Welcome to Effortless Swimming, the podcast for swimmers, triathletes and coaches. Join Australian swim coach, Brenton Ford, as he reveals the latest techniques and information to improve your swimming. Let’s dive right in. So I want to welcome everyone to this Google Hangout with Bobby McGee. I came across Bobby from a friend of mine said, oh you should check out what this guy is doing online, watch his videos, he’s just got some really good tips with running. So I’ve been watching Bobby’s videos for the last couple of months and I really like what he’s doing. I think we’ve got a very similar coaching philosophy and that’s why I wanted to get him on a call today because just watching some of his videos have improved my run and so I know you’ll probably be able to do the same with yours. So Bobby, welcome to the Google Hangout session. Thanks Brent. I’m looking forward to it. I must say I like your stuff too because when we started communicating I got a chance to

look at some of that stuff and we had that chat about some of your backgrounds are fantastic because of those great colors. Well I think most people are probably familiar with your background, your Olympic run coach but for those that have been out familiar with your background, give us a bit of a run down on your background and some of the athletes that you’ve worked with. Yeah, I started off, I was a high school teacher for 12 years and I’ve been coaching, distance running in some form or another, this is my 31st year actually of coaching it seriously ages me. And I started intensely coaching triathletes in 2002 and I started with triathlon myself in 1985 but middle distance runners first, a bunch of milers and 800 meter runners coached the kid who ended up in the top 10 in the world for 1500 and one mile and then in 1996 I was coaching almost exclusively coaching road runners and I coached the Olympic champion

in Atlanta in the marathon and then I had some world records on the road and some world champions on the road as well. In there I’ve also coached some age group race walkers, some amateur race walkers to world titles and then the last decade has been full on with the triathletes, mostly with the ITU style triathletes but I see a lot of long course athletes for the biomechanics specifically and then I do some of the long course pros, I help them with the mental skills as well. Awesome. And what we were talking about earlier and what I want to get out of but hang out today is just giving some 5, 6, 7 tips that triathletes can take away and go on using their training and their racing to start improving right away. And so we’ve talked about a few of these things and we’ve written them down but the first one is running off the bike. So what’s the difference between someone who’s, you might be starting just a normal

run race with someone and they might beat you in that race but then you might beat them off the bike. Can you talk about some of the differences between running off the bike and normal running? Yeah, the research is still in its early stages you know with the Olympics only starting for triathlon in 2000. The research is in its early stages, some of the Italians are doing some good stuff but in 2009 the AIS did some work at the World Championships and found that a pretty large percentage of age group is almost more than a third of them I think actually lose access to their neuromascular patterning when they’re running so they neurologically are incapable of running off the bike as well you know anywhere near close to the form that they would have if they were just running in an open race. And then I think as much as 17% of the pros suffer from the same thing. But what happens is is when you get off the bike good runners probably have about

a 5 to 1 ratio in terms of elastic return to power and a poorer runner has a higher power component and in triathlon on the bike obviously that’s all power and so if you’re a power type rider and then you try and back that up with a power type run you’re going to run into trouble very very quickly and then another factor that plays into that is if you have a low rating especially for age groups that are doing riding a time trial position on the bike and let’s say they have a rating you know 75, 80, 85 reds a minute on the bike and then they get on to the run and they need a higher rating than that it’s a very very difficult neuromuscular transition to make and so what we’re doing with the long-course athletes at the moment and with the ITU kids is we’re trying to get them to run with a higher rating so that their run is less predicated on strength and that’s something we spoke about yesterday so if so you’ve got a triathlete and their rating on the run

might be I don’t know 85 so you’re recommending that on the bike they should be rating about the same about the same. You actually want them rating when they’re racing depending on how fast they are so some of the you know in some of the slower paces that people are running say six minutes a k or something off the bike then they’re gonna rate a little lower they’re gonna rate probably around about 88 to 90 when they race but typically you probably want them in the mid 90s and so it’s not as easy as just moving your rating up on the bike you know so if you typically have habituated yourself to produce good power at the lowest possible heart rate to meet the demands of competition at a low rev rates let’s say 80 and then you want to move your rev rate up on the bike so that you can run better you’re gonna be inefficient on the bike so it’s a it’s a newer muscular learning curve as opposed to just moving the rating up on the bike so it’s pointless gonna ride

90 on the bike not producing good power having your heart rate go through the roof just because you you want to run at that same rating so it’s much more of an organic process to to get to that as I said yesterday you know people need to bike proof themselves to be able to run well and part of that is going through that process of moving up their rating and another thing is what’s what are some of the different approaches in training to short stuff versus long stuff so someone who’s doing a sprint distance triathlon compared to half Ironman or an I mean well it’s very important that if you’re a sprint distance racer and it’s and it’s cutting thrust type racing a lot of surges a lot of accelerations a lot of different paces of running and then obviously a much higher intensity of running at a for a very short distance then your training benefits a lot more from be able to max type training intermittent type training where you’re doing part like gear changes that kind of

thing whereas if you’re a long course athlete you really want to train yourself to be rock steady you want to be able to you know want to be a pacing genius and be able to run just steady steady steady no matter what people are doing off the bike at the start of the run you really really want to start out smooth at the pace that the conditions allow and that your fitness allows and stick to that pace no matter what’s going on around you and so the training approach is very different and in fact there is some anecdotal evidence that people that do intermittent training get really really fit they have good numbers but they don’t race as well over the longer distances and vice versa if you’re doing a lot of steady type of training you know which is your race-based training for for the shorter distances for the sprint in the Olympic distance then and you get involved in these races where there’s lots of changes of pace lots of hills lots of accelerations

quick quick starts out of T2 then you don’t do as well so it’s a very much the law of specificity you want long steady stuff for the long steady races and you want the more intermittent explosive fast-paced running for the shorter races and you’re talking about also about building the muscles to be able to deal with that and so you’re talking about your low-intensity type running and how much how much low-intensity training should you be doing well you know the research is is pretty clear here that your physiology likes consistency the most so the more consistent you can be the better and when you when you’re running a little slower you know it’s the age-old conundrum for triathletes what happens is is that the guys go out the door and they’re only running five times a week or they’re only running four times a week and they’re running counterparts are running seven eight nine ten eleven times a week you know they do in two days and stuff like that

which which very few triathletes do and so when they do go out so infrequently they tend to push the pace a little bit and when they do that they don’t have to worry about backing up the next day with the run because they’re going to be on the bike or they’re going to be in the water or both and and and what what happens is is from those faster pace runs they just don’t develop that consistency they actually detrain from training too hard too often and so they need to slow down a little bit because what they’re really trying to do you know is increase their bone density a little bit if they come from a swimming background they are trying to develop some consistency so they can back it up the next day with some more run training because you know those repeated run efforts are other things that that lead to good conditioning so you know I I’m always telling the triathletes to slow down and then they such they such tech geeks that you know they find out from the lab or

from some kind of test that their training pace should be five minutes okay or 430 okay and they get up the door and they look at the watch and they try and run 430 okay off the bat but maybe their body needs six minutes okay until they settle down so you know it’s it’s I think a good coach with the triathletes run is always putting on the handbrake you know because you can you can bike a lot more you can swim a lot more because those environments and those activities are more conducive to volume whereas running you have to have a different mindset you have to be very patient you have to wait through it hmm that as a kid when I was training for swimming that’s one of the things that I obviously didn’t know about that kind of training keeping your heart rate lower and training at the lower intensity so a lot of the longest stuff whether it was 2100s or you know to a 3k set I did it where I was really pushing

the limit and working hard because I like to work hard and that’s one of the things that that a real you know that a really good athlete that’s one of the things that they develop over time is that they learn that training isn’t always about going as hard as you can and pushing yourself and being absolutely knackered at the end of the session it’s about being specific about your training and training the zone that you need to train for that session or for that set absolutely I couldn’t agree more I think you know at least that go hammer and tongs at it all the time they get to a point where they just don’t want to do it anymore and I think that’s why a lot of people gravitate up from from the sprint and the Olympic distance to the longer courses because it’s just a lot more tolerable and the intensity is a lot more tolerable and you know in order to build consistency you know 80 90 percent of your run training including your bike and your swim I

mean I think the swim is a little different but I think 80 90 percent of your swim and your run and your bike needs to be super super easy and it must be really really enjoyable so that you can prepare yourself to do those quality workouts you don’t really need a whole bunch of quality run workouts to to bring on your run to its to its top level but you do need a lot of consistency and that you can get by going a little easier yeah definitely that’s with my school that’s something that we’ve done this year towards our motor season is that we’ve done a lot more longer stuff that’s been lower intensity and it’s paid off big time the results this season have been really good because of that so it’s um it’s it’s a bigger it was a big light bulb moment for me I think when I realized but that’s the kind of training that you do need to be doing even even some of the sprinters need to be doing this low intensity type stuff oh absolutely yeah you know it’s it’s so very

interesting but most people can do a good level of quality work you know when I’m working with a marathon runner or half marathon runner half Ironman Ironman type of athlete you know and they come from an explosive background it’s other basketball players or their footy players or something like that and they really like to get their their heads around a real juicy tough workout and you know just get on the river then hammer but but you know they just don’t develop quite as well and if you can slow them down build some some consistency over time have them run for for six weeks continuously without some kind of breakdown or niggle or illness or or you know injury then the fitness benefits are amazing as I said earlier you know your physiology smiles on consistency and very few athletes can consistently chat train at a very very high intensity all the time they just go flat yeah definitely and what I’ll with this with this hangout with this podcast I was going to make it

about the similarities between running and swimming because I think there’s a lot a lot to be said for the similarities there and one of the things is consistency you know if you’re not in the pool three times a week then you’re just going to lose feel of the water so you know if you can get in there three four five times a week then you’re just going to be able to maintain that feel of the water and continue to improve and the same things with your run I guess you know I’m sure you see this problem all the time people that come to swimming you know in their mid 20s or their mid 30s or even in their 40s and then now come to swimming and they just just take so long if if they even even ever get there to have a feel for the water now the same thing is true of the run you know my good friend Libby Burrell who’s head of triathlon Canada high performance she’s always saying she she doesn’t want the kids away from the water for more than 24 hours but

because of the intense nature of running and the recovery requirements we tend to stay away from our running a lot more and similarly athletes that haven’t grown up in endurance running haven’t got the skill and we know that duration builds fitness in running but frequency builds skill and so if you have an unskilled runner somebody who’s not smooth somebody who runs with a lot of power they need a lot of frequency and so I say you know if you’re running four or five hours a week or three or four hours a week and you’re doing you know four-hour runs to achieve that you probably better up gonna run six times for 45 minutes or something like that you know yes so it’s exactly the same as swimming if they’re not skilled as runners they need frequency they need opportunities to do that and they can’t run too long because then their form starts to deteriorate as they fatigue both posturally and centrally and when

they fatigue then their run form goes off and then they are vituating bad run form and so you know when you go to these long course races you actually see people running far worse than when they are actually competing in an Olympic distance triathlon because they strong enough to stay in some kind of a form in the Olympic distance race but in the long course race they just fall apart and they just look terrible and they lose all those advantages of their fitness because they’ve lost their form and I was watching one of your videos the other week and you’re talking about the forward lean of running and so not coming from running background I’ve never really heard about you know you that you should be leaning forward and and to what angle but can you talk a little bit about the forward lean of running and what that’s got to do with your speed and cadence and things like that you know the forward lean sometimes gets a bad name because a lot of a lot of

lifetime runners you know they don’t even think about it they just get into their posture quite naturally and and some of the elite runners are they look quite kind of quite upright but the whole thing with the forward lean is to increase your opportunity to maintain your pivot so you know people need to lean from the ankles they need to be loose enough in this soleus which is the lower calf muscle and the Achilles tendon to be able to do that but it’s much more a connection of having your spine be in neutral in other words if your shoulders are too arched back all right in that in that fashion there then that makes you upright if your if your if your chest is too far down and you bent at the hips that’s no good as well you need to get yourself up into that position there and if you’re leaning too far forward for your speed and your feet are coming into the ground from the back and kicking dirt forward

kicking gravel forward when you’re running then you’re leaning forward too much so it’s basically just like an athletic position like a tennis player or something like that being with the weight on the balls of their feet with their shoulders hanging slightly ahead of their hips and their hips hanging slightly ahead of their ankles where if they stop pushing down with their feet it would take a little step and a little stumble forward so it’s just a creation of a forward momentum and it comes by by aligning the chest just bringing the chest down in the front so that that little forward momentum is created but it’s it’s not it’s not a massive forward lean that is difficult to maintain puts pressure on the low back and causes you to to over rotate it’s just a very subtle it’s called dynamic balance but it’s really a very subtle static imbalance it’s just that little fall forwards so that you know if you if you were if you were running along and you stumbled and

fell you’d fall forward you wouldn’t fall straight down and you’ve got some if you go to your website which is Bobby McGee dot com I think there’s a good video on the homepage there that talks a bit more about it so correct if you if anyone’s looking for a more visual way to explain it then you’ve got a good video on your homepage there so go and check that out the other thing is midfoot and heel striking so again another new concept for me is a swimmer but can you talk a little bit more about which types of runners heel strikers which types of runners are midfoot strikers and you know what’s the difference and what are the advantages and disadvantages I guess of each of them yeah well you know right now with the advent of of Lieberman’s study on on African runners, habitually unsharred runners and the bookborn to run we you know forefoot running and midfoot running has become you know a sexy concept and a lot of shoe companies have jumped on the bandwagon and a lot of

minimalist or sort of barefoot running type shoes have come into play but the truth is is that changing somebody’s mechanics that dramatically is highly risky and for probably a hundred percent of age groupers it’s not a good idea to suddenly become a midfoot striker I think that doing some barefoot running you know running around on some grass or some synthetic turf or something like that to strengthen your feet for five or ten minutes before or after a running session might be a good idea but to change your gait that dramatically is not such a good idea the big thing is is if you are a heel striker to make sure you’re an effective heel striker and if you’re a midfoot striker be an effective midfoot striker so an effective heel striker lands on the outside of the heel all right and then the foot rolls like a partial wheel straight onto the ground and slightly inwards so you know it’s slightly that away so that it loads the plantar fascia over here all right but if

there’s a two-beat strike if the heel hits the ground and then just immediately after that you have that forefoot slapped down to the ground that’s not such a good idea that could lead to shin splints and all sorts of problems and what happens with the heel striker that has too much support in their shoe and this is why you’ll notice that the drop in running shoes has got a lot lower in the heel than it used to be in the past what happens then is is the foot decelerates too quickly that way inwards as opposed to transitioning forward and off the middle toes and then with the midfoot striker the big problem is from the bike and triathlon that that the achilles and the calf muscle gets too tight and then the athlete lands on the midfoot and then as their foot passes underneath them they are unable to put their heel down on the ground because that tissue is too tight and then the tissue has to hold the heel off the ground for the entire stance phase

of the gate and that that’s not a good idea either so if you’re a midfoot striker you basically landing just behind this bone here and then the heel is rolling down and then you’re coming up the foot so the heel just kisses the ground there’s just a little support phase there but you know those things are almost subservient to to what your shin angle is doing so this is your foot over here and you’re hitting the ground that shin angle should be vertical or even landing slightly forward if I’m traveling in that direction so that shin angle vertical as soon as that shin angle when the shoe starts to bear weight when the foot starts to bear weight is leaning backwards like that now you starting to develop trouble for the you know the ankle the the heels the knee the hip the low back and so on so it’s it’s a moral question of getting your foot underneath you what impacts the ground first is a little less important and we find that a lot of top road runners

and especially triathletes would probably benefit from being heel strikers just because their calf muscles work so hard when they’re on the bike yeah right I’m curious as to what what do you think a lot of run injuries come down to is it technique is it the type of shoes or is it a combination you know I think that you know most running injuries that the largest percentage of running energies are neither knee related and then then ankle and foot and I think it comes down to in triathlon probably most of the injuries are sourced on the bike you know I’m not I’m not I’m not a fan of a very small pedal especially if you’re an athlete with bigger feet you know if you if you have a you know size 11 or a size 12 or something like that and and the pedal is on a very narrow part of the foot there it’s too easy for the foot to do that when you’re pedaling all right and you know whatever your tendency is that could create problems so I like a nice broad pedal that

supports the foot very very well and so I think a lot of times pushing heavy gears low low revs on the bike those things all set us up and then the running exposes the injury that has been created on the bike but I think that footwear might might be problematic but I think that if you took an actual cross-section of the community that that footwear has actually made it possible for people to run more than they would have been able to run without a slightly more technical shoe okay right and then is there is there something that you look for in a shoe then is that shoes that you tend to avoid oh well you know I as a general rule of thumb I would just say you know you want a good bit of room up in the front of the shoe you want at least a thumb of room in the front of the shoe you know so that when you are doing you know triathlons and you’re running downhill and you’re putting your shoes on and not not lacing them very effectively because you you know

you’re in a hurry to get your shoes on and to race or you need a little bit of room in the front of that shoe the second thing is is choose the least amount of shoe that works for you if you need a little bit of support and it’s clear that you need a little bit of support and you are overpronading not just normally pronating then a little bit of help from a shoe works if you have you know if you’ve been getting injuries because the shoe is up too high at the back try a little lower heel lift but I wouldn’t go from a structured shoe to a to a minimalist shoe in one go it would be disastrous and so you know there’s there’s no specific model or even specific type of shoe that I recommend but I do you know probably from a footwear standpoint with triathlons you tend to have to buy a lot of equipment anyway they might not be changing their shoes up often enough and you know we talk about a shoe having about 500 Ks before that EVA is blown and I would say with the average

triathlete I’d probably change that shoe up more often especially if there’s an imbalance if you put your shoe up on a shelf like this and you look at the back of the shoes and the shoes are standing this way or this way it’s probably time to get rid of those shoes anyway. Good point good tip now the other the other thing that so one of the guys that I coached you did the Iron Man Melbourne yesterday he said he was telling me about the walk run method for people who are doing you know quite long triathlons or long running events I’ve never heard of that before but walk run method is basically where you’ve got a long event you might be a marathon and you’re going to walk for part of it and run for part of it which I thought was a strange concept but it’s done by the done by the top guys and top girls and should be done by age groupers as well can you talk a bit about that? Yeah the run walk has brought a lot of success to a lot of different levels of athletes with the

elites it’s a really really good way to to move up their volume and for a beginner who comes safe from a swimming background or from a non non sport background or wants to get into the sport of triathlon and immediately has to deal with that kicked in the butt feeling of getting off the bike and then trying to run it works for for all of the communities across the way so for example a beginner would get a lot further would get much less problems with injuries would gain fitness much quicker if they just took on a proto bottle walk a minute run a minute and you know and then you know if you’re a better athlete and you’re doing these longer races you can do anything from six minutes of running and 30 seconds of walking all the way up to say nine or 10 minutes of running with one minute of walking but the best way to test it is just go out on a on a longish run that you typically do one week and go out there and just run it normally and have a look at what your time is and

trying to equate the conditions and then the next week go out there and run it with a walk run interval just choose an interval say maybe run with for nine minutes walk for a minute and see if you come up with a better time so the ideas is not for you to run slower during the nine minute section you’re running slightly faster and in the walking section also very very important is that you don’t dawdle that you really hope that you you know you walk at a good pace you know you know it’s it’s not that difficult to get get around 35 minutes if you’re walking for a 4 or 5k you know and so that kind of pace you’re not you’re not losing a lot and the thing too with a walk is it should have a much higher cadence than what we’re used to walking at the arms should be up and it should be very reminiscent of how we run so that the transition is not so dramatic we don’t lose lose our rhythm but it’s it’s an absolute no-brainer and the only thing that stands between people

having tremendous success with the walk run method and insisting that they try and run the whole way is the ego they just it just they just don’t be seen walking at the beginning of a race and if you proactively walk sometimes I’ll take an Iron Man athlete nuns and say to him have you ever run the entire marathon you know and when you get to the end of the marathon are you getting kudos for the fact that you did a six hour marathon and you ran the whole way or do you want to go five hours and run walk it you know so it’s it’s it’s that it’s it’s that dramatic so it’s a good way to build volume over and above that 10 15% rule it’s a great way if people walk run they feel so much better the next day they can also walk run for so much longer than they could just run for it’s vascularly better for them it’s easier to digest your food stuffs and get your liquids down as very much easier to keep your pacing up yeah that’s a that’s a great point and so someone’s

sort of on the hit a plateau with their run speed or you know with their run times and that’s something that they should definitely consider trying and as you said it’s a no-brainer so you just go out there and try it and see what your results are like you know people forget that when we started interval training you know I don’t know when it was in the 20s or something the idea was is that if you want to run a mile a little faster you can only run a mile that fast at some stage you have to fractionalize the distance run a little bit more than the distance in chunks and then run that little bit more faster and then put it together in a faster mile and all the walk-run method is is interval training for endurance athletes you know so in other words it’s not easy for people to run 42.2 case you know and so if you fractionalize that they’re able to run a little bit faster and and they also forget that they’re not standing still during the walk break it’s also not

forced on them it’s proactive they still moving forward and they catch so many people at the end there as soon as they just do one race like that they sold yeah yeah that’s a that’s such an interesting concept so I mean the furthest I’ve run is you know half marathon and I think that would have been a good method to to use in the race because I certainly struggled at the end in the last sort of five k’s and we’re very slow so yeah with my next long race that’s I’m definitely using it simple rule of thumb if you’re going up a hill and you’re trying to run and somebody walks past you you should be walking too I’m sure that’s one that’ll stick with people if they’re getting passed by someone walking walking up a hill exactly now the other thing is building strength so we talked a bit about how important strength is for running because once you lose your strength and lose it as you call it structural integrity that’s when you know things turn to turn to crap so to

speak so what are some exercises that you get your runners to do to build strength so that they can maintain form towards the end of a race very very good question I think as a preamble to this what’s important for people to realize that your foot’s on the ground for about a third of a second so it’s a very short period of time and no amount of strength work is going to help you maintain integrity in the third of a second because it’s just too slow so people have to do strength work in order to be able to do power work and power work is what you need for your running so obviously your primary muscles in your legs your quads your your soleus muscles your lower calf muscles your hamstrings your glutes especially your external rotators the little glute muscles at the top at the back those need to be not only strong but they need to be powerful and so if people could progress from doing you know regular squats regular single-legged squats moving to a little bit

more of an explosive pattern maybe doing you know little explosive squats a little bit more explosive single-legged squats and then even doing some small hops and some small bounds lunges are fantastic just start off really really cautiously and then build your way through but a lung is a power move you step out you carry your full weight you go down you come back up again so those kind of exercises are very very important and one of those YouTube clips that you’ll find too is one of the king exercises that that I recommend for runners especially in triathlon and it’s the monster walk where they strengthen those external rotator muscles which are so very important to maintain stability when we run and then the last thing is is you know we bike we go hilly courses we swim all of these activities massively fatigue our posterior chain our muscles that keep us upright and then when those muscles fail when we run we actually pull our shoulders back we lose a

mechanical advantage so triathletes must go to a lot of trouble to keeping their their back strong and also keeping their pecs loose at the same time so that they can maintain their postural integrity and you were saying yesterday that if you haven’t got destruction integrity nothing else matters in terms of your nutrients and what you take in and that sort of stuff yeah it’s like a bottleneck you know I come from South Africa originally and and one of the problems that we have with with cheaters is that they have a genetic bottleneck there’s not enough genetic material and so the species is in danger and so you can do all this like they threshold training and do all this tempo training and do all this you know this great heat training you can prepare yourself for a race you can teach yourself to be a fat burner you can you can be technically very sound but if you if your structure that the strength in your groin in your glutes and in your hip flexors and in your

knees and your ankles and your back fails you have no access to all of that fitness and so the primary part of running that is so key is that is that microsecond from the time that your foot starts to bear weight until it leaves the ground if your hip on the opposite side is dropping and your spine is turning into an S and that knee is coming down and you’re losing vertical height you’re going downwards and then you have to gather that all up and bring yourself up it’s going to be a long day in Kona that’s right so that’s and the same goes for swimming is if you haven’t got the the structural integrity to be able to maintain your form towards the end of the race then you know nothing else really matters as you say so from you guys the swimming guys talk to me the concept of you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe that’s right you know if you look at if you look at say a 200 or 400 free in the other professionals but the sort of low levels you will see a huge change in the

technique in that last 50 meters when someone starts to hit the wall and that piano jumps on their back and you can just see their form go out the window but the guys who finish off strong and and do finish the front end of races they’re the guys that are able to maintain this their form the whole way through so it’s really important in whatever sport you’re doing yeah people you can see in running to those people that are staying on top of the ground and now they have some little bounce and little flick in their step versus those people that are starting to sink into the road and their heads are going up and down and they’ve got me and they’ve dropping their pelvis and stuff like that you can see that you know it’s not necessarily the engine that’s failing it’s it’s it’s muscle endurance that’s costing them now I’ve got some questions here in the chat pad and I say that we there must be a limit of 10 people so apologies to the people who might not be able to get

into the the chat pad here but we’ve got two questions the first one is from Alison she’s asked what exercises would you have runners do that have issues or injuries with patellar tracking or are there any exercises that you’d recommend yeah yeah for sure for sure and the first thing to remember is is that the lateral quads the quad muscles on the outside are much much bigger and much much stronger than the quad muscles on the inside and so that they’re always going to be dominant and especially when you ride the bike they’re going to be more dominant than create patellar tracking problems the thing second thing to remember is is that the muscle the primary muscle on the inside of the knee the vastus medialis is it has its own nerve root and it’s a muscle that can tend to switch off so you’ve got to make sure that that muscle is activated and firing and then from a functional standpoint your best bet

is those single-legged squats and then progressing on to two hops to keep to keep that right and then kind of tiny tape is a good way to just encourage that that that patellar you know tracking to be correct in other words you you’ll put the this was it was your knee and this is the outside of your leg you know putting the tape this way around that knee sometimes helps it start tracking and get it get it firing correctly another thing to do is to stay very very close to your your foam roller and to do a lot of active release work for your quads and your hip flexors especially for your rectus femoris and that’ll that’ll protect your knee from bending too much and that and stabilizing that patellar more. So what the foam rollers are they’re pretty cool but they’re good they are I’ve only got on to them in the last sort of 12 months that they can really get stuck into your ITBs and your muscles they’re awesome.

Don’t get a wimpy one either all right it’s got to have a piece of PVC pipe in the inside at least. I’ll have to step it up I think. But another question here from Riviera, I hope I’m saying it right, Riviera and she’s asked what technique do you recommend on a steep downhill mountain marathon run? So I guess what sort of technique do you need to have on a downhill run? You know downhill running is very problematic for people especially you know if you if you’re more of a heel striker it becomes even more problematic but the idea is to realize that when you’re going downhill is not to step out away from the surface but actually to step down the surface to try and get your foot a little closer to the ground so you’re not stepping away and then dropping an increased distance it also helps a lot if you can if you’re doing a long race is to pick your rating up so that you bear less weight per step. If you’re doing a short race like

a 5k or a 10k off the bike then you know you might be strong enough to just let go and let momentum take you down the hill and take and take nice big rangey steps because that’s free speed but in the longer races like a mountain marathon as you said you want to take little smaller steps a little shuffle step down the hill try and take it more in on a mid-forged section it’s okay if your heel comes down almost like you want to scrape your foot down the hill and have the sole of your shoe handle the friction rather than hammering your hip and your knee especially your knee so that that’s that’s that’s something to look at if you can get a look at some some footage of the great Kiwi triathlete Bevendocati running downhill there’s nothing more to be said if you watch him run downhill he’s about as good as I’ve ever seen anybody run downhill. Fantastic. Now if you get your hands down and and you know just

open your elbow angles a little bit and just widen your arms a little bit sorry Brent. No that’s right I was gonna say you’ve also put some videos so you’ve got a new program or course coming out where you’re talking more about this sort of stuff and it’s going to be a very in-depth course you’ve got some free videos that people who have joined this and people that are listening to the podcast later on as well but they can watch these videos and get some more visual demonstrations so for the guys that are on this hang out here you can just see that button on the bottom right-hand side that says free running videos so you can click that and go and watch some more videos about Bobby talking about this sort of stuff so I’ve never chanced to go through those yet but I’m looking forward to doing that after the call and the other thing is there’s a bit of a discount there for people who are on this call who will

listen to the podcast later too on Bobby’s upcoming product as well so you can get a bit of a discount there and full disclosure I don’t make any money from you know if anyone buys this I just wanted to interview Bobby on this sort of stuff because firstly I’m interested to improve my running but I know that some of the videos and some of the stuff that I’ve got from Bobby’s videos have been have been that good that you know I want to share with them with the triathletes that do follow the effortless swimming stuff so thanks so much for being on the call Bobby and you know I’ve learned a lot and I’m sure we’ll probably do another one of these you know down the track too because I think they’re really good value where people can ask questions and you know it’s not often that you get to learn things from such an experienced coach like yourself so I’m yeah I really appreciate it I’ve just got another question come through so I’ve done my dirty sequence but I’ll

I’ll just answer this question is asked this question as well so I’ve got someone’s asked you mentioned that running frequency is more important than duration as an Ironman athlete looking to run sub three three fifteen mark on what how much threshold training would you recommend you know that the problem with thresholds a great question by the way the problem with threshold training is is not in the training itself but in the definition of training so in Ironman I would focus more on what I call a steady state running and also on on the laws the principle of specificity so once you get into those last four to six weeks before the race you’ve got to spend a lot of time both both in your brick workouts and and in in other pure run workouts working on exactly the pace that you want to run to get to get that sub three hour running and so they become very very important but the duration you know a tip that I can give you there is that sometimes the

duration leads to deep training because it’s hard to recover from temper runs like that so I give my athletes things like four by five K or you know even five by five K so they’ll do 25 K at that intensity will say a 90 second break in between or you know athletes that maybe are not quite as durable they might do you know 2 K repeats they might do you know 10 2 K repeats a 2 K repeats at that pace with a little bit of a breakdown in between so I hope that that that gives you some idea that’s just fine again all right now I just wanted to say to the folks on the podcast that you know that that website is Bobby McGee dot com forward slash run transformation preview you know if they if they look at that they’ll they’ll they get a get a sense of those free videos and what the what the course will be like that the course will be three components will be running mechanics and drills run training and then also a section on mental skills awesome yeah I’m looking

forward to this because I’m going to get the program and go through it because I think it’s going to be very useful and there’s friend of mine who he’s not a very good runner at all he’s he was a Australian team so he could swim he could swim really well but he just can’t run to save his life so he’s he’s pretty keen to go through the videos to because he wants to develop his run so you’ve probably got a change on your hands there with him but you know he’s really looking forward to it as well so nothing gives me more pleasure than getting getting one of the big guys you know one of the one of the Aussie Iron Man guys not not not Iron Man triathlon but you know your guys it’s life-saving Iron Man guys to to run faster I’ve worked with some of them in the past and it’s a joy to see a guy you know coming in at a hundred kilos running at four minutes okay it’s pretty impressive yeah that’s exactly right

it’s a lot of momentum they’ve got there absolutely especially on the downhills yeah that’s right that’s right well thanks thanks again for that Bobby this is um I’ve really enjoyed and I hope I hope the audience has too so again go to Bobby’s website Bobby McGee dot com all the free videos at Bobby McGee dot com forward slash run transformation preview and you can get those videos there so I’ll put the links on the website as well on SwimmingPodcast.com and yeah and this has been fantastic so thank you Bobby thank you Brent thanks everybody thanks for listening in thanks for joining us on the effortless swimming podcast to get transcriptions bonus videos and see the first to hear about new episodes go to swimmingpodcast.com