in the face this training season, you might think of it as a bonus, not a drawback. Use the time to work on the things you can: core strength, flexibility, technique, body composition, and see if you just don't come back stronger!

The Rake Mystery Solved

So the woman with the rake on the running path was my friend Carrie. We ran down to the local sand volleyball courts in the morning to do some technique work. After raking a swath of sand smooth, we ran down the smooth part so that we could take a look at our footprints and analyze our foot strike patterns and running gait. This technique of evaluation is suggested in the book Chi Running, and I've done it before and found it very useful. I think it would've been more helpful if the sand had been damp as you get a better footprint impression, so maybe next time we decide to do this, we'll wait for the morning after a light sprinkling of rain.

One thing I noticed from the last time I did this is that I have definitely moved to a mid-foot strike. I can thank Chi Running and my years of running in the Vibram Five Fingers for that I guess.

So here is what we were looking for in evaluating our footprints:

This is a midfoot strike. Thankfully most of our footprints looked like this!

Then, we deliberately tried to run with a heel strike for comparison's sake. This was surprisingly difficult now that I've trained myself out of doing it. It's hard to believe I used to run this way all the time, it feels so clunky and heavy now. You can definitely see where the heel leaves a much deeper impression and a push-off on the back end of the heel.

We also looked at whether our feet were tracking straight, and discovered that each of us has a foot that points slightly out, which spells future knee trouble if you don't address it. All in all, it's a good diagnostic tool to use!

Kaizen Meets Flow

If you're an athlete, you know what Flow is. You're either in it, or you're out of it. Like a current in the river, you know when you're moving with it or just in an eddy by the shore going nowhere. But how do you grab hold of it and wrestle it to the ground and make it yours? Now that's the challenge. It reminds me of the lyrics to that wonderful song from Sound of Music about Maria, "How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?, How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?" Achieving Flow can feel just that elusive.

The book Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi should be on every athlete's bookshelf as the author studies the state of flow (you might refer to this as being "in the zone") among many different people, some of them athletes. He comes to some conclusions about how people achieve flow that are, I think, useful to those of us who would like to be there more often.

For me in swimming, flow is more elusive than just its mental component and is tied directly to technique and my ability to hold that good technique through the fatigue and intensity of a workout. In a sense, I lost the flow of my swimming when I pursued the high-elbow catch two years ago. I managed to nail the catch, which definitely brought a lot more power into my stroke, but at the same time I lost some elusive groove in my rhythm, with the net result that I ended up slightly slower. If there's anything more frustrating to a swim coach than tweaking your stroke and ending up slower, I'd love to know what it is!

But in the spirit of Kaizen, which you may remember from a previous post is a Japanese term for "constant never-ending improvement", I have been trying to find that rhythm ever since. I've tweaked my kick, my hand exit, my hand-entry, my timing, but all to no avail. I am no faster than I was in December of 2007 when I started mucking with my stroke.

That is, UNTIL LAST NIGHT!!! I changed one more thing, one more little tiny thing, and BOOM, it all fell into place again. I changed the angle of my head when I breathe, just slightly more forward, and that was IT. My old rhythm came back, swimming felt effortless and free and beautiful and gliding and all of the things I remember it could be. I did a set of descending 500's and the last one clocked in at 6:51, despite massively fatigued arms from a morning workout of bench presses and pull-ups and a 1.5 hour karate class in the mid-day.

So today I am celebrating, not just because the flow and the groove came back to my swimming, but because I never gave up trying to find it, trying to change and improve what I'm doing there in the pool. Today I'm signing up for my first swim meet in over 20 years, and I think now I'm actually excited to see what I can do. I know the times won't be what they were when I swam in college, but I think they'll be good for where I'm at now, and that's all I need.

On the Journey To Swimming's Holy Grail

You might recall that I've been working on swimming's "Holy Grail", the high-elbow catch. Recently we all showed up for Master's swim practice in the morning and the pool was closed for repairs. Our coach took the opportunity to show me an exercise you can do in the gym (or at home with exercise bands) that allows you to build the muscle memory and strength into your arms to accomplish this maneuver. The idea is to keep your upper arm flat and elbow high when you start the catch, and you can verify that you're doing this with a mirror while you perform this exercise.

I'm sorry for the crack in the mirror right in the middle of my arm in these photos, but hopefully you can see what I'm talking about.




















Reaching forward like your hand has just entered the water.



















Make sure as you pull your hand toward you that your upper arm stays parallel to the floor and your elbow remains high. You can repeat just this part of the catch over and over until it feels natural to your muscles.

















If you want, you can rotate your hips to the other side and follow through with the rest of the stroke. I like to do five catches, then a full stroke, and repeat that. You can add weight or thicker bands for resistance.

And yes, that's me as the Black Knight above (you Python fans will know from whence this scene hails. One of my 365 Days of self portraits.

It's just a flesh wound. I'm invincible!