Where are we regarding triathlon and cycling? Frodeno and Vidal mentioned that they averaged
pedaling 350 watts per 40k at different races (Frodeno in Kitzbuhel and Vidal
in Madrid), none of them are in the front pulling the peloton.But as Macca and Jordan Rapp (both ironman
competitors who tried Olympic distance recently) said, paraphrasing: “it does
not matter the average but the peaks they have during the race that goes up to
900 watts for a few seconds.”The peaks are
something that we experienced as a team in Veracruz this past week.The only ones that followed Arturo Garza were
the ones that were able to increase to above 900 watts when turning a U.
Let´s take the following from Coggan´s book.
Taking
the above example, our competitors are trained to be in a peloton. Being in the peloton is
similar in required abilities to a criterium race for somebody competing in a triathlon Olympic format. This competitor with such abilities is also called all-rounder competitor by
Coggan.Yes, we need a all-rounder
cyclist for triathlon at a competitive level. Please read, 27 août 2012Triathlon Bicycling .We need to train for that purpose if we want to be
in the peloton.
It is interesting, but we do not have experiences
strong enough to impact our athletes or they are too scattered.Arturo Garza helped us with this matter.As juniors, our athletes are not used to
increase power to 900 watts in order to keep the wheel in front of them.Arturo kept the power as I mentioned for a
few seconds several times during the race; and at the end, they averaged 370
watts for the 20k ride. OUR BOYS WERE
AMAZED AFTER THE EXPERIENCE.WE THANK
ARTURO FOR THE EXPERIENCE. THEY NEEDED IT BADLY.It was during the National Championship
for elites.Our athletes were able to
run faster than Arturo at the end because he took the load of riding in front
most of the bike segment.Five athletes,
including Arturo, made contact with the first pack after 17k.
Our team is training for the World Championships and
this race was type C for them; there was no tapering.Our team has been back to fundamental for the
last month; so swimming has emphasis on improving technique as well as running,
our boys are from 18 to 20 years of age and they need a rehearsal on
fundamentals. The volume riding is around 400k a week.Riding with Arturo was timely right for them
on their learning curve.
The competition was held in the evening.It was hot, humid and the ocean had big
enough waves to disturb the swimming.All of the Mexican triathletes were present, including Crisanto
Grajales, 28th place in London Olympics, who finally won the race
running a minute and a half faster than our competitors.The experience of riding with Arturo made the
trip worth it.Our two athletes lost the
first pack and had to make the effort to catch it.
This is as
old as Socrates and perhaps even before, but this is how democracy works and
started with the Greeks.
In
the spring of 399 B.C., Socrates
confronted 500 Athenians, citizens, judges and jurors, in his trial initiated by the charges leveled at him by Meletus,
Anytos and Lycon. The trial began with a reading of the formal charges:
“Socrates is a doer of evil, and corrupter of the youth,
and he does not believe in the gods of the state, and he believes in other new
divinities of his own.” Last
Friday the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens gave Socrates a new trial,
assembling a panel of distinguished jurists from Europe and America to
reopen the case. This time the verdict was different. The vote by the
jury was a 5–5 tie, which meant Socrates was acquitted. The audience’s vote
was more decisive: 5 to convict, 584 to acquit. Of course, it was a little
late for Socrates.
Four hundred
years after Socrates, Jesus suffered the same end.We are repetitive animals that it is why my
supervisor Robert Seidenberg, MD said that to me,10 avr.
2012TRIATHLON PHYSIOLOGY FOR
DUMMIES AND THE TENDENCY TOWARD THE MEAN Robert did
many things for me. I thanked him when leaving supervision after a year; and on
the way of exiting his office in the corridor, he yelled at me from his desk
before I reached the door:“Be careful,
every boy born in a Catholic country wants to be like Jesus and ends crucified.”We want to be as our heroes, that is what
limits us.At the end, it is so simple,
“YOU SHOULD CHOOSE YOUR HEROES AND FOLLOW THEM IF YOU WANT TO BE CHAMPION.”
What is happening today?
You are right champ! We have not learned many things over millenniums and still do murderous rituals as in the past. That is why you are the champ.
In part I, we spoke about what Sergio Santos said and
that Psychology was doing things instead of talking. Pain in athletes exacerbated by environmental
conditions and inner world is nothing new; as we can see in this vignette
written by Simon Whitfield:
The worst moment, and it was nearly a complete meltdown, came during an ill-advised-pre-Athens training camp we set up for Brampton, Ontario, less than three weeks before the 2004 Summer Games...Bystanders thought I was overdosing and called an ambulance. When it arrived, the paramedic immediately saw there was no real physical distress but the signs of an emotional breakdown (68)... "Son, you're okay. Calm down. Get your act together. You´re fine. I recognize you. I watched you in Sydney. I know you can win." Simon Says Gold. 2009. Canada.
The above is a problem encounter by coaches.How much you push the athlete to
continue?When do you stop pushing
athletes to return to train? Is he/she faking it?What is happening in the life of the athlete?What doctor you choose for treatment of your
athlete?I will try to give you an
answer to each one of them, taking into consideration that you need to personalize
the formula; also, what I say is for high performance individuals that are 120%
involved with the process of “performing at the highest level possible.” Try
what is prescribed someplace for the “regular athlete” if he/she is not
involved 120%, otherwise you get into a lot of problems legally or you can loose your athlete.
What is happening in the life of the athlete?In the case of Whitfield and Jenkins, the
Olympics were around the corner and they were favorites to win gold.It is simple; there is a lot of pressure.We have routines to decrease pressure; eating
routines, training routines, relaxing routines and problem solving time with
collaborators.DO NOT LOOSE RHYTHM that
is the key.Work seven days a week on
the project; do not take time off.DO
NOT STOP TRAINING EVEN IF YOU FEEL SORE; change the routine to something softer
or lighter.Divert attention to
different subjects instead of thinking about the big competition and that you
are not ready or how bad you feel. This is easy to say than done, that is why I
wrote,3 août 2012Triathlon and
the Denial of Saint Peter
Do not choose a doctor who is not an Olympian
himself/herself, chances are very high that you are going to get unpleasant surprises
or loose the gold for that same reason.Remember research: “Patients are often not reassured by
investigations; in a study of patients suffering from NCCP (Non Cardiac Chest Pain),
44% believed they had heart disease in spite of a normal angiogram.[9] There is
some evidence that the process of investigation itself may entrench the
mistaken idea of cardiac disease.”WWW.MEDSCAPE.ORG Management of Noncardiac Chest Pain in Women.It is not just for chest
pain, this is valid for any kind of pain, perhaps not the 44% that you see with
patients complaining of chest pain.MEDICINE
IS MORE AN ART THAN A SCIENCE. There is an abyss when correlating
radiological finding and patient´s complaints.An abyss fulfilled by doctors depending on our idiosyncrasy. And on top,
the interpretation of radiological findings has more than a quarter of false
interpretations or idiosyncratic interpretations.
What you should do is what the paramedic did for Simon.
Listening to Sergio Santos, former coach of Vanessa
Fernandes, the one that changed the world winning 20 World Cups, made me think
about the Psychology of Triathlon for Outsiders.Nobody wants to spend time raising athletes;
coaches want to get triathletes already raised, well trained and obedient.Santos said: “If he/she needs a psychologist he/she
is no good for triathlon.”Santos is
right; so we should raise them in order for them to acquire the “requirements
to be a champion.”This is the step
before starting any kind of training.Do
we have the right people to do the job?
A few people have the right education to start
training triathlon.It is as Albert
Einstein said: “The rational way to educate is with the example.”Vanessa as well as Holy Avil (24 mai 2012TALENT IDENTIFICACIONADDICTIONS)disappeared from triathlon due to this lack of education.Vanessa said that “she wanted to be herself”
and Holy said: “But those great times do not outweigh the
miserable times. I don’t want to risk my health again, not just my mental
health, but my physical health. I want to be happy.”
How to enjoy ourselves and love what we believe in are
fundamentals that we learn during our growing up.How to enjoy ourselves brings the problem of
education in triathlon.It is difficult
to keep champions at a competitive level and even more difficult to make them
to enjoy the process.I tell my athletes
that enjoying life as we propose doing triathlon is hard and it takes time and
effort, compared to enjoying the bar that it could be learned in just a day.The coaches and the environment where those
athletes were in held the mentioned athletes at a competitive level until they decided
to make a move, out of fear or seduction by non-athletes.
Seduction plays a big role in our decisions.The athletes mentioned were seduced by
something different than triathlon, in place of the previous seduction by former
coaches and environment.When we keep the
activity at the level of seduction instead of something that belongs to us, it
is very easy to be seduced by something else.Seduction as Baudrillard
says:
Accordingly, Baudrillard argued that the excess of
signs and of meaning in late 20th century "global" society had caused
(quite paradoxically) an effacement of reality. In this world neither liberal
nor Marxist utopias are any longer believed in. We live, he argued, not in a
"global village," to use Marshall McLuhan's phrase, but rather in a world that is ever more
easily petrified by even the smallest event. Because the "global"
world operates at the level of the exchange of signs and commodities, it
becomes ever more blind to symbolic
acts such as, for example, terrorism.
"Is it to seduce, or
to be seduced, that is seductive? But to be seduced is the best way to seduce.
It is an endless refrain. There is no active or passive mode in seduction, no
subject or object, no interior or exterior: seduction plays on both
sides."
-- Jean Baudrillard, Seduction
Psychology of the outsiders starts with the ABC (Physical
Education 101) of physical activity and the search of enjoyment of this
activity.Without this requirement
mentioned above, visualizing victory or something pleasant after more than
30-40 hours a week of training is impossible.There are cultures and/or families that can teach the ABC of physical
activity, now in extinction, which I do not call outsiders and are the “natural
champions.”The Brownlees belong to this
kind of culture.They were seduced
by parents, teachers and environment to enjoy life the way they do. Years
later, that way of living became part of them as well as victory.We have to promote and be part of this
environment if we want to raise champions.
Psychology is not a talking process; it is a doing processin the form of education.There are athletes that pass the P.E. 101 but
have problems with advanced courses like Helen Jenkins: “I couldn't train for the first
two weeks, pretty much just swimming with a pull buoy, I couldn't run or ride.
I went to see a few doctors and had scans, although the scans showed nothing
that would be causing my pain. Which was good in a way as there was nothing
hugely wrong like a torn tendon or fracture but very frustrating as I had a
massive amount of pain.”Please
see,3 août 2012Triathlon and the Denial of
Saint Peter“Patients are often not reassured by
investigations; in a study of patients suffering from NCCP (Non-cardiac-pain),
44% believed they had heart disease in spite of a normal angiogram.[9] There is
some evidence that the process of investigation itself may entrench the
mistaken idea of cardiac disease.” WWW.MEDSCAPE.ORGManagement of Noncardiac
Chest Pain in Women.
Regarding triathlon per se, it is difficult to
globalize it.Education is a huge
problem and there are no triathlon centers in the world.As I mentioned, timing is necessary to acquire
the benefits of training and timing is tight to education.In Mexico we try to globalize sports and we
end up practicing something that looks like triathlon.Our age groupers that have the chance to
compete in the Worlds are ex-pros or on the way to become a pro. There is no culture to support a group of amateurs because there is no background to start practicing triathlon; as far as I remember just 7% of the population "walks/runs" an hour a week (according to our census).
The USA tried to globalize some athletes and they were
training in Australia 10 years ago, that is how the females were able to
compete at a good level, Barb Lindquist was the main example.Darren Smith, after leaving the Australian team,
built a group to globalize triathlon with some success, but it is obvious that
it is very limited (eight females).
Sarah Groff is one of the Darren´s athletes. Education, once more, places the biggest role in the success of
globalization.Triathlon is a new sport
and the knowledge about the triathlon´s demands are not well known by the
majority of the athlete´s families.They
do not know that practicing Olympic triathlon is very different from practicing
ironman.They are two different sports. Macca knows more than anyone the differences.
We have tried to develop a culture before speaking of globalization to support triathlon in our community, but education has been the problem. Triathlon is totally different from training soccer, basketball, diving, archery. Triathlon needs somebody involved 365 days a year if he/she wants to be at the top. Rest 365 days a year if she/he wants to be at the top. One has to love what he/she does and lives for it, if she/he wants to be a triathlete with some success.
TRIATHLON IS FOR ALREADY GLOBALIZED PEOPLE and not the opposite.
