Preventing Injuries While Triathlon Training pt 1

dimensionsIn our athletic careers, many of us have experienced injuries. Some of these setbacks only seem to sideline us for a couple of days or a couple of weeks while others are capable of ending our careers. It is important that you learn how to listen to your body before you end up injured beyond repair. Never take your health for granted, and make sure that you are always behaving defensively when it comes to preventing injury.

Preventing Injuries When Swimming

Proper technique is vitally important not only for swimming more efficiently but also for preventing injuries as well. Making stroke changes can be really difficult, and so getting injured and ending up having to change your stroke can be really difficult. Here are some tips to improve your technique so that you can prevent injuries while you are swimming:

  1. Join up with a masters team, because having a coach on deck is going to work wonders when it comes to making improvements in your stroke.
  2. Ask someone to videotape your swimming, because looking at a moving image of your stroke habits is going to help you visualize the proper technique while you are working your way through the pool.
  3. Consider attending either a swim camp or a triathlon clinic.
  4. Consider spending some time alone in the pool so that you can better focus on your technique by spending time in a pool sans a pace clock and the competition that comes with being in the pool with other swimmers. Pick a day that you can spend on your own, swim easy, and concentrate on improving your stroke above all else.
  5. If you are feeling pain or feeling tired, or if your stroke appears to be falling apart, simply get out of the pool. Any and all of these three symptoms are capable of creating bad habits in your stroke that are more than capable of leading to an eventual injury.

Preventing Injuries when Cycling

Being bike fit is absolutely important when it comes to maximizing your strength and decreasing your chance of sustaining and injury. If your bike is off by a simple millimeter, it can create an ache in your body that you were not expecting. Here are some tips to improve your technique so that you can prevent injuries while you are cycling:

  1. Ask an expert to take a look at your position to make sure that everything is correct, including your crank length, your stem length, your seat height and the fore and aft position of your seat.
  2. Once you have determined your optimal position, you should mark everything down using black electrical tape or something similar. This way if something slips or your bike has to come apart, you can easily adjust everything back into the proper positioning later.
  3. Never ignore your cleats, as they too are capable of becoming loose and shifting, and this is capable of causing alterations in your position. Make sure that all bolts are tightened down properly.

Photo credits: jurvetson

Originally posted 2009-09-22 03:05:02. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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5 Steps to Improving your Triathlon Swim

swimmingSwimming is a sport that can be extremely technical, and as a result, determining how you can concentrate on improving your triathlon swimming capabilities is often difficult. Here are five steps that you should be taking in order to improve your swimming capabilities for an upcoming triathlon. There is no real specific order to these tips, and all five can go a truly long way when it comes to helping you achieve your own personal goals for swimming, regardless of what they are or what your experience level is.

1 – Improve your Master’s swimming in order to improve your triathlon swimming ability.
You should move into a slower lane so that you can work on the improvement of your strokes. If you belong to a Master’s team, you should not feel as if you have to keep up with your swimming mates every time you work out because everyone has different swimming goals and you need to work on your own goals rather than everyone else’s.

2 – Improve your swimming habits in order to improve your triathlon swimming ability. One of the most important habits that you can break is to prevent your arms from crossing over. This is one of the most common bad habits that appears in swimmers as their arm crosses over to the other side during the pull. Avoid this by keeping sure that your head is not moving when the rest of your body moves, taking care to pull yourself in a straight line.

3 – Improve your ability to keep the feel in order to improve your triathlon swimming ability. If your toughest sport is swimming, then you need to make sure that you are keeping a feel for the water, getting in the water at least every other day to maintain your awareness of balance within the water.

4 – Improve your lungs and your ability to breathe properly in order to improve your triathlon swimming ability. Make sure that you are mixing in hypoxic training when you are working out. Consider a set of 4x100s breathing with every 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th stroke by 25, taking a 15 second rest in between each set of 100. Your lungs are going to really thank you when you race and they are properly prepared for the challenges.

5 – Improve your own personal weaknesses in order to improve your triathlon swimming ability. Spend more time working on your own weaknesses than your strengths. If swimming is your weakest sport, spend more time working on it than anything else. This is the best way, above all else, to improve your capabilities in the water.

All five of these tips are simple and straight forward and they really are capable of going a long way when it comes to increasing your capabilities as a swimmer.

Photo Credits: heyerin

Originally posted 2009-07-21 05:31:39. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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