I lost all hope a few years ago when Taren started advertising LED lights that you put in your ears, so that more light reaches your brain (and “cheats” it, giving you the benefits that come with being around a greater amount of natural light).
I kid you not. There’s snake oil, and then there’re lights you put in your ears to illuminate your brain.
Sadly there’s no shortage of (often, self taught) coaches who work their athletes hard in both intensity and volume until they burn out in several years.
If you just look at the athletes who get results doing that, you might get the impression that it’s the way to go, but that’s really survivorship bias - you ignore everyone who burns out or quits and cherry pick the few who didn’t, by stroke of unusual ability to recover from and absorb massive amounts of training.
I lost all hope a few years ago when Taren started advertising LED lights that you put in your ears, so that more light reaches your brain (and “cheats” it, giving you the benefits that come with being around a greater amount of natural light).
I kid you not. There’s snake oil, and then there’re lights you put in your ears to illuminate your brain.
Ha ha, yep that certainly was a highlight!
Seems he has his loyal disciples indoctrinated though judging by the comments section of the video… He could kill someone and they would say he has helped global warming
I only saw an occasional video, he seemed like a nice guy that happy to find a way to get out of the office and live off enthusiasm for his hobby. He seemed pretty affected to hear that he had a few ‘haters’ just at the point he planned to commercialize a bit more.
His content and viewer interest depended on racing so pretty much vaporized during covid.
fitness and lifestyle theme is more robust during covid and promises unlimited new audiences and new potential topics.
Lots of competition though and often looking super fit helps attract people seeking health advice.
His TRI channel will still be there for TRI noobs with 6.5 years of topics, so might keep making some money. no point scratching around for new ideas with downturn in racing.
People change and it’s hard to train as much, let alone have that unlimited naive energy and enthusiasm, knowing last time you burned out
I lost all hope a few years ago when Taren started advertising LED lights that you put in your ears, so that more light reaches your brain (and “cheats” it, giving you the benefits that come with being around a greater amount of natural light).
I kid you not. There’s snake oil, and then there’re lights you put in your ears to illuminate your brain.
Ha ha, yep that certainly was a highlight!
Seems he has his loyal disciples indoctrinated though judging by the comments section of the video… He could kill someone and they would say he has helped global warming
W-T the actual F? You know what else gets more light to your brain, a hole in your head, but I am not advocating that approach either… Some of these coach/guru types forget that their audiences are actually smart, and see through them. You can monetize and shill for some stuff, as long as you stay true to your message, and have some standards around what you will promote… He’d be best to remember this quote “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”… I think that’s an apt description of the hole he’s trying to climb out of, while still falling for more stuff and thus simultaneously digging the hole deeper.
I know he has his loyal followers, I regularly see people in his original demographic (everyman triathletes) religiously sharing his videos on facebook, but he’s bee bleeding those for a long time on his descent to gurudom (or ascent to Quack status?).
Yes, it’s always amazed me how major brands partnered with him. Especially Canyon, which definitely made me think less of the brand.
When he decided to change his tack from Everyman to full-time triathlete he began shilling tons of snake oil in various forms. And his brand only grew. He would be one of the things that I don’t think is good for Triathlon, but that doesn’t make him unique. There are TONS of Fit Bros on youtube that shill snake oil and do the mastermind course selling pyramid scheme crap. So now he’s becoming a generic FitBro I guess.
I lost all hope a few years ago when Taren started advertising LED lights that you put in your ears, so that more light reaches your brain (and “cheats” it, giving you the benefits that come with being around a greater amount of natural light).
I kid you not. There’s snake oil, and then there’re lights you put in your ears to illuminate your brain.
Please tell me you can find that video…
Sorry, can’t find it, which is good because I don’t have the dilemma to face of whether to post it and get it more clicks.
Don’t agree. No one tuned in expecting great things from him, to the contrary they tuned in because they could relate to the everyman age grouper that he originally presented himself as.
It was once he started sprewking snake oil and grounding mats and $6k bikes as ‘entry level’ that the tide turned
I agree his everyman age grouper image at the beginning was more interesting to me but he seemed to quickly transition to pushing whatever thing caught his constantly shifting focus. Must have Carbon insoles or some nutrition thing or some new magical training technique. No idea what his training plans he produced were like but I wouldn’t trust them judging by the content he produced.
He expanded too fast and got caught up in his own hype. He was certainly a source of information and inspiration for beginners. He spun that directly into thinking he had the knowledge to advise about everything and began to sell short cuts and silver bullet “hacks” and looking for how to monetize triathlon as an average age grouper/content maker. He continues to blame his intense training for his hormonal system being out of whack. He does not know what true overtraining is. Good luck to him. Hopefully the algorithm no longer includes him with the rest of the tri videos.
I honestly never quite understood why he was pushing so hard to go to 70.3 Worlds or Kona even.
I was always thinking that he was trying to get more views if he was THE guy what is not necessarily the true…or maybe he wanted to prove his following that he could.
I think there is o lot of beginner triathlon content he provided in the past but things keep changing!
But all the nutritional content was something that just destroyed his credibility with me.
Also the way he would give advice - YOU HAVE TO DO THIS, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT
I would prefer the approach of I`m doing this, but YOU do what you think his best for you!
After the Keto / Vegan crazy no carbs diet and after that complaining that his body had the same testo count of a 70 year old and blaming over training was a bit too much for me!
There is two fitness Youtubers that I follow that have good content and even share links of clinical studies so you can understand the sources. The likes of Nick Bare, Taren…just want you to sell you things!
I assume pretty much all of his recent content has been geared around stuff he can sell on his app, the reason he does loads of kettlebell workouts is because they are easy to film and add to his app. Probably not very easy for him to go out and do a hard track session, when there are likely people using his stuff who are faster or better bikers than him now
That 5km time trial he did just off of hill running was the first to get to me, he clearly upped a lot of his cycling intensity at the same time but put it all down to hill reps 🤔 and I also seem to remember him doing a lot of comparison videos (Roka vs amazon brand or a Canyon bike vs something cheaper) and whilst wearing all the sponsored branding gear and having all his sponsors on the wall in the background he’d be telling people to buy the $1000 Roka swimsuit or the $8k Canyon he was given for free.
I honestly never quite understood why he was pushing so hard to go to 70.3 Worlds or Kona even.
I was always thinking that he was trying to get more views if he was THE guy what is not necessarily the true…or maybe he wanted to prove his following that he could.
I think there is o lot of beginner triathlon content he provided in the past but things keep changing!
But all the nutritional content was something that just destroyed his credibility with me.
Also the way he would give advice - YOU HAVE TO DO THIS, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT
I would prefer the approach of I`m doing this, but YOU do what you think his best for you!
After the Keto / Vegan crazy no carbs diet and after that complaining that his body had the same testo count of a 70 year old and blaming over training was a bit too much for me!
There is two fitness Youtubers that I follow that have good content and even share links of clinical studies so you can understand the sources. The likes of Nick Bare, Taren…just want you to sell you things!
Nick’s marketing is quite genius though, always subtle and backed by his own results. But he is not pushing any kind of snake oil is he? Well guess his morning reds/greens are actually.
Nick’s marketing is quite genius though, always subtle and backed by his own results. But he is not pushing any kind of snake oil is he? Well guess his morning reds/greens are actually.
To be honest I think Nick does a good job overall, and I would buy his product even though I already have greens and Whey that I already like, but I would buy one day no problem
The only thing that bothers me is that his size/performance I THINK is not due to his products. Even though he NEVER said that…I think this is the overall aim for his youtube channel
And that dude is clearly using something else. And again I have no problem with that - I have people close to me that does use some ‘Help’ but like…drinking whey protein and greens will not make me that big.
So it’s super easy to do a cross country bike ride training session when you feel like 15y old waking up next day!
I honestly never quite understood why he was pushing so hard to go to 70.3 Worlds or Kona even.
I was always thinking that he was trying to get more views if he was THE guy what is not necessarily the true…or maybe he wanted to prove his following that he could.
I think there is o lot of beginner triathlon content he provided in the past but things keep changing!
But all the nutritional content was something that just destroyed his credibility with me.
Also the way he would give advice - YOU HAVE TO DO THIS, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT
I would prefer the approach of I`m doing this, but YOU do what you think his best for you!
After the Keto / Vegan crazy no carbs diet and after that complaining that his body had the same testo count of a 70 year old and blaming over training was a bit too much for me!
There is two fitness Youtubers that I follow that have good content and even share links of clinical studies so you can understand the sources. The likes of Nick Bare, Taren…just want you to sell you things!
His “YOU HAVE TO DO THIS, YOU HAVE TO DO THAT†advice is certainly not unique in triathlon. Plenty of advice posts on this forum do just that. If you’re a beginner in triathlon and read some posts here (not all) you’d think you need a $10k bike, disc wheels, electronic shifting, lightest pedals, skinsuit, $400 bike shoes, and train 20 hours per week otherwise there would be no point.
I think that’s why I probably enjoy local sprint triathlon as much as bigger more competitive triathlons. Local sprints have a bunch of beginner with whatever equipment they can round up and often are just excited to be there and have fun.
Is Taren not on Slowtwitch?
i admire the guys who have been doing this for 10+ years. Well I just hit 10, but everyday as Im not hitting previous performances question what I am doing with myself. Seems like ‘10,000’ rule is in effect no matter what hobby you take up. But I am personally fascinated by those who go beyond that time. running, swimming, computer programming. whatever it is.
This sport is not about getting better relative to yourself of yesterday or the people around you.
The sport is about getting the most out of yourself with the cards in the hand NOW, enjoying it repeating that daily.
I am 36 years from my first tri and the same process repeats 36 years later. I went from MOP to FOP to sliding way back in the overall, but if I compare what I get out of myself daily it is very motivational and enjoyable for myself. The actual numbers on the clock and power meter and at races are completely different.
on a side note I recently went 4:54 in a half Ironman. My first half Ironman was in 1986, so 35 years ago. I was 20 seconds faster this time…however,
1986: no wetsuit swim, close to 2000m climbing between bike and run, 35C heat high humidity in vermont, no wetsuit, standard road bike, no aerobars, no race wheels, no racing flats, water and dates for bike and run nutrition (33 + 2:42 + 1:33)2021: wetsuit swim, fast bike on a formula 1 circuit, 20C low humidity day, tri bike, aero bars, racing flats, gatorade, coke and gels for modern nutrition (31 + 2;29+1:49)
Still it was cool to beat the 1986 time, but I needed everything lined up in my favour this round to beat it. In 1986, I had youth and a big engine. I ran a 7:08 1.5 miles in my military fitness test 2 weeks later in military issued running shoes (4:43 mile pace). On a good day today, running a 5km at 4:43 per km is a massive acheivement. This was my mile pace!!! But last year I still ran 3200km just because
Dev, I couldn’t agree with you more. As a competitive runner for over fifty years and triathlete for 39 years it’s about following the honest process of training. Sure the results are different from 20’s,30’s,40’s,50’s and even each year in my sixties . We all go through trials and tribulations over the years but you dust yourself off and do what you can.
Taren, burned his flame quite brightly and quickly. He is highly over dramatic about the daily process and his progress . You start a sport because it’s fun, then see how far your work wthic and talent can take it, You remain in the sport for years later because of the reason you started because it’s fun.
Before he passed away at age 84 golf legend Arnold Palmer still practiced every day. It’s the process not the result!
Nick’s marketing is quite genius though, always subtle and backed by his own results. But he is not pushing any kind of snake oil is he? Well guess his morning reds/greens are actually.
To be honest I think Nick does a good job overall, and I would buy his product even though I already have greens and Whey that I already like, but I would buy one day no problem
The only thing that bothers me is that his size/performance I THINK is not due to his products. Even though he NEVER said that…I think this is the overall aim for his youtube channel
And that dude is clearly using something else. And again I have no problem with that - I have people close to me that does use some ‘Help’ but like…drinking whey protein and greens will not make me that big.
So it’s super easy to do a cross country bike ride training session when you feel like 15y old waking up next day!
He does look like he’s on one of each from each category, but don’t fool yourself - he’s working hard everyday and he’s not having more than a couple of cheat meals a week. You don’t get to look like that by slacking off.
That said, I hope snake oil charmers die a painful death. Especially those who dabble in antivaxxer mud like Greenfield.
The key to being good at endurance sports is building a large aerobic engine.
The key to building a large aerobic engine is to train consistently over a VERY long time (10+ years)
How do you train for a long time? You don’t train too hard. You sleep. You control intensity. You keep it fun.
Go on long bike rides (and don’t stare at your powermeter). Stop for coffee. Run trails. Lift some weights. Eat well. Go to bed.
The Norwegians have figured this out.
GOLD!
That’s the WHOLE thing right there!
This sport is not about getting better relative to yourself of yesterday or the people around you.
The sport is about getting the most out of yourself with the cards in the hand NOW, enjoying it repeating that daily.
First long run when I was 15
First triathlon when I was 20.
First 1/2 iron distance triathlon when I was 25
First Ironman when I was 28
Best Ironman and maybe my best overall life Endurance Sports Performance at 31 (9:04 @ IMC)
Took a complete year off from work, and just about everything else and back-packed around the world when I was 34
Last triathlon and Ironman when I was 36
Most recent long ride - 120km two weeks ago
Most recent longer “training” - 45 mins. on the rollers last night.
“Training” today - a long walk this morning
Current age - 60
It’s always been fun. It’s been a great run so far. I do this because I love it. It makes me feel good!
What Norwegians are we talking about here? Are you referring to the Blumenfelt/Iden/Stornes crew?