By Coach Mike Ricci
page two In June, I went to the Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Colorado Springs to work on my Level II Coaching certification. There was an enormous amount of information to be digested but I am going to hit on the highlights as I see them:
Swim: The theory going around these days with Olympic caliber swimmers is the lack of a finish on the swim stroke. It seems that the experts think that as you push from your hip toward your midthigh your arm is decelerating and therefore you are wasting energy. The idea now is to pull your hand out at the hip, and restart your stroke.
Bike: Concerning your pedal stroke – the new idea here is to pedal not in circles but in squares. Across the top, down the front, along the bottom like you are scraping mud off of your shoe, and then up along the back.
Run: The big talk at the OTC when speaking of running is really all about one thing cadence. Along with cadence comes ground contact time. The less time your foot spends on the ground, the faster you are running. That makes sense to me. Try to get that cadence up to 90+ RPMS.
Nutrition: In terms of hydration,
how do you know how much
water weight do you lose while
running in the heat? Well – it’s
pretty simple actually. Weigh
yourself naked before you run, go
for your run, and come back and
weight yourself again (naked of
course). Add back any water that
you drank during your run, and
you will know how much fluid
you lose during a run. The best
case scenario would be to create a
chart of how far you ran, at what
pace, and the day’s temperature.
The last column would be how
much you lose when you run for
that pace, temp etc.
Born to Suffer
By Coach Erik Cagnina
The official D3 Sufferfest - Ohio style - has just been completed. It
consisted of the Great Buckeye Challenge Half-IM on Saturday,
followed by a quick trip up to Cleveland to check out the Cleveland
Indians that evening, and wrapping things up with the Mosquito
Creek Olympic Distance triathlon Sunday morning. Coach Mike
and Iona made the trip out and would be representing Boulder for
the weekend festivities. More...
Page Two
In’s and Out’s of Stretching
Part II
By Bo Richardson
Last time we discussed the problems with passive stretching, four factors that can cause decreased flexibility, and the need for specificity. Now that we have identified some drawbacks of passive stretching, let’s discuss solutions for improving poor flexibility. As we discussed in the first article, unless an injury has occurred our muscles don’t shrink or shorten, but they are simply in a state of increased tone or partial contraction. So to improve flexibility we need to inhibit this state of partial contraction. We are going to discuss three excellent ways to inhibit muscle tone thereby improving flexibility: increased vascularization, partner stretching, and active motion.
