Tri-Mania Boston - Come on out!!!

Next weekends Tri-Mania Boston is always a super event (March 28).  Come on out!  We are presenting on self monitoring.  What's that you ask?  Well, ever wonder how to make the best decisions when it comes to adjusting your training?  Ever ask yourself: "Am I tired or not?"  We will provide a clear description of the value of monitoring, how to do it in a way that works for YOU, and how it can provide you with incredibly satisfying sense of autonomy and competence in your athletic abilities.  

Click Here is the seminar flyer for more info!

We will review key variables you can easily monitor like resting HR, HRV, exercise heart rate and more.  But, more important, we are going to show you how to use that info to make great decisions regarding your training.  

Coach Will will also be working with the great folks from Fit Werx who are doing a seminar on the latest technology in cycling.  Will will help bring the coaching/training point of view to their seminar during the discussion of Power Meters.

When not presenting, we will be at our booth on the expo floor all day - come on out and say hi!

Will & Jason

Taking in the Whole Picture

Today’s post is a bit of a stream of consciousness ramble.  It’s fairly abstract.  It’s just a concept that’s really important to me as a coach (to both of us, Will just happens to be writing this post).  Because wellbeing and performance are not separate, and are not merely the precipitate of a hundred decisions… They are much more, and much more valuable than that! 

So with that said, when you think of your training, or your life overall, what do you see? 

Often, people are drawn into specifics.  Drawn into seeing amazing data, concepts, or aspects of what we do and who we are. What’s our resting pulse, our blood pressure, our vision, our mood status, our financial status, our marital status…  This seems to be something we all do.  It’s nice.  It feels like it helps each of us gain comfort, and feel better knowing that we “control” X area.

What do you see in the image below?

20150313_135625.jpg

Lots of dots right?  True.  I’ve zoomed in on my white board to take this picture.  I’ve done what is so easy to do when thinking about health, athletic performance or athlete development.  I’ve taken a snap shot of a moment, or of some interesting material, but I’m not providing a context or relevance.  I’m just focusing on a few things.

So again, what do you see here?

Yep… Still lots of dots.  This could be a specific diet strategy, or a test, or a training strategy… Maybe it’s a representation of how you sleep or rest each day, or could it represent your check book ledger or 401K balance? 

Ok, here is the same picture zoomed out.

It’s a person!  A whole person!  Yes, the way this started, you’re “forced” to see the parts.  Your forced into seeing the minutia and focusing on it – not what might be there… if you could see or choose to see a bigger image.

Seeing the whole is huge, it’s way too often missed in today’s age of biohacking.  Look, I’m all for monitoring a variety of physical and psychological variables, and I love to get into reviewing HRV and resting heart rate data relative to an athlete’s psychological and emotional well-being and physical performance.    I love to apply solid metrics as a way to better understand an athlete’s response, and their ability improve.

I’m just amazed at how often the concept of physiological, psychological and spiritual integration is viewed as soft and left behind once we start zooming in on metrics.  Metrics are great, but they just represent little parts of YOU.  They provide clues, but YOU are still the key.  You as a whole, integrated, amazing YOU!

We are comprised of billions of cells – of dot’s if I go back to the pic’s above.  And those cells work in an amazingly complex and integrated fashion.  Developing our self as a person who is well and who is an athlete is about fostering that integration of cells.  It’s about helping all of your cells positively move in the direction you are dreaming of going.

Pay attention to your parts, the cells or the dot’s if you will… they can and do provide some interesting information that can be valuable, but always remember, those cells create a whole… and it’s the whole you have to think about first!

Seminar Update!

We wanted to provide a quick seminar update today.

The seminar Will was going to do at Central Mass PT tonight with Mike Roberts PT has been moved to April 5th due to an unexpected conflict.  This will be a fun, free evening looking at in season strength training and the science and practice of awesome pacing!

Will is presenting on training with a power meter at the Tri-Fury spring clinic on March 22.  Please contact Paul pds27@comcast.net for details on this event – which will include other excellent speakers on sports chiropractic, massage and running mechanics.

Tri-Mania kicks off your 2015 season right.  It's an awesome day including an amazing expo, great seminars and clinics.

Tri-Mania kicks off your 2015 season right.  It's an awesome day including an amazing expo, great seminars and clinics.

On March 28 We are very excited to be opening up Tri-Mania (http://tri-mania.com/boston/seminars/)  at 9AM discussing how to adjust your training based on smart-self monitoring.  This seminar will introduce the key quantitative and qualitative variables you need to monitor, and how those variables can be used to adjust training.  This will include real world examples of monitoring led training adjustments that lead to solid age group performances including an age group world championship (xterra).

Also at Tri-Mania, Will will be presenting with our friends at Fit Werx.  Fit Werx is performing a seminar titled “A Tri-Bike Gear Showcase” which will cover several hot topics in triathlon bike technology.  Will will add the coaches view of the importance of using power during training, and will broadly review two power meter systems to fit any budget, and get you training with power today!

Lastly, but not least, our friends at EnduroPack’s http://www.enduropacks.com/products/enduropacks  have offered up some great product (a month supply of their full daily system of vitamins and minerals, a $75 value!) for us to share at our coming seminars.  So, if you attend… and you answer the pop quiz question/s correctly, you may walk home with a fantastic supplement system in addition to knowledge that will help you train better this year!


Seminars coming up! Free opportunities to learn!

It’s almost spring, which is hard to believe looking out at the 4-5 feet of snow covering my yard… But the seasons change, and that means winter is coming to a close, and your race specific period of training is about to kick into high gear.

We have several free seminars coming up, and it would be great to see you there!

At #Tri-Mania (@TriManiaExpo) on March 28 we are presenting at 9AM.  The topic is: Train Your Best Today: Self Monitoring Led Training Adjustments.  This seminar will present concise, scientifically sound, and practically useful strategies for adjusting your training based on your physical and emotional readiness to train.  After discussing the science of HRV, RHR, sRPE, Sleep, Stress and diet logging, we will provide concrete examples from actual athletes training logs, and show how modifications changed their training improving performance.

Also at Tri-mania, #Fit Werx (@FitWerx and @ FitWerx2) will be leading the Tri-Bike Showcase at 10:45.  Will is going to be a panelist in their discussion of bicycle power meters, providing the training point of view on these fantastic training tools.

If you are a Tri-Fury team member, come on out to the March 22nd club meeting.  Will is going to be presenting on the how and why of using a power meter to improve your training on the bike.

Will is also really excited to be kicking off the spring with a great series of seminars at Central Mass Physical Therapy and Wellness in W. Boylston MA, which he’s doing with Mike Roberts.  This seminar series is a fun week night-event that we target every 6-8 weeks.  This year the first seminars will be on Thursday March 5, starting at 7:15.  The topics are “Your Best Pace” and “In Season Strength Training”.  Will will be leading the Your Best Pace seminar which will focus on how what influences our pacing ability, determining goal pacing, and how to distribute our efforts for the fastest times.  Concrete examples from cycling, triathlon and running will be discussed to ensure you can meter out your effort best in your next races!  Mike will be leading a talk on how to implement strength training during the season.  He will cover the topic top to bottom regarding why in season strength can work, how to adjust training so it can fit best and the types of exercises having the most value.

We really hope you can get out to see us for one or more of these events!  If you have questions, feel free to contact Will at will@tri-hard.com or @willkirousis. 

Be well

Will and Jason