I am hoping to get some feedback from kick-ass fellow triathletes. I am working in tandem with an iPod waterproofing company to develop a series of swim workouts for triathletes.
Basic Concept:
Waterproof your iPod
Download your favorite workout
Choose your music
Swim!
I’ve been racing at the elite level for nearly 15 years, so I appreciate the need for structure and motivation in an effective workout. Without a coach, music, training partners or an effective plan, swimming gets pretty boring and repetitive.
I’m working to provide an inexpensive, fun way to remedy this problem and help people meet their goals quicker
We are wrapping up a couple of preliminary volumes that guide the athlete through workouts based on perceived excerption and heart rate. Ultimately though, the product will allow the user to download whichever edition they choose (be it Olympic Distance tri training, Sprint Distance, Ironman, General Fitness, Technique etc) and customize their goal times, interval times, tweak the workouts to better suit their abilities, and even add their favorite music! (More details to follow on the release of this product)
I am wondering what other features you triathletes would like to see incorporated to make the product better and more inspiring. After all, the point is to get people pumped up, in the pool and improving!
Thoughts? Comments? Questions? I appreciate any and all feedback.
The company I am working with can waterproof iPods from the inside so there are no big bulky cases. Then you just download the workout and hit the pool.
A couple notes, and I definitely appreciate your comments:
The perceived exerption method is primarily for the introductory volumes before the software that allows you to change your intervals and goal times is fully developed.
in response to your thoughts, I dont think most people who havent had a background in swimming are able to strictly adhere to a set they concoct themselves. (and if they can, chances are it may not be the best use of their time) I can speak to this personally as I was a nationally-ranked swimmer for a number of years and now, when I go out to swim without a coach or workout, I am uninspired and definitely not training effectively.
With this product, you have can have an accredited coach in your ear giving you a set that will maximize your training time, motivate you and make you push yourself harder.
As a parallel, I would refer you to Troy Jacobson’s “Spinervals” cycling products. Troy is a friend of mine and I think what he has done with Spinervals is amazing. With his product, you can get a great workout, targetting whatever goals you may have (sprinting, time trials, hills), in a short period of time from you own home. (if the weather is too nasty to cycle etc)
At the same time, my product provides technique instruction, great music with cadence appropriate for swimmers, and a workout that will maximize training time given your specific goals.
I hope this answered your question and please feel free to ask any more and I welcome any and all comments.
I think this may be a good idea. I have an Otterbox and the music is a welcome relief from the boring laps. But, what really needs inventing is an ear bud that stays in without a swim cap on. I just can’t wear that swim cap. It is worse than being bored.
A spinnerval type workout when time is short might be of use in life.
Thats a great point. Even if you dont have a workout, going out for a run is so much more tolerable if you have music. This concept is even more true for swimming since there’s no scenery.
I definitely recommend spinnervals to anyone who may be short on time or lives in an area with frequently inclimate weather. 45 mins, great workout, done
As far as earbuds go, check out Swimman. He is who I am working with. He waterproofs the iPods from the inside as well as the headphones so you dont have to have those rubber covers that tend to slide out. plus, no bulky case on the iPod.
What do you mean exactly? As in the elitists consider it impure to train with music? or find it not to be feasible. I have heard great things as well. Our product will be adaptable to any mp3 player also.
I got an ipod shuffle for Christmas. My wife bought it from swimman.com. Its small, about 1X1" and hold a lot of songs. It has a nice set-up to fit on your goggles. The ear pieces were not as good as I wanted so I used silicone and made custom ear pieces and now I listen to my tunes while I swim all the time. It really nice for my long swim. It water proof and easy to use.
Notice I referred to Swimman a couple posts ago. He is my primary contact in getting this product to the public. What are your thoughts, especially now that you have a waterproof iPod, on downloading various workouts to give you motivation and instruction while you train?
It would be fine but the problem is that the ipod that they use is the “shuffle model” It holds alot of memory and is super small and light weight. In fact, I can not feel it at all. it selects songs from your list in random order. It is not like a regular iPod that you go to a menu and select from a play list of what ever. It just plays your songs randomly.
On of the great things about it is that they waterproof all the buttons, in fact you don’t use them any more. When you are done with your swim, you un-plug the cord from the ear-piece and in 90 seconds the ipod shuts off. This is to keep buttons that are used a lot from getting “un-water proofed” from use.
They really did not work for me until I made the custome earpieces though.
I agree with you. Its great for swimming as its so light and not in your way at all. but, there is an option on the shuffle to either play songs in a random order or to play them in the order uploaded from your playlist. I usually have this option on when I workout in the gym because I coordinate the cadence of the songs to what I am doing that day. Makes the workout more enjoyable.
With my product, each interval in the workout is its own “song” so that, ultimately, you can control how fast or slow you do the workout. If you miss an interval, the music will continue to play until you hit the wall, take the rest you need, and hit “next” to start the next one.
I know swimman is working on developing a more effective set of earbuds, that seems to be a problem some people who dont wear swim caps are having.
i think this is a great idea. I have an otterbox as well and havent used it to swim in two years because of the terrible discomfort of the earbuds under a cap to keep them in/ wires pissin me off. My pool has music piped in underwater which is cool but the soundtrack usually pretty lame so…
Better earbud system and a goal oriented workout regimen is great idea for me. I’m a non-swimmer who has gone from a 2:05 hundred HIM pace to a 1:35 HIM pace and is stuck there like mud, maybe would push me that extra bit…I aspire to move from best of the worst to worst of the best one day
If you can get that done it would be nice. The instructions on the current swimman say “don’t change the button from random- to- order of play” or the thing may not be water proof anymore. Personally I don’t like the random play. I use my regular iPod more like you do especially while running. I like to sequence the music to get me motivated. I hope your idea works out.
I will take to Charles about having the option to either play songs randomly or in the pre-determined playlist order. The latter is fairly important to my product so you arent skipping around to different parts of the swim workout every time you hit the “next” button
Again, thanks for the input. I will take this all into consideration and put together something you will hopefully find very beneficial
Sounds like you are on the right track and are definitely a candidate for this product. I really am working hard on getting the software underway that allows you to change your goal times, customize your interval times etc…all within the framework of a coached set. This part though is pretty expensive so I am working within the basic framework for now which is seemingly very popular, but more for the beginner, intermediate swimmers who dont yet focus on every statistic.
And, as I told the last poster, I will speak to Charles about remedying the uncomfortable earbud situation.
One more thought…Do you ever workout with a pull-buoy? After I switched from competitive swimming to strictly triathlon, I started using a pull-buoy much much more often in practice. This allowed me to focus more effort of developing my shoulders since, with a wetsuit as most of my races required, kicking isnt as important to keep you afloat so much as it is to ward off oncomers!
Sounds like it could be an amazing product. Having been raised a “purist” swimmer running workouts on intervals with specific goals in mind and then having made the switch to the “unstructured” triathlon training for a few years - basically doing what I wanted when I wanted, training mostly long swims/distances just for technique purposes and to keep the “feel” and very little time-dependency - I think a product like yours could help many triathletes that don’t participate in Master’s and/or don’t feel comfortable with coaches. Nothing could replace the impact of those two things on a swimmer’s ability, mind you, but something to just make swimming a bit more tolerable to most would certainly help people improve.
As someone who just started trying out a master’s group (2x/week) I’m really relishing the structure and freedom of someone else putting together the workout and keeping track of intervals. I’m still skeptical of my ROI on my tri swimming, but it feels good to be back in the pool turning and burning on timed intervals with someone else saying “go”. I’m not sure your product would really have much impact for those types of swimmers (the master’s devotees). But for the long Open Water stuff, for entertainment purposes on the long unstructured swims, and for someone who has long had a super-long/slow turnover, your product could be a life-saver for my mental state. I’ve never swam with piped-in music or an iPod-type product, I’d be interested to see what it did to my turnover or stroke mechanics.
