I AM, Grant Hackett

Everyone always says that the best bang for your buck in triathlon is getting a coach. After working with Matt for slightly over a month, I now echo those sentiments.  Matt has lived up to my expectations as a coach. He has met with me several times outside of training just to talk shop, we have met up for multiple workouts and his knowledge and insight into the varied aspects of triathlon are invaluable.

During one of our first pool sessions we busted out the GoPro and video taped my swim from every angle.  He pointed out areas of concern which I could immediately address.  He did remind me to only focus on 1 or 2 aspects because trying to fix everything at the same time would be overwhelming.  A few things that I have been focusing on are, my reach ( keeping my arms straight and parallel as well as reaching for the end of the pool), completing my stroke (early catch, and extending my triceps through the follow through) and hip rotation (it took a while to figure this one out, I’m slowly making progress).  I have been working on these three aspects intensively during my pool sessions and within the last couple of days have been reaping the fruits of my labor.

Every few weeks I have a pool session that has a main set of; 3 sets of 10x25yds.  25 yds may not appear to be a long distance, because of my HIM goals, but the current focus is to build my aerobic engine and some speed right now. Below are the same Main Set done a month apart.  The numbers speak for themselves.

                          11/03/11                                                               
Rd 1
Rd 2
Rd 3
     18.67
19.20
18.29
19.63
18.42
19.94
18.49
19.83
18.14
19.11
18.13
19.19
17.75
18.40
16.02
18.54
17.57
18.21
18.18
18.15
18.13
17.13
17.52
18.84
18.25
18.32
18.84
17.92
17.86
18.37

                               12/09/11
Rd 1
Rd 2
Rd 3
18.53
18.28
16.29
17.19
16.85
16.38
17.51
16.91
16.24
17.23
16.79
16.70
17.20
16.96
16.55
16.79
16.73
15.91
16.87
16.75
16.01
16.76
16.32
16.30
16.20
16.68
16.79
16.67
16.27
15.86













11/03/11 avg for all three rounds was around 18.3X
12/09/11 avg for all three rounds was around 16.7X

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