ProLine Sports, Nutrition Blog

Form and Function

It's a common, yet sad, motto for so many endurance athletes. The thought that slugging away mile after mile, that's all you need to get better. Listening to co-workers and fellow athletes talk about their training and goals, I feel they're missing out on what could be the most important part of their training: form.

A better way to describe form is to use the word biomechanics. The word form seems to miss much of what you as an athlete are going for when you work on it. Form is just scratching the surface of what you're truly after. What you really want to think about is your biomechanics. 

In the latest installment of Inside Triathlon magazine, T.J. Murphy describes this as (and the title states) "Making the Invisible Visible". A very proper title for such an overlooked aspect of endurance, and better yet all sports. 

Some people are just flat out fast. Take Usain Bolt scorching up the track or Ryan Hall flying through the streets at a pace we can (maybe) only think of doing for one mile, and he's racking them up over a two hour run. But it's safe to say neither of the two aforementioned athletes got to their elite level by talent alone. Somewhere along the way somebody pulled them aside and developed their form (biomechanics).

Usain Bolt getting the perfect amount of knee drive to propel him forward at epic speeds, and Ryan Hall placing his foot at the perfect spot under his body to not only propel him forward, but at the same time, preserve energy. That's the true beauty of biomechanics. Biomechanics is a two-fold winning situation. On one end they help you get faster, and on the other, help prevent injuries.

In his article, T.J. talks about the benefits of weight training, with the likes of Chrissie Wellington nonetheless, at the beginning of the article, but towards the end he drives home a list of philosophies every athlete (from the star quarterbacks to gangly cross-country runners) can utilize for better performances. The base of just about everything is the core. Not just core strength, but mostly core stabilization. Having a stable core is like having a properly tuned engine. It allows all the other smaller parts to run smoothly and fire properly at the right times. Say you have a loose core while in the swim leg of a triathlon. You're going to have issues in timing your pull and kicks. Not only will this slow you down, it will also waste priceless energy you will need later on in the race.

Going to the gym needs to be more than just stacking on muscle to your frame, it's a place to put your body through the motions of your sport under a load. And even doing your basic lifts properly all still stems from your core. Keeping your spine locked in proper position for each lift or movement is key. And this is especially key if you're just starting out to lift. Rather than throwing 250 pounds and squatting just because the guy before you could, start slow, light, and easy. Start with body weight squats, and get them right. Just the other day while I was stretching at the gym, I was watching a young teenager with 225 pounds on his back, with terrible form. By the time his knees got to 90 degrees, his back was arched forward and his head was facing down. Especially at this age, biomechanics of this lift are much more beneficial than the gratitude of a few friends standing around cheering you on. It takes a lot for me not to go over and help them. But with my bum knee, I'm not one to talk if I'm not even allowed to squat anything more than my body weight let alone have my knee go past 90 with that weight.

So before you go out and start building mile after mile on the road, trainer, or in the pool, take a step back and look at the mechanics of your sport. Where is your foot landing when you're running? What does your back look like while in aero position on the bike? Do your hips move up and down with every pedal stroke? Do your hips drop ever time you reach forward in the water? Learn some proper technique and form. Build it into your schedule a couple times a week to do some form drills or watch yourself in a mirror. As most endurance athletes will tell you, preserving energy with better form is on the same level as getting faster. The more energy you have for that last mile, or getting off the bike, or even in the 4th quarter, the better you'll finish. For me, I have noticed it in all three sports in triathlon. Especially in my running. Switching from a heavy stability shoe to shoes that get my foot strike under my body and more in my forefoot makes me a lighter runner on my feet. For videos and in-depth analysis of some mobility exercises checkout mobilitywod.com.

 

-Dave

Back in the Pool... Kinda

So after a good stint of weight training almost every day and doing my physical therapy, I decided this week was a good week to get back in the pool. The hard part; I've lost my drive for getting up at 4:30 to get in my early swimming. So I have to settle for lunch time swims until I get my lazy butt out of bed when that alarm goes off.

I've been back in the pool twice now, and it feels pretty good. I'm not using a watch, so I'm not over eager on my 100m splits or anything like that. I'm just getting the feel again. It had been over three weeks since I had swam last, and man does it feel good! I missed the cardio.

With all the strength training I have been doing, my stroke felt more powerful than I remember. However, I seemed to be fatiguing earlier than normal. But honestly, that was about what I expected. I didn't realize it at first, but I really did miss the monotony of swimming lap after lap. Even though I can only get in a mile over my lunch break, it's a good start. 

As the weather in Illinois continually looks nicer and nicer, it's getting harder and harder to be patient with my knee healing up. I just want to be outside doing things as much as I can. Yesterday I saw someone riding their bike on my way home from work. I wanted nothing more than to throw on my running shoes and just jog for 20-30 minutes. It would feel amazing, I know.

But, it's back into physical therapy yet again. My knee has been bugging me for a couple days and I'm not completely sure what I did. While swimming I only used the good leg to push off and left both legs dangling in the wake. I made a conscious effort NOT to use my legs as propulsion, just merely balance. I'm a triathlete anyways, we don't use our legs when we swim right?

-Dave

Time for Real Physical Therapy

At this point in time, I'm about 2.5 weeks out from surgery. To be quite honest, my leg is feeling great, all things considered. I'm feeling great walking around. After a while of sitting at my desk at work, I'm only a little stiff-legged at first, but it gets better after taking about 10 steps or so. Every once in a while, I completely forget that my knee has had a major surgery recently. The scabs from the incisions are almost gone, and I think I won't really have any scars to speak of long term. It's truly amazing how far this type of surgery has come.

My physical therapist continually tells me to take it easy, and he really emphasizes it. So I'm doing my best to maintain that for his sanity. The first day I went in, I had told him I was on the elliptical for 20 minutes, and he made me stop that right away. However, I can't let it completely stop me from keeping up some sort of cardio. 

My first real session was last night. I consider it a real session because I was actually doing mobile things and pushing my knee. Mostly I'm working on range of motion and getting back some of my muscle, especially in my quads. I can definitely notice the difference from my left knee to right in terms of muscle structure. The big thing I'm working on now is to stop any possibility of muscle atrophy in that right quad. So, throughout the day I'm doing quad sets to tighten the muscle and keep it activated as much as possible. By the end of the work day, it's honestly pretty sore. But I know it's from how much I'm working it, and not from any sort of damage. 

I was also working on some balancing on my right leg, which felt good. I would put all of my weight on my right leg, while moving my left leg out in front, to the side, and to the back for sets of ten each. I'm pretty positive I'm ahead of the game, as this we really easy and I didn't feel any pain or any sort of fatigue from it. 

Another exercise was some walking butt-kickers. Not the typical loosening up your muscles and joints kind, but just to activate the hamstring and again, work on some range of motion. This one felt good for me as well. I can really feel how much more I have to go when I compare my right to left. But, it still feels good doing some actual work to get back to 'normal'.

With all that being said, and my physical therapist's ideas on training, I'm really thinking of getting back into the pool and pushing my cardio a bit. It's been too long, and I truly don't feel it's going to hurt anything. However, I will check with him and explain my thought process and the type of swimming I will be doing. Being a triathlete, I especially use my upper-body during the swim phase, saving my legs for the other portions of the race. I still need to invest in a pull-buoy, though. That would take even more pressure of my legs and focus my swimming on form and upper body work.

I go back again tonight, and I'm already looking forward to it, just to see what I get to do next. Hopefully there's some more time on the bike!

Dave

1st Endurance Pre Race Capsules or Powder? Both!

Nice little piece from the folks in NZ discussing First Endurance Pre Race powder versus the new capsules. The videos can also be found on our website as well. A side note that we will be the only retailer to initially carry a time-release version of the 1st Endurance Pre Race Capsule starting the end of Feburary 2012.

 

"Why did First Endurance come out with PreRace capsules?  It’s a great question and one that we’ve been getting a lot of lately.  And well, it ultimately came down to listening to our athletes and customers. We created PreRace capsules for a couple of reasons:

1.  The biggest reason is that we got quite a bit of feedback from customers and sponsored athletes who wanted us to offer PreRace in capsules. They told us that, while they love the formula"...... read more

When You Can't Train, Cross Train!

Instead of taking the new of my torn ACL and post surgery physical therapy with a heavy heart and feeling sorry for myself, I'm doing what I can to stay positive and look at this time as quality recovery time from a hard fought season and lots of time spend training. I've been out of real training for about two weeks now. Even though I was still putting in hard efforts while my ACL was technically torn, I wasn't really in any sort of off-season mode. I was still plugging 60+ minute runs and some pretty heavy rides. But now, being in the post-op stage and starting rehab, things have changed.

Instead of the long runs, lap after lap in the pool, and countless revolutions on the trainer, I'm at the gym, busting my 'you know what' and working out any possible lingering injuries that may have plagued me. I couldn't recall and sore muscles or nagging injuries that haunted me during the past season, so I'm trying to hit a bit of everything. At least in terms of stretching. Really the only muscle I can't stretch properly at this point is my right quadricep. That being caused my the lack of range of motion in my right knee having someone else's ACL (allograft) instead of mine. It feels great to be doing lots of range of motion exercises for my hips, to be quite honest. I think that was something I missed out on a lot of last season. Putting in 13+ hours a week of training makes putting in quality stretching and ROM (range of motion) exercises tough. I never really had any issues with it during the season, but I know as I get older, I most likely will, so I best start working on those now!

Now back to my cross training. The hard part for me with weight training, is I don't get that same feeling of accomplishment that I do when I put in some solid time in any of the three criteria for a triathlon. However, the endorphins that kick in when I'm lifting at max capacity are quite intoxicating. It's also amazing to see how quickly my strength comes back. Within two weeks of lifting, my main lifts are back to what they were when I was in college where I spent a lot of time in the weight room after soccer was done for me. However, now I am so obsessed with keeping my HR up, I don't spend much time sitting around between lifts. I generally will grab a light weight or find something to do between reps of my main lift. Those things can range from front raises with a twist between sets of bench to work on my shoulder strength and core simultaneously. Or, if I'm on a flat bench, I try to knock out a good set of crunches or calf raises. Sometimes I put in some body weight squats so I can keep my musculature around my knee working.

This is kind of a half-ass version of crossfit training. I would like to do some classes that resemble crossfit, however, I need a fully-functioning knee for that. I'm hoping as my knee progresses, and I continue my rehab at my friend's gym (Your World Fitness) I can slowly start working in some of those type of exercises. I'm also looking forward to doing some work with my trainer from High School who now works as a Personal Trainer on a new MAT System for rehab and recovery. I'm hoping as my rehab comes along, his work and studies will help get me back on the road running feeling fit and strong, ready to take on some solid races later in the season. Until then, it's back to the gym followed by some ice, compression, and elevation.

And for those who were wondering, here's a quick look at my knee post op, no brace, after my sutures were removed. I also received an electric stimulation machine to work on my quad in hopes to keep most of the muscle working.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dave

Back at Work

It's funny how good I felt the day of surgery. Getting out of the hospital, I was really feeling good and not much pain. I really thought it wasn't going to be that big of a deal going back to work. The thought actually crept into my mind about going back in for the afternoon. Especially since the guys on my team and I are pretty overloaded with work and another designer in our group just left for a new job, too. But, I did as I was told and went home and rested. Good decision.

I know I've talked about the first few days, so I won't go back into that at all. But now having been back at work for two days with my leg immobilized and walking around with either no crutch or just one, the days are really taking it out of me. I'm a really active guy, so I figured a little extra precaution and taking extra time to get things done because of my knee wouldn't drain that much out of me, but boy was I wrong.

Monday wasn't too bad, albeit it was a long day. I moved my desk back down with the rest of my team and I now have a seat with a view! But moving a lot of my stuff was tough. However, my boss and fellow-designer did do the heavy lifting of bringing down my Mac tower and monitors, as well as my backup battery, so that saved a bunch. I just had to empy out my drawers and load up my utensils and rearrange them back at my new desk.

The doctors that did my surgery had told me, in general, most people will take the next week off of work, then go back slowly. I really didn't have this option. Had I done that, I would have left my boss to man the front alone, because the other designer was leaving for vacation on Tuesday, and with our excessive workload, it would have been a nightmare. So I decided to buck up, take my pain meds, and get work done to help him out. 

What really surprised me was how much I actually move around at work. I know it's a desk job, but if you stop to think about how many times you shift your weight around or turn your chair, it's quite a lot. And for me, each movement means readjusting. I'm either putting pressure on a few spot on my leg because of the brace, or I'm putting my hip in an uncomfortable location that makes my lower back start to ache. There's really no winning. So by the end of the day, I'm beat. All I want to do is go home, lay down, eat food, and decompress. But I stil need to elevate my leg for a while, take the brace and wrap off to let it air out and help alleviate the swelling, and try to get some icing done. Which is illustrated in the pictures below.

             

The nice thing is having the ice machine that I can just wrap on to my leg that you can see in the second image. Instead of strapping cold and hard ice to my leg, this pumps ice cold water from a cooler through the tubes and around my leg into a gell-like container that wraps all the way around my leg. So it constantly feeds through col water. Having everything off except the dressing (image 1) is nice to let my leg breathe and also do one of the exercises I mentioned last time. Putting my heel on the pillow and letting my knee use gravity to straighten out. It's a welcome relief from having my knee slightly bent throughout the day. Then when I'm back in bed, (image 3) the brace goes back on for another night of uncomfortable sleep. For some reason I can't get good sleep. Even with the pain meds, I wake up hot, uncomfortable, and frustrated a handful of times each night. The worst part, I know, is that the more sleep I can get, the better my body can heal. So I'm feeling like the lack of elevation at work, and lack of sleep is somewhat compounding on top of each other. I'm hoping to make up for it this weekend by not doing much. But we'll have to see! 

-Dave