I am hoping to become an injury-free triathlete

"I'm writing you because I saw your video on how to strengthen the tibialis posterior. I have shin splints and I have suffered from ITB syndrome. I am a biker and a swimmer, and I am hoping to become an injury-free triathlete, but my shin splints are stopping me from running at this point in time. If I am currently suffering from shin splints and a moderate case tibialis posterior tendonitis will it helpful to perform this exercise. I don't want to exacerbate my condition as I am taking time off from running to try to recover.

Also, on a semi-related topic, do you think it could be preventitive to run barefoot? Not on the cement of course. I feel like running in shoes, almost always with arch supports, have weakened tibialis posterior and anterior."
Matt
________________________________________
Gary:
(This video has now had over 165,000 views - wow!)

This exercise, done as described in the video, about every 3rd day will assist with maintaining strong feet and ankles.  It targets exactly the muscles and tendons that you are writing about.

Barefoot running, simulated wearing footwear such as Nike Free or Five Finger running shoes will assist with keeping injury free.  If you have been raised in shoes take care introducing barefoot running.  Start with short jogs and with 2-3 days between simulated barefoot sessions, otherwise you may actually make matters much worse!

If you have shin splints and ankle pain then you need to do a course of deep tissue massage of the feet and lower legs.  Repeat one deep tissue session per week for as long as it takes for these to be painless massages.  Significant progress will be seen by the 3rd session if the therapist is doing a good job.

You will find many other articles and training guides on this website about this injury issue and training for events like triathlon and marathon.  enjoy the reading Matt!

_______________________________________

About this website

The advice in these articles is given freely without promise or obligation.  Its all about giving you and your family the tools and information to take control of your health and fitness.  Please give me your support by subscribing to my free email updates. Please shop at my Online Store. Please encourage your family and friends to do the same. While we may not always be able to compete with the big operators on price, we aim to more than compensate through personal service!



Your email address:

Powered by FeedBlitz

Do you have a question?  Email Gary: gary@myotec.co.nz. Include any relevant background information to your question.  Please be patient and be aware that I may not be able to answer every inquiry in detail, depending on workloads (My paying clients take precedence!). I will either reply by email or, most likely, by way of an article (Personal identifying details will be removed before publication).

A summer training programme for triathlon and running a marathon

"Hi Gary
What would be the best approach?

A new schedule for each month, reassessed according to progress, or a full 5 month programme?

Photo: Gary making his move during one of the PNP club's 40km cycle races around Aotea Lagoon circa 1980.  From 1978-83 he averaged 3rd-4th placing in multisports races in NZ (run, bike kayak), due mainly to experience with club-based racing in all three disciplines.  Message: If you want to get good at a discipline, then you really should be competing in that sport against better competition.

Can train during lunch breaks (limited to 50mins) and could train in the mornings if required. Evenings are mostly free but constrained by transport, so training best done at home.

Would like to get started on it as soon as possible now, given the legs seem to be better.

I purchased a Triathlon wetsuit on the weekend, so am ready to start triathlons now, and was thinking about the Scorching Bay one on Sunday as a starting point.

Note – should we include a combination of the below?

5km races on Tuesdays
Splash’n’dash races - Wednesdays
Stroke training classes at Porirua Poll on Thursdays
Turbine training on Thursdays (8.5km of hilly off road running).

There’s a clash of events in January and March.

December:
Wed 3rd – Splash’n’Dash – 250m
Sun 7th – Either Korokoro Stream 10km, or Scorching Bay Tri Medium (500m swim, 20km bike, 5km run)
Wed 17th – Splash’n’Dash – 250m or 750m

January:
Wed 14th – Spash’n’Dash – 750m
Mon 19th – Scorching Bay Tri – Medium
Sat 24th – Ocean Swim Capital Challenge – 2.8km
Sat 24th – Cycle Challenge – Mount Taranaki 150km
Sun 25th – More FM Women’s Tri – 300m swim, 10k bike, 3k run
Wed 28th – Splash’n’Dash

February
Sun 8th – Scorching Bay – Med 750 swim 20km bike, 5km run, or Long 1500m, 40km bike, 10k run
Wed 11th – Splash’n’Dash – 750m
Sun 15th – Sub ½ Marathon - Martinborough
Sat 21st – Lake Taupo Relay Race – would do approximately 20kms.
Wed 25th – Splash’n’Dash – 750m

March
Sun 1st – Kapiti Women’s Tri
Sun 1st – GutBuster
Wed 11th – Splash’n’Dash – 750m
Sat 14th – Contact Tri Series – 1500m Swim, 40km bike, 10km run
Wed 25th – Splash’n’Dash – 750m
Sun 29th – Scorching Bay – Long? 1500m, 40km bike, 10km run
(I may be overseas from 1 March – 14 March)

April
Sun 5th – Grand Traverse – run only (18km mountain run)
Sat 18th – Xterra – 1000m swim, 26km mountain bike, 11km run

May
Sat 2nd – Rotorua Marathon - ? if I don’t aim for Rotorua, possibility of team event in Crazy Man –18km mountain run only.

Thanks Gary!
Nice and motivated, so looking forward to the programme!

Cheers"
Sarah
______________________________

Gary:

Sarah, I do not like schedules, including dictating time and distance because the human body does not work that way: It varies so much in what it can handle from one day to the next and from week to week.  It is better to set yourself a weekly framework with general guidelines and to listen to your body.  It will tell you each day whether to do more or less; to go faster or slower.  As strength and fitness improves, so will the quality and volume of the training - It will just happen naturally.

Here are a few guiding principles to help you along your way:

• To improve fitness of any of the three disiplines, train at it 3-4 times a week for about 4-6 weeks.
• To maintain fitness achieved in any of the three disciplines, train at it 2-3 times a week.
• Do not repeat the same hard workout on consecutive days.
• The cardiovascular system recovers in about 36 hours whereas the muscluloskeletal system takes about 3-5 days.  So, if you hammer your legs in a hard run, swim the next day and then cycle the next, then swim, the next, then be back into full running (You can jog easy on those recovery days).
• The more nutrient rich food that you can eat, the more training and racing you can do and the better you will get.
• When not training or eating - rest!  And get a weekly massage.
• Make about every 4th to 6th week a lazy restful one - train but make it minimal - fit this week in with when you feel a bit off colour, when work is hectic or when your period is heavy.  
• If you want to get really hard and efficient at a sport, then train with the pros - join a cycling club and get involved in their local races.  Join a running club and do their summer 5km series.  Join a swim squad and do drills with the speedsters.  
• Concentrate most of all on improving the event you are weakest at.
• In the swim triathlons, you must be a strong swimmer to have any hope of being competitive, so work on your swimming.
• Practice racing triahtlons at every opportunity by entering tri and duathlon races that you can play at without wasting yourself while practicing competition skills like swimming, cyling and running in congested surroundings and making slick transitions.
• Triathlons, swimming and clycing are much easier on the body than running.  For about every 2km raced running, you must take one day of relative rest.  For cycling and swimming, take a day rest for each 10km and 1km raced respectively.  If you do a two hour triathlon hard, take about four days of easy recovery days, then take another 2-4 more days to steadily ramp up the workloads back to normal.
• Be flexible and listen to your body: If it really does not want to train hard then take it easy or have a rest day.
• Do not put all your eggs in one basket: Enter every race you can and have a great time over Summer and Autumn traveling the country soaking up the thrill of exotic and challenging events.
• If you have a race that is really gruelling, like the Gutbuster, that is not your big one for the season, then do it as a team rather than risk wasting your body and wasting far too much time recovering.

Here's how a week might look:

• Monday, Quality swim and Bike easy, maybe an easy jog
• Tuesday, swim and bike easy and run 5km race, or just an easy jog or ride in the am and do the Splash and Dash swim-run series
• Wednesday, easy run, long cycle and easy swim
• Thursday, 80minute off road run with us plus a quality swim
• Friday, easy run, cycle and swim or even a complete rest
• Saturday, quality swim and 80 minute run with strideouts
• Sunday, 3-4 hour cycle and then maybe an easy run and swim later in the day

Consider the long cycle as your principal endurance training for the week.  So long as you do quality running durign the week, there is no need to hammer the legs doing extremely long runs that carry a high risk of injury.

When doing the weekly Splash and Dash races you can do these as fast as possible if you are feeling good becuase these are so short recovery will be very quick.  

If racing the 5km, then make about evey 3rd one an attempt at a personal best.  Other times, play the race by running parts very fast and other parts just jog.  You can run the first few Km hard, plod the middle part, then race the last km hard.  Got the idea?

These short fun races really hone top end speed that will pay huge dividends during the longer races.  You could also look at going to the cycling velodrom on Sunday afternoons and joining in the club practice sessions.  Even though you will be tired from your long Sunday am cycle, the track work will develop impressive top end cycling speed that will make triathlon cycling a breeze!

Race weeks

This is easy: Have two days of rest in the leadup to any races and make any races on the tuesday easy and playful and not much more than that.

When racing, do not waste yourself.  Have fun.  Enjoy the occasion and ensure that you are not so wasted as to spend weeks recovering.  You can go totally hard out during the final one or two big events of the season.

Make the day following a race a complete rest and then ease back into full training over as many days as is necessary to feel your post-race recovery is as good as complete.

Which races?

Hey - who cares!  Just enter those events that grab your imagination and get you excited.  You will be fit enough to do any of the races listed above.  The only thing is to concentrate mostly, but not exclusively, on the type of event you are most serious about.  So, if it is the triathlon, then generally favour triathlon related events.  

Marathon or not?

Go for it!  After the Xterra, recover a few days then step up the running and back off on everything else.  Run up to 2 hours three to four times a week with an easy early morning jog thrown in daily.  Peak with 10 days to go then reduce to the point of doing no more than your easy morning jogs with 2-3 days to go.

Go to the E-books section of my website and read my E-book about training for a marathon and the ones on nutrition and the Lydiard Method.  Also have a read of my recipes.

Your email address:


Powered by FeedBlitz

Do you have a question?
Email Gary: gary at myotec.co.nz (Replace the "at" with @ and remove spaces). Please include any relevant background information to your question.

Back pain, surgery, glucosamine and triathlons

Hello Gary, I have just come across your website and I must say its bloody fantastic.

I am an age group triathlete (41year female) who last year had diskectomy surgery on my lower back and am now suffering from painful degeneration that has caused me to cut my running right down (replacing with crazy fast walking) and I am finding the swimming painful too. I have just started taking Glucosamine tablets and am trying hard to not take as many panadol as I am sure it cant be good for me.

My goal is to NOT go and have fusion surgery but to still be able to race and train comfortably for as long as I can.

I was interested in your u tube piece on the various joint supplements but am now a bit confused as to what I should be taking can you help. I have also been reading many online articles about it and some say its not been proven to work and some say its fantastic, what is your opinion?

I really look forward to hearing from you. "L"

________________________

Gary Moller responds:

"L"

Glucosamine works more often than not when taken in ample quantities, consistently and for several months. It can be beneficial for back pain because the spine is a complex series of semi-mobile joints, so the same principles of joint nutrition apply.

Read my book on back pain carefully. More or less, leave the spine alone and concentrate on mobilising the hips which may be very tight as a result of all the repetitive running, cycling and swimming you have been doing over the years. Doing so may relieve stress on the low back, especially when you walk and run.

Get a trained massage therapist to massage your low back and backside muscles, locating and focussing on painful "trigger points". You will require from 6-8 sessions every 4 or so days for relief.

Try a warm Epsom Salts compress on the low back and soak in a hot bath with a cup or two of Epsom Salts. The magensium and sulphur soak through the skin into the body and aid relaxation of muscles and nerves and with tissue healing.

All of the products mentioned in this article are available from http://www.myotec.co.nz/

Given your age and sporting background it is possible that you have burned your body of B vitamins and minerals, principally magnesium. If you are like 100% of everyone I have so far had tested you will be low in vitamin D. Deficiency in any, or a combination of these, will be significant factors in ongoing joint and muscle pain and failure to get better, such as you are suffering. If such deficiencies exist, then no amount of exercise, physio, manipulation, drugs, surgery or rest are going to provide lasting benefit. You must get the chemistry within the body right first for there to be a restoration of vitality and healing to the max.

Further surgery is your final option. Surgery of the type that results in loss of mobility of any joint, including in your lumbar spine, may cause additional stress on the joints located immediately above and below and they may eventually fail.

"L": Give the conservative measures of Mother Nature and Father Time a chance to work their magic. Relax! Put your feet up; your body is telling you that it needs a rest. Be lazy for a few months. Go on a South Seas winter holiday in Rarotonga and lie on the beach and eat good food for as long as you can. Find ways to pamper yourself (triathlons are punishment and you need counterbalances). Body and mind will tell you when you are ready to recommence training. Being in a fresh state, you may find that you have lost little and are very soon doing personal bests.

It is often the case in sport that more is less. Less can mean less punishment on the body and better quality of training and comnpetition. This can equate to injury resistance and higher end performances.

If you are in Wellington I am available for consultation.

Feedback about chronic stitch problems

"I emailed quite a number of weeks ago about chronic "stitch" as a beginner runner. I have followed your advice and have been taking 400mg of Magnesium and a decent multi-vitamin every day. Just thought I'd pop in a follow up email as you encouraged.

Ive managed to find my "running style" finally and although I wouldnt go so far to say I run crouched over, I have found that running in a more controlled manner by tightening my gut muscles and belly breathing has really helped - I find Im restricting the movement of my stomach muscles and keeping my wobbly bits from wobbling ;o)

After completing a Triathlon in early March, I found a few muscles I didnt know I had and was getting the stitch just wondering around the shopping centre and put the cause down to strained muscles. I am working on strengthening my core muscles starting with 50 sit ups a day and working up every week - I can take some motivation from Oprah who does 300 a day ;o)

Im very pleased to report that I managed 7.5km last night - probably doesnt sound like a lot, but considering I could only manage 0.5km around Christmas, Im really happy with my progress. The next step is to get fitted into running shoes after suffering from sore feet after the last few runs. Still aiming for a half marathon in October.

Thank you very much for your help and advice - I am really enjoying your website."



__________________________________________
Gary Moller comments:
I doubt it very much if Oprah is consistent with her 300 situps/day! It may be a case of her doing a Donna Awatere, if you get my drift. 30 situps done properly each day is just fine.

As is usually the case, there is never a single solution to conditions like cramp and this is why single factor solutions, like a quinnine prescription, seldom provide lasting relief.

A good place to start with understanding core exercises is to read these articles.

How much vitamin C should an athlete take to avoid colds?

It is the common experience of many athletes to finish an exhausting event like a marathon or iron man triathlon and feel surprisingly good; only to crash several days later going down with a virus an injury like tendonitis or feeling very depressed and tired or all of the latter. This may be fully or partially due to the delayed effects of the extreme oxidative stress suffered during the exhausting exercise (This can be either from competition or heavy training). In many cases, such as multiday events there is the added stress of sleep deprivation which hammers one's immune system.

"A practical way to reason is that, if a person carrying out heavy exercise feels that he or she has colds too often, he or she could (should?) try vitamin C.

The doses have been about 0.5 to 2 grams per day in the controlled trials and that kind of doses are safe for ordinary people (and cheap). In the US nutritional recommendations they consider that safe range goes to some 2 g/day. That is a conservative limit in my opinion, but with the current knowledge, I do not think it makes much sense to use substantially larger doses even though I consider them safe.

If we assume that the oxidative stress caused by the marathon would b protected against by higher vitamin C levels in the body, I think that the time scale would be initiation a few days before and continuing a few days after the marathon (one or two times per day I would think)". Harri

(Excerpt from correspondence between Gary Moller and Harri Hemilä, MD, PhD,Department of Public Health,University of Helsinki, Finland. Dr Hemilä is one of the world's leading researchers into the benefits or otherwide of substances like vitamin C and vitamin E).

Dr Hemilä's impressive work in this area makes fascinating reading.

With what we know about free radicals and how they are generated during exhasting or intense exercise, it would make good sense to anticipate excessive oxidative stress to your body and take preventive measures, if you are doing heavy training or have an exhausting competition coming up. This migh also apply to work and personal situations that may be emotionally as well as physically exhausting.

Using Dr Hemilä's advice as our guide, here is my guidance:

• If you are doing exhausting training take 1-2,000mg of vitamin C per day
• If you have a history of frequent colds, take towards the upper level (2,000mg)
• Take 2,000mg per day over the 2 days before an exhausting competition and for 2 days afterwards
• If you are taking Wagner Ester C, then you could reduce these guidelines to 50% and you will probably get the same protection or still better.
• Regardless of vitamin C supplementation, take a daily Super Smoothie that has red berries and whey protein added and eat plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.
• Go to sleep before 11pm every night and be out of bed by 7am
• Get plenty of sunlight on your body to boost your vitamin D levels. Get a blood test of your levels.
• An athlete requires more minerals and B group vitamins than most
• Other antioxidant food extracts like high potency garlic extracts could be added to the diet
• Have recovery days within your training schedule and take 3-5 days rest after an exhausting competition like a marathon.

I will be posting some guidelines about use of vitamin E which is currently a confused and controversial matter.

Even more feedback from happy campers - running and iron man

"Hi Gary,
You probably won't remember me but last year I emailed you for advice about training for my first marathon at Rotoura. You got me started in plenty of time and gave me some valuable advice about supplements being a 'mature' starter. Anyway I made the journey in a good time of 5hrs with no injury and a big smile on my face loving every minute of it. It's only as I started to look for the date of next year's marathon that I realised I'd never said thank you.

After Rotorua I decided to follow my real passion triathlon and 10 days ago completed my first Iron Man in WA in 13hrs 49mins 45sec. Despite having a coach in tow now I still follow much of that initial advice you gave me which was invaluable on the big day, temperatures reached the mid-30s and heat and me just don't go, but with all the good advice I survived, in fact more than survived, I was buzzing.

I still don't consider myself a natural runner and I'm not fast, but good advice such as yours has made me a very happy runner who can sustain reasonable speed and fitness over long distances and remain relatively injury free. I just wanted you to know how greatful I am for your advice."
"A"