This past weekend I held one of my training camps in Boulder Colorado and the most often heard question was about tips that can for sure help you get faster in each sport. This will be the topic of my newsletter article this month.

The Swim. The most important thing to learn is to properly catch the water and keep the pressure and force on the water all the way back in each stroke. Think of the hand and forearm as your paddle if you were rowing a boat. That paddle needs to be firmly placed in front and you push straight back as far as you can. Similarly you need to do that when you swim.Get video taped and see exactly what you are doing . Developing the proper catch and pull allows you to do very well specially on wetsuit swims as the wetsuit pushes everyone up over the water and it’s the big equalizer in swimming. As a swimmer I never liked wetsuit swims for that reason, everyone was that much closer.

The bike. My best tip to become a better cyclist that not many think of is to compete in time trials. It seems to me that many triathletes do run races to help them prepare but hardly ever do cycling races. Most communities have bike time trials and you can often join the event without the need to get a license. A bike time trial is a solo bike effort against the clock. It’s called the race of truth as you cannot hide on the draft of your competitors. A time trial is exactly how you will ride on your triathlon except you want to go all out on these and end as hard as possible. These bike time trials teach you how to hurt and manage your effort evenly for the race. Such a big effort will boost your fitness markers and also expose you to what going all out on the bike is like. In triathlon the bike effort can be 90, 80 or 70 percent and that will feel easy once you experience what 100% is.

The run. My best tip to improve your run is to stay healthy and injury-free thus allowing you to stay consistent. Consistency is key in any sport but on the run it’s paramount. This means running easy when it easy, getting a weekly massage to keep muscles healthy and losing truly unwanted pounds to minimize the wear and tear that running brings to those with additional pounds on. When I look at many peoples best run results they come from months of injury free run training.