Wow, there's a lot of negativity on ST. As a millennial who didn't have TV or internet for the first three years of our marriage, my wife and I watched a lot of youtube videos. I like videos that are well put together and touch on subjects I'm interested in, or are just simply entertaining. A lot of Triathlon Taren's videos fit into this category. Some of his videos I'll never watch. Some of them I've watched 3-4 times, like "a day in the life of a triathlete" which I and my wife find hilarious. I've also been to Winnipeg several times and live relatively close by so that makes him more relatable for me.

I watch Shane, Dcrainmaker, TT, the Vegan Cyclist, and some GTN and GCN videos, but actually my favorite channel is seth's bike hacks. I've met the dude in person so I feel like I understand the YT game. Why not try and make a living off what you're passionate about? If you like educating people, great. If you're not an expert, use caveats that you're not. I think Taren uses caveats all the time, but maybe not in every single video, so I take everything he says with a grain of salt.

If people asked me to do a video on nutrition and I had a triathlon related channel and some knowledge on nutrition, I'd do videos on nutrition with the caveat that I'm not a nutritionist.

We get asked, as a coach, all the time to comment on people's nutrition. We have some knowledge, but we know we're not experts. So we refer people to experts.

This is the same thing Taren *could* do, but chooses not to. And I think he'd be better served by having someone else on to explain certain things versus attempting to showcase expertise he doesn't have.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

Surprised no one has commented on Taren's video from yesterday critiquing Training Peaks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A54crxKp-1c


I think his critique of TP (aside from lack of TSS for strength training, which I believe it does have if you use a HR monitor) has some merit. Training Peaks could very well become the next Computrainer ... but not sure if the Traniac Training Platform is the thing that'll replace them.

Either way, never seen so much commotion and such a drastic "thumbs down" ratio on a video. I'm a fan of Taren and overall think he's good for the sport, but he does go the way of Ben Greenfield with recommending some whacky nutrition tips and ideas occasionally.

I saw it and thought it was interesting. However, I'm not a TP user (I have the fairly useless free account, but never used the subscription version), so I don't know much about the nuances of TP and how to work around the limitations of the software.

I "think" that his criticism of swim TSS was a little off though. How I've always put in my swim numbers is to just estimate "moving time" and use that. So a leisurely swim at a low percentage of threshold pace will be much lower than an intense interval session. Even then, my method isn't great since 2 interval workouts can be substantially different in impact, even though they'll have similar moving times.

e.g, 20x50 on 60 holding :35's is substantially easier than the same session, alternating easy (40s) and very fast (30s)

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

$22 millions a year for this 7 year old YouTuber!

Ryan ToysReview - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/...JGhZ9SOOHvBB0Y4DOO_w

Guy building platform criticizes those that are already in market...it doesn't seem much more complicated than that.

TSS is but one metric that you can utilize from them, and you can tweak how it gets calculated for each workout if you really want to dive into the weeds and build out the zones, workouts in workout builder, etc.

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Editor-in-Chief, Slowtwitch.com | Twitter

A fe things: I unsubscribed from his channel, I click not interested every time it's in my feed, I turned off autoplay so that his videos don't play if they've somehow ended up in a youtube match playlist when I'm GTN, Lionel, or a Gwen video.

There are a lot of other training platforms out there that are going to be significantly better than his and remain so...and none of those people crowdfunded and then craiglisted a programmer...and then made a sob story video...an overall decision that somehow seemingly put his employee's position at risk because he decided to get out of social media content creation rather than make it autonomous with more employees.

So he has a platform he's going to launch...there's two ways to go about this...just talk about the cool things yours does and don't say negative things about the competition or attack the big dog on the market because everyone does...so he attacked the competition.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Ok that's it I'm out. His latest vid he is shilling for ventum and is spouting the 17 min faster at Kona crap. The bike isn't 17mins faster, the people riding it are.


Unsubscribed.

I won't buy a Ventum until it comes with a dedicated spirulina-only bento box.

Interesting enough GTN made a vlog yesterday about training - sponsored by Training Peaks - that was very interesting.

They kind of explain how you can set up your season and your training. Mostly using the Training Peaks platform.

At one point they mention - you don't have to use training peaks for that - and that vlog was sponsored by training peaks!!!

I wonder if that have anything to do w/ Triathlon Taren kind of bad mouthing training peaks a week ago. But I loved the approach of telling how you can do it, basic concepts and not criticizing any other platforms. All that done by a former ITU professional, coach and w/ the right credentials to do so.

It was done in a very professional way and a classic English matter! Awesome.

Two Former Pros!

Mark is retired from the ITU, Fraser raced in the ITU but just retired from long course racing.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

Agreed. If you need to tear something down to build something up, you're doing it wrong.

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Inside The Big Ring: Podcast & Coaching

So is he making a new platform to challenge Training Peaks?

Not according to his video on the new Trainiac platform, Taren says that it isn't intended to challenge trainingpeaks. What it actually does, I have no idea, but it's not supposed to replace TP.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Yeah, it's pretty unclear what he is planning on doing. He is hosting some kind of online training camp right now, plus he's coming out with the masterclasses some time early 2019, and on top of that we have the Team Trainiac platform. To be honest I got the impression he wants to use his platform for everything; workout planning, and fitness tracking. To me that sounds basically like a TP competitor.

Sounds like it to me too, but he's said that it isn't, so there may be some significant differences. But really, the most likely challenger to TrainingPeaks in the short-mid term will be TrainerRoad and/or if Zwift comes out with something similar. TrainerRoad not because it does everything that TP does (it doesn't and probably never will) but it does do the most important bits for those of us who just want basic analysis and tracking, don't need to share online with a coach, etc...

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

To me it sounded like he is building a Training Peaks Competitor...the difference here is he wants to make it social? Have recovery included? There are numerous metrics for recovery that you can input into training peaks. The Mighty Stat from Masimo Personal Health integrates with Training Peaks. Hell...Garmin tells you how many hours you need to recover, it tells you when you're training too much etc.

Interestingly, Leanda Cave is coming out with a Training Platform that is pretty advanced.

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Washed up footy player turned Triathlete.

I just watched (well, listened to) his video where he "reviews" Tower26.

He really needs to NOT do that.

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

If I had a dollar for every time he has said Gerry Rodriguez from Tower 26' in his vlogs I'd be a rich man.

He claims he isn't getting paid to spruik Tower 26 but you can bet your bottom dollar there is some arrangement-my call is Taren gets to use Gerrys routines in exchange for the constant mention in his vids. Licencing if you will....

So. Freaking. Brilliant.
Millennials for the win

I don't get it? Are u laughing at him saying no internet but was able to watch YouTube?

I wonder how many others, like me, just get on with our training and watch no Triathlon content online, and don't read Tri magazines? The most I do nowadays is post occasionally on ST, and look for interesting advice/experiences here and on another UK Forum. I prefer the feel of community where people are relatively 'anonymous' and the propensity for self promotion is less. I can't put my finger on why I'm so 'unengaged'; whether it's a generational thing (I'm 45) and whether after 26 years of Tri I'm just needing other 'entertainment' aside from actually doing the sport...I'm a doer rather than a watcher. I'd rather watch videos on car reviews or dudes reviewing survival gear these days!

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29 years and counting

Alot of people are like you, not me im the totally opposite, wasting my time on ST/triathlete.com/GCN/Taren etc, mostly at work/commute though ;-)
But if i went to the start line of a 70.3 i bet half the people could not name the last 2 WC of the 70.3 races.
Triathlon is so much more about an experience for you that it is rooting for a team like in football.

Yep. No internet or TV at home. I watched YT videos at the library down the street from our apartment and at school.

Man, how things have changed since I went to school. Back then, most ppl hanging out in the library were just there to masturbate...