The cartoon, The Jetsons, had it right all along—a lot of us now have a mini computer on our wrist. Smart watches are becoming more popular and more sophisticated all the time! On this episode, join TriDot Coaches Jeff Raines and Will Usher as they discuss how to get the most out of your multi-sport watch. They'll cover the pros and cons of some popular brands of watches and then delve into some of the most utilized features, such as GPS tracking and heart-rate monitoring. Jeff and Will also discuss how understanding the capabilities of your watch can enhance your triathlon training. Know when to do your TriDot session by heart rate, power, or pace, learn what displays are best to view and track primary metrics during your training, and hear how additional measurements and health data is viewable on your athlete dashboard. Whether you are looking to get a new watch or just better understand how yours works, this is the podcast for you!
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TriDot Podcast .207
Mastering Your Multisport Watch
Intro: This is the TriDot podcast. TriDot uses your training data and genetic profile, combined with predictive analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize your training, giving you better results in less time with fewer injuries. Our podcast is here to educate, inspire, and entertain. We’ll talk all things triathlon with expert coaches and special guests. Join the conversation and let’s improve together.
Andrew Harley: Hey everyone! Welcome to the TriDot podcast. Okay, everybody right now look down at your wrist and give that multisport watch that you’re wearing a nice little tap, a little high five, a little thank you for all the good work you do for me because today we are talking about how those little guys work and how we as triathletes can get the most out of them. That’s right. It is watch day on the TriDot podcast and the first coach here for this conversation is TriDot coach Will Usher. Will is the head coach and founder of the Precision Race Team, a top ranked team in the European rankings. He is formally a captain in the Royal Military Elite Close Protection Unit. Will has been coaching triathlon for over 20 years. He has competed in over 200 triathlons and duathlons ranging from local races to World Championships. He is still competing and his current focus is Ironman and Ironman 70.3. Will, thanks so much for coming onto the show!
Will Usher: Thanks for having me. Yeah, I’m excited to be here and talk watches.
Andrew: Also with us to talk watches is Coach Jeff Raines. Jeff is a USA Triathlon Level II and Ironman U certified coach and a TriDot Master Coach who has a Masters of Science in exercise physiology and was a D1 collegiate runner. He has over 60 Ironman event finishes to his credit, and has coached hundreds of athletes to the Ironman finish line. Jeff has been training and coaching with TriDot since 2015. Hey there Jeff!
Jeff Raines: Watch out everybody. It’s going to be a great watch episode. I haven’t had a corny pun in a while. Yes I had to go there.
Andrew: That’s a good one. Yeah, I liked that one.
Jeff: Great to be here and excited to be on today with Will. I know Will is across the pond out there in the UK and I have had the opportunity to meet Will in person at one of our Pool Schools. Great guy and just super excited to be recording today with you Will.
Will: Cool. Yeah, that was an excellent dad joke by the way. Congratulations on that.
Jeff: Thank you! Thank you, Will.
Andrew: Yeah, the TriDot coaching team is going more and more international every day and thus so is the TriDot podcast kind of group of experts that we bring on the show. So excited to have Will with us. I am Andrew the Average Triathlete, Voice of the People and Captain of the Middle of the Pack. As always we'll roll through our warm up question, settle in for our main set conversation, and then wind things down with Vanessa interviewing a TriDot coach for a coach cool down tip.
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Warm up theme: Time to warm up! Let’s get moving.
Andrew: I know both of you gentlemen are fathers and so you will absolutely understand this antidote that I’m going to use to set up our warm up question today. Historically I do not sing in the car to the radio, at a concert, karaoke party, with people, by myself. It does not matter. I absolutely do not like to sing out loud. Ever since our daughter was born, that has changed dramatically. I’m always singing with her whether it’s to entertain her, just to use words around her, to be loud, to make noise, keep her happy and I kind of realized that the other day that I’m just singing all the time now and that is a huge change for me from before we had our daughter. And I say all that to say, introducing today’s warm up question, let’s take this concept into the tri sphere. What is one way that you dramatically changed once you became a triathlete? Coach Will.
Will: I reckon, I think I’ve just gotten more serious to be honest. My background as a swimmer and specifically spent at SAIL, you know we did thousands of meters a week to compete in a race that came down to thousandths of a second. I remember one final, all eight of us were in the same tenth of a second which is madness, right. What I found about triathlon, it is so collaborative and the camaraderie was there and I sort of really embraced and started coaching more and exchanging information and ideas and stuff as well as wearing a lot more lycra of course. I mean, you know.
Andrew: Oh of course. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you were a pure swimmer you weren’t as collaborative with your peers. Is that what you’re saying? It was more of a solo endeavor versus tri.
Will: Yeah. I think it’s just the competition was so tight that it actually bred a slightly more negative atmosphere maybe at a club and national level. But with triathlon everyone has got something to give. Everyone’s got different stories, different distances. Yeah, it’s a good place to be.
Andrew: No, really cool. Not an answer I expected so really cool to hear that from you. Jeff Raines, what is this for you?
Jeff: I was just going to say, Will, it seems like a lot of people get more serious once they become a triathlete so I like where you’re coming from and I like that. I’ll say that for me once I became a triathlete, man there’s so many things that changed. You know me, I’m not going to give one answer. But a couple things that have changed, I always have anti-chafing cream nearby. There’s always vaseline somewhere.
Andrew: Yeah sure.
Jeff: Actually we have a bottle right there next to me over there. You might can see it over my shoulder here. Gosh, I always have run shoes. I have– actually swim, bike, and run gear always handy. So everywhere I go I have a spare pair of shoes I keep in the car. I have another one that I keep in my wife’s car, in my garage, in my house. When I travel I’ll bring a secondary pair. So I’m just always ready for a spontaneous workout. I think also, I always have like my Yeti nearby or water or electrolytes. I’m always drinking all day long. Since I’m a triathlete I definitely drink more water. Gosh, I could go on and on, but I’ll stop there. Those are a few.
Andrew: Yeah, a good solid list there Jeff. For me this answer is just super easy. I am not a morning person and so for triathlon you kind of have to become a morning person just by default. Races are ealy in the morning. Often those training opportunities, those group rides. Where we live in Texas, getting out before the sun just is baking you. You kind of have to become a morning person for tri related activities and so that is a change for me that is exclusive to the triathlon part of my personality. Guys, we’re going to throw this question out to you, our audience. I’m curious to hear what you have to say. Thinking back to before you were a triathlete to who you are now as a person, how has triathlon changed you? Let us know. I can’t wait to see what you have to say.
Main set theme: On to the main set. Going in 3…2…1…
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Andrew: Multisport watches are powerful little devices capable of tracking literally everything that we do as we swim, bike, run, lift, walk, kayak, sleep, hike, and on and on and on. You probably, hopefully, are familiar with how to track your swim, bikes, and runs with your watch, but today we’ll dive into the tech inside that multisport device and we’ll get tips from our coaches on getting the most out of them. Will Usher, it is your first time on the podcast. Your wife Raya has joined us before. Now the two of you as we said in the intro lead Precision Coaching out of the UK and Raya told me Will that you love nerding out on tri tech. So I immediately knew that I needed to have you in this conversation. Just kind of tell us, as a guy who loves tri tech and loves the data, what was your first impression of TriDot once you were introduced to our training?
Will: It’s super relevant to today. For me simply TriDot brings it all together. There is a huge amount of capacity from devices such as smart watches and apps and bits and pieces that go with that particularly over the last ten years. There’s a lot of the apps out there have taken or looked for like the shortest route to leveraging that data, but TriDot is the only one that has actually taken the time to work out the issues with the old metrics like TSS and design something that actually works.
Andrew: Yeah.
Will: So for me, it’s the only one out there that’s doing what’s needed.
Andrew: Yeah, and so Precision Coaching came over to TriDot earlier in 2023, the year that we are recording this podcast. How have your athletes found the differences in the training since coming on board?
Will: It’s been awesome actually. So we did our due diligence prior to sort of jumping on board and heard lots of great stories about athletes doing really well, etcetera, etcetera. However, now here we are eight, nine months down the line and we’re seeing the results for ourselves, right, which is huge. It’s not only comforting, but it’s exciting and there’s like this energy that’s building within the team with people just trying to get better TrainX scores and things.
Andrew: Always. Yeah.
Will: Yeah. It’s been really awesome.
Andrew: Let’s take the tech conversations from the training app down to our wrists where our watches reside, for many of us, permanently. Our watches are always on our wrists. They never come off. So let’s kind of start this wrist watch conversation off with this. What multisport watch do you guys currently use? What do you like about it and is there anything that you wish was different about the model that you’re currently using? Jeff Raines.
Jeff: You know, I have the Garmin 945. I know that there is a 965 out now. This is a favorite of mine. Also the Fenix Series in Garmin; so the Fenix Pro Series and the Garmin 965. Those are my favorite. Gosh, I know now the newest version has a touch screen, 23 days battery life, I think 31 hours while in GPS mode.
Andrew: Wild.
Jeff: Some of them now even have solar panels built in. But I’m currently a Garmin guy and I love my Garmin 945 and when it starts to bite the dust I will probably upgrade to the 965 and/or Fenix Series.
Andrew: Or whatever is the newest, latest and greatest when yours finally kicks the bucket, right?
Jeff: Yeah. Right.
Andrew: If two models come out in that time, you never know. Will, what are you rocking?
Will: So I like the Wahoo Element Rival. That’s what I have. The main thing I like about it I guess is it’s simplicity. It does what you need it to do without creating loads of distractions. It’s actually one of my main gripes with smart watches is that there’s so much data that you can be wading through. For your zone 2, 20 minute run you requires phD to understand the data that's coming out of it and often it buries the important parts of your feedback. For those sort of sets you just need to get out, get it done, and not worry about everything else going on. I see people running around the park with their face in their watch, right?
Andrew: Yeah.
Will: And their run form is horrible. It’s like they’re running the egg-and-spoon race or something. The other things I like about the Wahoo, I’m a Wahoo guy for all my gear so it’s been an easy system to hook up to all the other devices seamlessly. The battery life is pretty good; it’s like 24 hours in GPS and 14 days, which is enough, right? If you’re doing an Ironman in over 24 hours then you need to get on TriDot. Improving it though I would say better labeling or maybe different shapes for the buttons so when you’re under major stress, you remember you’re not going to hit the triangle button or whatever. I think that would be a little bit of an improvement, but you know, it’s a small thing.
Andrew: I currently am using the Garmin 955, so one newer than Jeff, but not quite the latest and greatest. I had the Garmin 920 XT for a long time; kind of that square shaped one. I loved it. It was my favorite. If they still sold it, I would still be using that.
Will: I think that’s the greatest compliment of all time.
Andrew: I used that one for so long, I’ve had this 955 for probably a year and I still am not very good with the buttons because I’m so used to the orientation of the buttons on the 920. But eventually the battery got where it wasn’t lasting me so I upgraded. I do like the music. I do like that I can have my Spotify account linked to my watch so I just throw on some bluetooth earbuds and actually have music now in my outdoor runs. I didn’t have that before. So that’s the one new addition that I’m really enjoying, but I do miss my 920 that’s for sure.
I always like to remind people that you can absolutely be a triathlete without all the gadgets. We talk about that on the show periodically. You can go out, you can swim, bike, and run. You don’t have to measure anything at all. You can even race by feel on race day. Sure you can do that, but I think very quickly new triathletes find it beneficial to grab a watch to help measure what they’re doing. So I just want to ask you guys as coaches, at what point should an up and coming triathlete make sure they purchase a multisport watch? Will, what do you think?
Will: Firstly, I 100% agree that you don’t have to have a smart watch and I actually encourage my athletes to really understand how they’re feeling relative to the effort so that when the tech fails you, which it will at some point, you can still regulate your own race. You should be able to race pretty close to on point if you’ve done your buildup training correctly.
Andrew: And Will, it also helps just in your day-to-day workout like if you know– on the track for example, if I know what my 6:30 minute mile zone 4 feels like, I’m not looking at my watch constantly like the people you’re talking about in the park and then ruining my run form.
Will: Yeah, no 100%. 100%. All that said, smart watches massively help with the training in particular. The auto uploading of the series of data that are available, there’s no way that we could even know what was going on without the smart watch in play, right? So whilst I mentioned earlier getting distracted by the data, a platform like TriDot doesn’t. That’s what it’s there for. It’s why it was created, to manage that huge amount of data coming in and make sense of it. Make informed, learned choices about your future training. So this is particularly relevant if you’re navigating your triathlon journey without a coach because you can then plug power into TriDot and it’s going to come out with a useful, predicted workout for you. If you have a coach then great, but you know what? There’s so many calculations that can possibly happen for each session that even as a human coach you’re never going to be able to compete with a computer effectively.
Jeff: Those data points after the fact are called descriptive analytics. You’re looking in the past to see what happened after the fact and then you’re making educated guesses potentially moving forward and that’s just what TriDot is taking out of the equation. The data comes into TriDot, TriDot sees that data, it takes it, it normalizes it to a baseline, it localizes it to your location and your environment and it optimizes the data driven training. Future workouts are dynamically and can be and will be changed based on the data as it comes in in real time per second. So you don’t have to sit there for 45 minutes and look at it all, understand it, and then now what? What do I do tomorrow because of this? TriDot does it all for you.
Andrew: When I was first coming into the sport it was pretty easy to get a good running watch at a pretty low price, but the multisport watches cost a pretty penny. Now every brand has multisport watches that should be within your budget. So if you don’t currently already have one, it’s definitely worth looking into at this point. When we’re looking at these watches, there are a few major players in the market. This list is not 100% comprehensive, but the major brands producing watches for triathletes that I am aware of are Garmin, Wahoo, Polar, Sunto, Coros, and Apple Watch now with their latest release has a viable multisport watch. Can you guys just kind of run through that list and give us just a quick overview on what each of these brands bring to the table for triathletes in their sport watches?
Jeff: Really what you want is multisport mode and what that means is it allows you to record multiple sports like swimming, biking, running in a single activity file. So if you have to stop the watch and stop the workout to change modes like the FitBit. They say they have swim, bike, and run and maybe they do, but you have to stop them, save the workout, start a new workout, start a new data file for that new workout, wait for the GPS to kick back in, and then start again. So that is not an official multisport watch. So you want to be able to record multiple sports in a single activity file. That’s multisport mode. Actually, a very reliable source, DC Rainmaker, has some great reviews…
Andrew: Yes.
Jeff: …just across the industry.
Andrew: Yes he does.
Jeff: All gadgets, all gear. He does have some really, really good kind of watch comparisons and he does those once per year. What he ranks the best series of all the brands you mentioned for multisport in particular, taking into account a number of things and price and functionality and accessibility, and all those things. The Garmin Forerunner, that 965 series, and the Fenix Pro Series was the best in class followed closely by the Coros Pace 2 and the Polar Vantage M2. Now my favorite is Garmin. I’ll just breeze through it. They have some features that other brands just aren’t doing. Training readiness- so when you wake up you can kind of get that morning HRV report. So a lot of the Garmins are now doing that. Full color mapping is something that is relatively new. So those maps are easy to read, see, follow mid workout. Triathlon and multisport profiles, training status, round trip routing. It’ll show you your recovery time. Sleep monitoring that gives you even a sleep score and it’s separate from that body battery score. There’s even some women’s health tracking functionalities now. I love that the wrist base actually in the 945, 55, and 65 series is the first one of the Garmins that I have found at higher heart rate zones for those to be pretty stinkin’ accurate. They also show running dynamics, pulse-ox, VO2. There’s a really cool, it’s called Pace Pro feature that can kind of tell you how fast to run if you have a goal finish time in mind and it kind of gives you warnings if you’re falling off pace. Kind of cool. Music. Safety tracking. It can even detect a wreck and automatically call or contact somebody if it detects a wreck and maybe you are unconscious or something like that. Garmin Pay so you don’t need to bring a wallet if you’re out doing a bike ride and you want to go stop and buy a bottle of water at a gas station. The smart notifications, live tracking, Garmin Connect. I’ll stop there. There’s many more, but some pretty cool in depth stuff.
Will: I used Garmin quite a lot in the past and then I had a few issues with bits and pieces and it was enough to make me switch. Just at the point with Wahoo coming in and what I like about Wahoo in particularly is it’s quite a clean product. It lacks some of the list of features you have there with the Garmin, but actually it also as a result it’s got the core information of what you need. For me one of the reasons I like Wahoo as well, I don’t like wearing the device 24/7. For one thing, it’s a very personal thing, I can’t type on my computer with it. The scratching on the metal case of the computer– it just drives me insane. So I will only use my device really for workouts and so for me the Wahoo has everything I could possibly need for the workout. Yes, it’s minus a few of the other features, but it’s there for training and it works beautifully for that.
Andrew: So a lot of good information there guys about Garmin and Wahoo which makes sense. Those are the watches you guys own, the ones that you’re the most intimately familiar with. But the other kind of popular brands that I gave a mention of, Polar, Sunto, Coros, Apple Watch. Any insight on these brands and why a triathlete might be intrigued by them?
Will: So I think Coros is a really good option. It’s cheap, but don’t be fooled by its price. It’s a quality little device. You can get it for less than 200 dollars and it has all the features that you need. So I think you should be looking for that if you’re entering the market or you’re not too sure. It’s going to do the job you need it to do. The other thing I quite like, actually, is the Apple Watch. I am super aware that here we are decades into our sort of triathlon lives and using Garmin and Wahoo, a GPS watch, is just in part of our past, we’ve grown up with it, but for a lot of people they haven’t. They’re coming to the sport fresh.
Andrew: Yeah.
Will: For that reason I really like the Apple Watch. It has the functionality available to you now. If you are dipping your toe into triathlon and you don’t want to go all in, then it’s great because you can just use it in line with your daily life. There’s a nice feature now in TriDot where you can pull in your personal account and link that with your training program and you’ve got it all in one place. Plus, you can hook it up to a chest strap. It doesn’t come with a chest strap, but you can get a third party chest strap and that will work really nicely. The only downside I would say is that it only works with iOS of course.
Andrew: Yeah. Sure. Of course.
Jeff: Yeah, and I’ll just throw in again that Coros, hands down, for the price– the lower to middle tiered– you’re getting way more features for the price than the equivalent of other brands there. So that Coros Pace 2. Polar Vantage M2 is a good one. Polar heart rate– I’ll just say that for that Coros, that Pace 2 it’s not limited to just bluetooth sensors. It has full ANT support. So that’s something else to think about. Then if you have like an older ANT power meter, it works very well with those. Then also you’re going to want the dual bluetooth functionality.
Andrew: All those different metrics that our watches– and whether you have a Polar or a Sunto or a Coros or Garmin, Wahoo– they all have some form of kind of prompts and metrics that they can give us, right? Just you guys personally, you guys as coaches, what metrics do you find actually helpful? What can our athletes actually pay attention to and what should we just kind of quietly ignore? Jeff, what do you think?
Jeff: You know, a lot of those I use them and talk to my athletes about, you know, take note of them some of those things, but don’t live or die by it because TriDot is doing a much more— for lack of better word— invasive job of seeing all that. It also is normalizing it, all those things I said earlier, but a lot of those metrics that you see are not being environmentally normalized. So the conditions at which a lot of that data was gathered, is that being taken into effect? Then how is it being adjusted or normalized based off of a lot of different factors. Then also in TriDot we have your training stress profile, your TSP. So there are a lot of metrics that are put in behind that. Even your Physiogenomix, your genetic makeup, TriDot is taking that data and then it knows the environment at which the data is being collected and it knows your genetic profile and then it’s giving you much more accurate than a lot of those. So I use them more as secondary. Using it all as kind of not just one day, one big number, but looking for trends in those numbers over time are something that we’re just going to talk about and monitor and then based on communication we can apply that a little bit deeper if we need to modify or something in the plan.
Will: Yeah, I would echo a lot of what Jeff said. Actually I think it is interesting as a discussion point, but that’s almost where it ends.
Andrew: Okay. Yeah, no very interesting and just kind of as a whole I’m hearing, look at it. Look at those numbers especially if you find some of those interesting, but don’t live and die by it. Don’t base training decisions off of it and know that there might be varying degrees of accuracy depending on how consistent you are in looking and tracking that data.
Will: Yeah, the thing is it’s not just looking at it as well. As Jeff’s talked about HRV and how that can be quite different with different devices. An example we could use is like the Aura Ring. It’s supposed to be super good and everything else. Well, it’s only good if the fit is good.
Andrew: Yeah.
Will: And the problem with that, of course you know is anybody who is married or wears a ring knows when it’s hot your fingers swell.
Andrew: Absolutely.
Will: When it’s cold the opposite happens. So you have to throw a big question mark about the quality of that data and if you can’t account for that then it’s of interest, but it should not be relied upon.
Andrew: So there are a few different features and nuances kind of brand by brand, but at their core all of these watches are tracking our workouts and our races just fine. I think we all know that they’re tracking our stuff with GPS and a variety of sensors, but guys take us a little bit deeper. What is happening on the inside of these watches to allow them to track our efforts and collect that sweet, sweet data. Will.
Will: It has various different types of GPS data they can pull in. It has altimeter, usually barometric, accelerometers to work out if you’re actually moving. Most of them have heart rate monitors inbuilt now with the optical element, but also all of them have the capacity to hook up to external sensors like power meters, chest straps, Stryd pods, power for running, that sort of thing. I would say that you may notice, and you certainly know about the barometric, altimeter side of things. If you’re in the UK and the weather changes particularly for the worse, you will find that your meters climbed will stop…
Andrew: Interesting.
Will: …or they’re really screwed up which is quite annoying. You’ve got to look and they’re off and go “okay, that 20% hill looks a lot like 5%.” Like it definitely isn’t a 20%, but that’s also why a lot of apps have the capacity to normalize that data post ride. So just something to watch out for.
Jeff: And there are definitely ways like when you lose GPS it will kick in with the accelerometer and based on your cadence it will guess your pace if GPS falls out. I still use the old foot pod and if GPS doesn’t work it takes that stride length off the foot pod and helps keep the data more accurate until that GPS reconnects.
Andrew: Yeah because I definitely had that one as a question and dipping in the GPS a little bit. Because when I was a newer triathlete I didn’t realize there was different forms of GPS and honestly, Jeff, you mentioned DC Rainmaker earlier and I– I mean, public service announcement– if you ever have a question about a particular gizmo or gadget in the endurance sport space, go find DC Rainmaker’s review of that particular product. No one is doing this better than DC Rainmaker. His whole thing is reviewing and analyzing how well different little devices work whether it’s your smart trainers or your bike computers or your watches. But when I started reading his reviews that’s when I– like he would kind of talk about how accurate certain devices were on this form of GPS or that form of GPS or this satellite or that satellite. So talk to us about kind of the different ways a watch can know our location and how to make sure based on where we are in the world that we are using the correct GPS tracking for our situation.
Will: Yeah, so basically you’ve got the global positioning system, GPS. It’s part of a global navigation satellite system constellation. So as you mentioned there’s more than one and it’s not always GPS. GPS is one of the five used around the world. We have GPS which is typically used in the US. You have– I don’t know how you pronounce it, but– QZSS in Japan, Beidou in China, Galileo in the UK and GLONASS in Russia. My individual understanding about why these different systems are used, one is you have different coverage of the globe, but also it originally stemmed from a military perspective because if all the satellites are controlled by one country then, you know, the ability to use it or change the codes to use that were in the particular part of the world.
Andrew: Yep, no. Yeah, that totally makes sense and if you go into the setting on your watch you can actually change which satellite you are connected to. Now I thought GPS was just like the catch-all term for all of them, but it’s interesting that GPS is the term for the North American one and there’s different satellites for around the world. So super interesting. Another very obvious sensor that newer watches have are heart rate monitors and Jeff you talked a little bit earlier about how the accuracy of the wrist based heart rate has improved over the years. It used to be that oh you just don’t trust that number. Go buy a chest strap anyway. And now you’re kind of saying that they are viable heart rate metrics. Do we need to be buying a chest strap in addition to our wrist, or is the wrist based heart rate on our watches good enough now?
Jeff: You know, that’s the million dollar question, and it has been. I think that gap is largely being closed. There are very few models out there that are wrist based heart rate that are accurate at least at higher heart rate zones in my opinion. Now, I will say that my Garmin 945, for me, that was the first wrist based that has been 90+% accurate. Any other model wrist based, gosh, any other brand and model, anytime my heart rate gets over 160 it just goes berserk. I don’t find it to be even close to accurate. One thing I’ll add, I get this a lot. Like, there’s different GPS modes on a lot of the watches, especially in Garmin. You’ll see GPS, GPS plus GLONASS– sorry again if I pronounce that wrong– or you can have like that GPS plus the Galileo. A lot of it I know has to deal with like how high the satellite is and how long it takes to orbit the earth and I know it gets all crazy, but for simplicity if it is super perfect clear skies and you’ve got a good signal GPS mode alone or only is good enough. A lot of people will select GPS plus GLONASS if there’s kind of like a mountain or trail terrain, if it’s really, really hilly, or you’re in some unique topography. That uses like a Russian satellite system, but like if you are in kind of like situations with poor sky visibility, like maybe it’s a little bit cloudy, a little bit of storm coming in, you might want to use that GPS plus Galileo and that’s a European union satellite system. So poor sky visibility, the Galileo. Mountainy, traily GLONASS. Then GPS for clear skies.
Andrew: So another very obvious sensor that the newer watches have are heart rate monitors. That wasn’t always a thing. You usually had to buy a separate chest strap or arm band. I had an arm band heart rate based thing for a long time, but now the newer watches have it built into the watch and for a long time it was just kind of known that wrist based GPS was inferior to the chest strap GPS– or heart rate rather. But now we’re starting to see, Jeff, you’re kind of saying that the wrist based heart rate is getting better, it’s improved. You trust it on your 945. I trust it on my 955. So Jeff, kind of talk us through in what use case would an athlete still need an additional chest strap for heart rate or something, or is the wrist these days just plenty?
Jeff: You know, I will say have them both. I still have the chest strap. I like the Garmin Heart Rate Monitor Pro, but a lot of the newer heart rate monitors will have an added accelerometer in there and you can get running dynamics out of it. So in that case, it’s closer to the heart, it’s arguably a better reading, and then you get some of the extra metrics as well. When in doubt get the chest strap if you haven’t tested or at least have that chest strap as a secondary as a just in case. But you know, if you’re going to get a heart rate monitor, the chest strap, I would ensure that it’s kind of that dual ANT and bluetooth smart. Like Polar has it, Garmin, Wahoo they all have kind of the latest sensors in there, but this is just in case you need to connect multiple things to that sensor. Like maybe you’re going to have your watch connected to that heart rate monitor sensor and you’re going to run on Zwift, right? So that heart rate monitor has got to be able to pick up both bluetooth. Chest strap is a little bit more recommended. There are wrist ones that are pretty stinkin’ accurate, but always have that chest strap because the newer ones have a lot of the extras and that dual bluetooth. Now I will say the Polar H9, H10 and the Garmin Heart Rate Monitor Pro, those are hands down kind of the industry leaders if you’re going to use that chest strap with those extra dynamics.
Will: My take on it. I had a lot of good experiences with people using chest straps and their watches. Maybe some of the top end watches are getting a lot better now, but for the most part not everyone’s got the latest tech. So as a general rule, I’d say you just set your chest strap. The other element of it as well is that heart rate is such a key metric. It’s the one metric that carries across your bike and your run. It’s the one that actually tells you what the system is doing.
Andrew: Yeah, that’s a great point.
Will: You’ve got your power, your pace sort of thing like that. Great. If you’re feeling terrible you should probably look at your heart rate and that’s going to tell you the more accurate story of where things are. It’s the thing that’s going to react to heat. It’s the thing that will react if you're sick and all these other elements. So if you want it to be accurate, use a chest strap.
Andrew: Let’s move onto this. This is always a hot topic of conversation when it comes to training and racing. Depending on the watch we have, there are a variety of ways to set up our data fields in the settings of our actual watch just to kind of best track our swim, bike, and run workouts. There’s a lot of different ways we can see different things on the screen. What best practices do you guys share with your athletes in terms of optimizing their watch setup and their displays across all three sports? Jeff Raines, we’ll start with you here.
Jeff: You know, that’s actually something else to consider when buying a new watch, a new multisport watch, right? We know that if you’re going to buy a watch we want you to buy the multisport one especially if you’re a triathlete. But something else to consider is how many data fields each discipline displays or shows or offers. Lower tiered watches might only allow you to see three different metrics on one screen. Other watches, right, you might be able to see five, six, seven things on one screen without having to scroll through. Hey, I’m half way through the bike, oh I don’t have heart rate on this bike screen. Oh, I’ve got to scroll through a little bit to find heart rate. Well, it’s hard and dangerous to do that in the middle of the race or the middle of the workout. So being able to see multiple metrics on the same screen is of huge value in what device or watch that you are buying. So I definitely would buy a watch that has at least bike and run settings that can fit five or more data fields on one screen without having to scroll.
Will: The other question of course is how big. There’s a lot of data to be had, how big do you want your watch to be? Because the short side or the long side amongst us, you may have a problem actually looking at lots of time data fields on the watch. But certainly some fields are more useful than others. You know, your ground contact time for example is probably not something you need to know mid Ironman. But for me when it comes down to the swim as an example, I’ll just run through the different disciplines.
Andrew: Yeah, absolutely.
Will: It doesn’t really matter. I have an alert on mine that tells when I’ve done 500 meters.
Jeff: It vibrates?
Will: Right, exactly. But I’m not going to do anything with that really other than go, “Oh yeah, great. I’ve done 500 meters.” Because I don’t want to stop mid swim. I mean, I’ve seen people try to do this. Their watch buzzes and they’re bending their wrist up and their arm and they’re basically putting the brake on mid stroke to look at their data. It’s just like, don’t do that. Please don’t do that. And as a fact, when people are in the pool my general preference is that people use a wall clock as a standard anyway. I find that it’s better and it gives people a better understanding of their pacing. Also, they’re forced to write down the set rather than relying on it just coming automatically through.
Andrew: Interesting.
Will: Which means that we generally have a better understanding of it prior to starting because they don’t just suddenly get this set come up on their watch automatically and go, “I’m not really sure what that is.”
Andrew: Yeah.
Will: So I quite like people not using a watch. Also, you do get a lot of inaccuracies, not recognizing kick sets. It says they do different strokes. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. It doesn’t recognize a tumble turn. Then, my favorite one is that people will end up, they do an equal number of lengths and yet it says they’ve done an odd number of lengths and it’s like, this is not possible. So for the swim I’m not so bothered, but for the bike I think my key things to have up there would be the power for your three second average and your current heart rate. If you have nothing else, if you want a cheaper watch or something, those two things. Like, think back to the TriDot program, that’s the data that you’re reading the metrics off, right? Then if you have the space you’re looking at distance, cadence is super useful. The time elapsed, speed, average speed if there’s space, and elevation. If you have space for all of that, great. If not you can break it down in most watches into different…
Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, very true.
Will: …screens. But as long as you’ve got those important ones: power three second average, heart rate current, and then if you can get it on the same screen distance and cadence, you’re basically set. Then with regard to the run, time elapsed, heart rate again, and distance or current pace. I’m a stickler for speed, distance, time and how I motivate myself. I’m a bit strange, I know, but I will literally be doing speed, distance, time calculations the whole time and that keeps my mind active. It’s strange, but it’ll grow on you. Probably one of my favorite ones to have on a run screen is cadence. If people’s cadence slips below that 170 strides a minute, for the most part unless they are super tall and I’m talking like 6 foot 5 plus, they need to be over 170, otherwise the risk of injury, they’re just generally inefficient with their running. So I like to have that front and center because actually people who hit their rhythm, hit their cadence as they should, it really helps them with their pacing. Finally, if there is space for average pace on there as well. Oh, yeah. Actually I said finally, but one of the things I really like on the screen is to have an automated kilometer or mile split that comes up. Again, it feeds my speed, distance, time craving and I can start doing the math forward and back while I’m running, but yeah that’s personal.
Andrew: Yeah, and what I like here is there’s no wrong answer here, right? Like, it’s whatever ends up being useful to you in doing your workout or tracking your race as effectively as possible, but just play with it. Play with what data fields you have at your disposal and see what just kind of works for you. Jeff Raines, anything to add there?
Jeff: The only thing I’ll add is once you have your displays all set up and how you like it and I agree with Will completely; power, three second averaging, all those things. Once it’s all set up, you can still– inside of all that you can set up kind of like notifications like when to eat or drink or you can get reminders or vibration warnings if your cadence falls. So you can set a range of run cadence and if your cadence goes above or below that it dings at you or it vibrates. Things like that so you can set up those notifications or those kind of warnings or those prompts inside of all these settings. So it gets deep. It’s very cool and you have it all and it’s smooth, but have somebody help you with it and definitely don’t let it make you go cross eyed because a lot of this stuff, they can do some fun stuff. But get it all set how you like it and then be in the moment and don’t live or die by it.
Andrew: So two more questions and then we’re going to wrap up our main set today. This is what I want to ask just based on comments I’ve seen on the TriDot and the RunDot Facebook groups. Occasionally I’ll see posts where somebody gets done with their workout and on their watch while they were doing their run or while they were doing their ride, their swim, whatever, they saw certain data and certain metrics come across the watch and they get done and they open up TriDot and they don’t see the time in zones that they are expecting. They don’t see the data they’re expecting. They don’t see the TrainX score they are expecting. So I do want to take a second to note that TriDot is software. We do not make the hardware. Because people will sometimes say, “Hey, how did TriDot get my data wrong on this workout?” We didn’t generate your data. We just pulled the data from the hardware because we are software. All the major brands mentioned on this episode– Coros, Wahoo, Garmin, Sunto, Polar, Apple Watch– they can push their data directly to TriDot. So Jeff, talk to us about the communication that happens between the watch and TriDot and how we as athletes can make sure that accurate data is coming through.
Jeff: You know, that’s a good question. We’re a data driven entity, right, and we can only drive as good as the data that we are given. So, there are a number of things that we do when we look at the data and as we know, technology can fail us at times. But the scores, your TrainX scores, everything is only as good as the data that it is given and certain devices can record or give better data than others. We have something that’s called Data IQ that you’ll see in there, but more reliable devices will give cleaner, better data. For example, there’s different– let’s just say Wahoo Smart Trainers, there are different calibers. There are entry level ones and then there are super, super expensive ones and some of them are within 1% accurate and some are 5%, some are 8%, some are within 10%. So there’s a greater deviation of the quality of the data and so the better the device, the better the Data IQ. So you’ll see some of that and how some of those products are ranked. But sometimes, you know, there’s just corrupt data files, right? Sometimes multiple data files come in and things like that. So what we’ve allowed or what the system does is you can link and merge data files so if you don’t have a multisport watch or something like that or your watch ran out of battery and you had to charge it and go back or you did a two a day or whatever and you wanted to link two files into one session, you can do that. Another one that we see a lot is that there is a predicted temperature, there’s an actual, right what actually happened, and then there’s a third kind of realm that we kind of tend to forget about and that is what was actually recorded. So we all know that the predicted temperature for three days from now is probably not going to be exactly what it is showing right now. We know how variable temperature is, but a lot of these devices, these multisport watches, have a temperature gauge built inside of them. So TriDot takes the actual temperature that was recorded by the device. So a lot of times body heat could report a temperature that was a lot warmer than actual. So let’s say it’s cold, it’s 40 degrees outside, but your watch is under a glove or a jacket and your body heat heats that up. So your watch is actually recording 30 degrees warmer than the actual outdoor weather. So as that data comes back into TriDot it will see that reported or recorded temperature. There are things you can do. When that data file comes in you can always go in and edit the temperature or weather if it was inaccurate or if there was a corrupt data file. Absolute worst case, you can manually complete a session if just something came in different or wrong or there’s a corrupt data file or whatever. You can always manually complete a session and give yourself a score. So when it works and it works most of the time, but there’s always a way to double check things after the fact.
Andrew: So in TriDot now you have the ability in most cases, almost every case, you can push your workout from TriDot to your device. So on my Garmin wrist watch I can sync those two and Garmin will tell me “Oh, you’re about to go for your run. We see that you have such and such workout. Do you want to do this workout?” I hit accept and then my Garmin will give me prompts as I go through the workout. I’m just curious to hear because some people I know love this. They love the watch just kind of telling them what to do moment by moment. Some people I think might get a little annoyed by how often they’re getting prompts out on their workouts. It’s certainly optional to your preference whether you want your watch to have your workout in mind or not, but what do you guys tell your athletes on this? Do you find it helpful in terms of having an athlete execute their workout properly? Do you just have your athletes ignore? Talk to us about kind of that feature where you can push your TriDot workout to your watch. Jeff Raines.
Jeff: First of all thing, it’s a great feature. It is amazing what you can do. It just loads, you’re right, you just hit go. Some people are busy and it’s just like, “Look, I have that one hour designated for the run. Just let the watch tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” So I get it, but at the same time– and it is a great, amazing feature. But at the same time I don’t use that feature super often and this is why. Because a lot of it depends on the course you’re running. I know you can use grade adjusted pace and things like that, but I like my athletes to be intentional on the course that they’re going to do for that bike or run. If they have a whole bunch of zone 4 intervals on the bike, let’s say, there are times where I want them to do those on a hill and sometimes I want them to do them on a flat. So sometimes you’ve got to bike an extra ten minutes or something until you hit that hill or until you get off that hill. So a lot depends on being intentional in the course you’re going to run it on. But having that functionality is great for on a track when it’s just flat, the terrain is simple, the same. You don’t have to worry about the elements. It is good to have those prompts. So I’m going to answer your question by it depends on the course you’re running and kind of what the main intent is for that. But yeah, 3 x 8, I honestly probably would say for me in the last eight years for what it’s worth, I’ve probably used that feature 10 to 12 times...
Andrew: Yeah.
Jeff: …for running. Now I love the ERG mode and automation for cycling, but I like to get out and do those quality sets running just kind of without the buzz and just do it when I’m ready and focused and can focus on my form inside of it.
Andrew: Will, what do you think here on athletes pushing their workouts to their device?
Will: Yeah, I agree in the most part with Jeff actually. I would say the trainer is super important. Like in the UK, certainly where we live, we wouldn’t call it mountainous like the Alps, but you can’t ride 50K without doing 800 meters of elevation. That’s a flat ride, right. The traffic is such and because we’re such a highly populated island– I think we’ve got something like, I’m going to quote some wrong figures here, but it’s like four times the population of Canada and you can fit Great Britain into one of the lakes. So we are highly congested so as a result I actually get most of my athletes to do the high quality bike work say like on an endurance ride where you have some zone 4 stuff first, do that first hour on a turbo, on the trainer, and then go out for your zone 2. So you’re relaxed, you’re not taking risks in traffic or on bends. Where we are in sort of Hampshire we have all these tunnels of trees to go through which are very beautiful, but very dark and dangerous in terms of traffic if you’re only concentrating on hitting your numbers. Again, on the run workout I like the simplicity of just doing it from memory. I am though an ex-swimmer and we do a lot of that remembering what the set was off the board. So I appreciate it’s not for everyone. I like to say a lot of guys are time poor and it really attracts time poor people, triathlon for some reason. So typically they will do things like early morning and because they’re doing early morning sometimes they like just that automation just like say buzz now, do this, and they don’t have to think because they’re actually already thinking about their day.
Cool down theme: Great set everyone! Let’s cool down.
Vanessa Ronksley: It’s cool down time and I’m Vanessa, your average triathlete with elite level enthusiasm. Today on the cool down I am here with Brandy Ramirez who is one of those people who warms your heart as soon as you meet her. Brandy is a mother of one adopted and four biological children. In 2008 she wanted to prove to herself that she was a strong and powerful woman so she decided to give triathlon a try. Despite all the training and racing she did not find the breaking point that she was anticipating, but she instead fell in love with the sport. In 2017 after many years of training and racing, Brandy was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer and spent the next year and a half undergoing aggressive treatments to save her life. When she decided to return to the sport she hit rock bottom as she struggled to run a single mile. With a degree in science and health, a certified Ironman coach, and a certified yoga and pilates instructor, she realized that she needed to rebuild from the bottom up. Brandy also started to wonder how many women had beat cancer and desired to return to exercise only to realize how much strength they had lost during their illness and treatments. At that very moment, she created a non-profit called SheStrong which has 3,900 members to date and the main goal is to help women get back into training following illness. Brandy hosted the first USAT sanctioned race in her home town of Kingman, Arizona this year where a portion of the registration fee was used to create scholarships for young girls whose primary caregiver has battled cancer. Since 2019, Brandy has become a TriDot coach, a TriDot certified Pool School instructor, and a newly minted certified USAT race director. This woman is a force to be reckoned with and I am absolutely honored to welcome her to share her coach cool down tip.
Brandy Ramirez: Thank you so much Vanessa for that introduction. I should take you on the road with me. That was wonderful.
Vanessa: Anytime! Sign me up. So you’ve told me that something that most people don’t know about you is that you love horseback riding. This is also something that I love very much. So tell me about how this love started for you.
Brandy: So my grandfather had a ranch in Fallon, Nevada and he trained horses for show. So you think old western movies or the grand marshall horse that could do that bow on one leg. My grandfather did that.
Vanessa: Wow.
Brandy: So that was instilled in me when I was super, super young and it’s never gone away.
Vanessa: And once you’re a horse lover there’s just no going back. There’s just nothing like being close to such a gigantic, beautiful animal. So I get that.
Brandy: Exactly. Yeah. They’re magnificent creatures and yeah, just love them.
Vanessa: I agree. So changing gears completely, what tip would you like to share with us all today?
Brandy: So oddly enough it’s actually not really changing too drastically. My tip for you is to pay attention to your core strength training and if you’re on a horse, you need that core stability to keep you in line. If that horse takes off running you need to know how to control it, but also when you’re in the saddle on your bike or when you’re swimming or when you’re running. Your core is what is going to engage you to create your power. So you could take it from your swim, your core for men begins right underneath your pectoral muscle, for women it’s right underneath the curve of our breast and it goes all the way down to your hip flexors in the front– and this is not just a front abdominal thing. This is also your back. So front and back in that area creates what is called your core. Anybody who is in yoga and pilates will know that as your core. If you can get that strong, it’s going to make you a faster swimmer. If you’re on your bike that is what’s actually holding you in your aero position. So if you’re a newby and you’re on that bike and you have that grip of death on those aero bars, 1) you’re wasting a lot of unnecessary energy by trying to hold those bars so strong because your strength for your aero does not come from your hands, it comes from your core. That’s what’s going to control you in that position. Then when you get off that bike and you’re running, the very first thing you’ll notice about runners is when their form starts to go it’s because their core is not strong so they start to do that hunched back lean over, right? It creates a lot of lower back pain if you’re running like that. So again, your core is your front and your back of your body. So really focus on that.
Vanessa: Because the core is so important for all three of the disciplines that we usually train for as triathletes, can you give us a couple of your absolute, must do core exercises that you think should be implemented on a regular basis, multiple times throughout the week? What would you say to that?
Brandy: So one of my favorite and it’s kind of a secret, but I’m going to let you all know about it right now is the reverse dolphin kick. The reverse dolphin kick in a swim. It’s not on any of your workouts, but it is something I will never skip at the end of my workout in the pool. So your kicks in the pool come from your hip flexors, right? So when you do a reverse dolphin kick you have this really long vessel. I do fins with mine. Your arms should be stretched out above your head. Your feet are together so it is that dolphin kick, your feet stay together, and you just propulse with your feet. It’s this up and down, keep those hands really strong because you are on your back and you keep the hands all the way out so you don’t slam your head in the deep end. But all of that is a lower abdominal strength exercise. It comes from your hip flexors. The next day you’ll feel it really low in your pelvis. So that’s a great one to do. I will do a 200 reverse dolphin kick every time I swim. The other one I would tell you to do, a lot of people think “Oh, I just have to do sit ups. I have to strengthen my core. I have to strengthen my core.” It’s not just sit ups. you have to strengthen your lower back as well and that’s especially important on your run so that you can keep that good posture when you’re out running. One thing that I love to do is back extensions where you strap your feet in and you’re on a machine that kind of sits at your hips and you bend forward. If you’re not used to it don’t do weights. You can just cross your hands across your chest or you can interlace those fingers behind your neck and keep those elbows nice and wide. Just start with three sets of ten. You’re going to bend at the hips and then don’t swing. Control yourself and bring the body back to that upright position.
Vanessa: Right. Okay. Those are both really fabulous. I can attest to– You did mention about those dolphin kicks you said the next day you’re going to feel your abs being tight, but no. I feel it like while I’m doing the dolphin kick. It’s so painful.
Brandy: At least you know you’re engaging the right area, right?
Vanessa: Yeah, exactly. Then for those back extensions, that’s definitely something that I would like to incorporate into my own training. I think that’s a really great tip and I love that you had mentioned like start with your arms crossed at your shoulders and then if you want a little bit more weight then just put your arms behind your head and then from there you can increase the weight to using a plate or something like that. Does a dumbbell even work? Could you use a dumbbell?
Brandy: You can use a dumbbell. You can hold the two ends of the dumbbell. Keep the dumbbell above the chest. You don’t want to keep it low. So you want to keep it nice and high, like at the chest, so that the weight is distributed evenly towards the lower back and not to the arms or the shoulders in the front. But yeah, most importantly, don’t swing. It’s not a movement that should be done fast. It should be slow and controlled.
Vanessa: Yeah, but you say that about all core exercises; they’re best done in a slow and controlled manner?
Brandy: Absolutely. You have to pay attention to your form even if you’re on the ground and you’re doing sit ups. If you’re rushing through it you can risk injury for anything. So in yoga it’s all about controlling that movement, engaging those muscles, having that ignition between the muscles and the other parts of the body; the hip flexors, the knees, the little muscles that will control the bigger muscles. That’s why we focus so much on being slow and controlled because we want to strengthen our connective tissues along with our big muscles.
Outro: Thanks for joining us. Make sure to subscribe and share the TriDot podcast with your triathlon crew. For more great tri content and community, connect with us on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. Ready to optimize your training? Head to tridot.com and start your free trial today! TriDot – the obvious and automatic choice for triathlon training.