Pro Cyclist Takes On Triathlon Can He Swim

Jimmy Whelan was a professional cyclist at the top of his game, until recently. After one too many crashes and countless hours spent recovering instead of racing, he decided it was time for a change. Jimmy has shifted his focus to competing as a professional triathlete. On the bike he's a powerhouse, holding 40 kilometers an hour plus with ease. On the run he's blazing fast, clocking a sub 30 minute 10k run. But here's the big question, can he swim? I caught up with Jimmy just two months into his professional triathlon career and just two months into his swimming journey. Will Jimmy be able to hang with the pros in the swim league? And more importantly, what key advice could I offer him to help him get there? So the first thing that I saw when I was watching Jimmy in the footage was that his head position when he was breathing was really coming off to the side. So you can see it here as he was turning to the side that his head came way off this center line here. It was actually shifting probably 20-30 centimeters off to the side there and that was causing a little bit of his legs to splay, that was part of it and it was just you losing his body line there. And when I was asking him about it he said that he heard some advice it should breathe or look behind you. And it just depends on where you are and when you're swimming but for the most part we just want to look directly to the side and not behind us. So the first thing I had him work on was just looking directly to the side, keeping that head in line with the spine almost like we've got a skewer running through here. And one thing that I did when he was swimming is I walked alongside him and I wanted him to look directly at me. So I made sure that I was standing right next to him here so that he couldn't look behind him he had to look at me. And that was a good way for him to know roughly where he actually needed to look there. So that was the first thing, correcting what his head was doing when he was turning to breathe. The second thing that I noticed was with his legs they weren't really working for him as well as they could. From above here you can see how his legs were kind of splaying a bit and when we look from underneath here he was bending at the hips and knees just a little bit too much. So what I had him do there was think about keeping your, almost tucking your tailbone underneath, trying to keep your inner thighs a little bit closer with your kick and thinking about having really your thighs or your thigh bones here as just moving slightly back and forth to create this nice kind of flutter out behind you. So I think perhaps from maybe his cycling experience and that kind of background we saw that through the hips and knees just sort of kicking down a little bit more than what he needed to. So that way with this straighter body line then he was actually creating less drag and had a bit more stability and control through the hips and through his rotation. So we just worked on making sure that the kick was a little bit narrower and more in line with his body. The third thing and I think this is like long term, this is probably the most important one, was we helped him work on his work on his catch. Now you can see from this side view that a few things was happening here with his catch. First thing was particularly on his left side he was drifting up a little bit here where his fingers were above his wrists and above his elbow. So he was putting the brakes on a bit, slowing himself down there and that impacted how well he was able to get his catch. Because if we draw this line from his shoulder to his fingers the elbow is a little bit below that and that's going to be a slower, well not as effective in terms of his catch. Because where we want to be is if we draw this line from here to here ideally we want the elbow to be somewhere above that line which is what a high elbow catch would be. So his forearm was mostly pushing down, we want to work on getting this shape where that's pressing more back behind him. Now a couple things were causing that. When we look from above you can see that he was crossing over the center line a bit, not so much on that left hand but a little bit more on this right hand where he was crossing this center line where he was coming across there. So we firstly want to make sure that we get on the train tracks, hands in line with the shoulders and not drifting across the head there, that's the first thing. The other thing that I sort of brought his attention to was with his catch and pull when we look at that front on he was somewhat narrow with it. So from this angle if we have a look at his catch here you can see that this was a little bit narrow there. A good catch would actually see is having the upper arm and elbow out wider here, hand and forearm there. So he's got a good kind of angle happening but he's a bit too narrow. Bringing it through here he's going through his catch and again this catch was kind of right into the middle. Now if we think about getting ourselves out of the pool, like let's say he was standing right here and he had to try and lift himself out. He would have his arms in this position here to help him lift up and out of the water. But if we transfer this position to him standing on the side it would kind of be like he was doing this. There's just not much power, can't use your lats as well through that movement. So what I had him work on with some of the drills that we did, it was think about your upper arm and elbow being at the side a bit more. So as you're moving your hand down just keep the elbow off to the side slightly more and that helped him start to hold quite a bit more water through his catch. And you can see it here in the footage. Let's pull this out. All right here we go. So this is where he's working on that catch and trying to go a little bit wider with the arm and you can see that immediately he was actually able to start to feel like he was holding more water and get into some better shapes and positions. So that's a lot better. Looking on his left arm, similar thing, starting to go out wider. That's a much better position for his catch there. And watching him swim it looked like he was getting a bit further with each stroke and just looked like he was holding and connecting with the water better. And we can see here from the direct front view, again starting to get some pretty good positions on a lot of these strokes. Whereas before this used to be relatively narrow. So going forwards that's a big big part of it because he already had fairly good body position. He was generally swimming quite well with good rhythm and tempo and he probably just lacked a little bit in the propulsive side of things. So I think moving forwards that's going to be one of the big things to work on as well as the open water skills and those sorts of things that come from racing in triathlon. Okay so quick update. I just got back from the Geelong Half Ironman which is Jimmy's first ever pro race. His second ever triathlon. He finished the swim in 28.48 which is an average of 1.31 per 100 meters which in my opinion is pretty impressive for only having swum for the last few months and his second ever triathlon. He biked two hours so averaged 44 kilometers an hour and ran 1.11.40 so a 3.24 per kilometer which is really impressive. So in my opinion a really impressive result for his debut pro triathlon. So I'm excited to see where Jimmy can go with his pro triathlon career and certainly as just first race step number one with his swim. 1.30 pace I think that's pretty impressive. So well done to Jimmy. Looking forward to seeing his progression over the coming months, over the coming years and get behind him. I am looking forward to seeing what he does.