Coach Tim Brazier

Coach Tim Brazier Endurance Coach at Cartel Coaching

04/09/2026

Most triathletes treat running as the sport you don’t have to learn.

We spend hours on swims drills. We look at every minute detail of our bikes, our fit and aerodynamics. Then we lace up and assume the running looks after itself.

It doesn’t.

Running is a biomechanical skill, and skills need rehearsal. Nobody produces a stride at hour four of an Ironman that they’ve never produced fresh.

That’s what drills are. Not a warm up ritual, rehearsal. You teach the body how to hold posture and meet the ground until it happens without thinking. Then when the thinking goes, and it will, the movement stays.

Skip it and you pay twice. In efficiency, and in your body.

Whether you come in through our community on Skool or work with us one on one, the methodology doesn’t change. We get you running with mechanics that hold up when it counts.

Come and have a look.

Early July I was in the snow. Ten days later I broke my foot in two places walking the dog.No fall worth retelling. Just...
21/08/2026

Early July I was in the snow. Ten days later I broke my foot in two places walking the dog.

No fall worth retelling. Just an awkward step and two fractures.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. Ski season just getting started, work trips, kids life…

Four weeks in, what’s struck me most is how fast the calf goes. I’ve told athletes that a hundred times. Watching it on my own leg is different.

So: seated ski erg most days. Leg curls, leg extensions. Single leg calf raises on the right side, because there’s a small strength transfer to the injured side even when you can’t load it. Upper body to hold onto something. And as soon as I was allowed, moving the foot up and down to keep the ankle’s range and stop the joint seizing up.

None of it’s exciting. That’s kind of the point.

We work with a lot of athletes rebuilding from lower leg injuries, and the pattern’s always the same.

People either sit still and lose everything, or rush it and go backwards.

I’m going to take you through the rehab properly. Every stage, what I’m doing, what I’m not doing yet, and why.

If you’re rebuilding something too, come along.

17/08/2026

Do you choose the hills or do you avoid them?

Most runners route around them. Fair enough, they hurt. But a hill asks more of you than flat ground ever will. It loads the calves and the glutes, it lifts the heart rate without you having to chase pace, and it stresses the whole system in a way that’s honest. You can’t fake a hill.

A few things worth holding onto on the way up:

Stay tall. The moment you fold at the waist you shut your hips down and leave your calves to do all the work.

Drive the arms. Your legs follow your arms more than most people realise.

Shorten the stride, lift the cadence. Let the gradient set the effort, not the watch.

Eyes up the hill, not down at your feet.

The best part is what it gives back once you’re on the flat again. Strength you didn’t have before, and the confidence that when the course goes up, you go with it.

Cartel Coaching we lean into them.

Special thanks to our non paid actor and resident ex pro, Callum Millward

14/08/2026

If you train with us, you’ll be in the gym.

No apologies for that one. Strength and plyometric work is programmed into your week from your base phase all the way through to race specific blocks. Not as an extra. As part of the plan.

You’re not going to get bulky. That’s not what we’re training for. We’re training for durability, because durable athletes spend less time on the sideline and more time actually enjoying the sport they signed up for.

I coach athletes at every level. People brand new to the sport, people who took up triathlon for their health, right through to athletes racing at Olympic level. The principles don’t change. Strength and durability matter the same amount regardless of where you’re starting.

Come see how we do it.

11/08/2026

One of the most common things we see is an athlete who understands the plan completely. They know the intent. They know why the easy run is easy.

And then there’s a little voice sitting on their shoulder, and his name is Strava.

So the run goes a bit faster than it should. Or a bit longer, because 9.4km looks untidy and 10 looks better. None of it feels like a big deal in the moment. That’s the problem. It’s never one session. It’s the compounding of dozens of small deviations over a block, and by the time it shows up you’re not sure why you’re flat, or sore, or why race day didn’t reflect the work you put in.

The number you rounded up wasn’t the point of the session. The intent was.

We get into this properly on the latest episode, which is all about running injuries 🩼

And if you want the longer version of this conversation, we have it live every week with our athletes inside our Skool community every week.

Come and join us.





Five mistakes I see in adult onset swimmers. I am not telling you this to make you feel bad about your swimming. I am te...
13/07/2026

Five mistakes I see in adult onset swimmers. I am not telling you this to make you feel bad about your swimming. I am telling you because every one of them is fixable, and most of you are one honest conversation away from a better stroke.

You swim at survival pace and wonder why you have no speed. You reach for the fins the moment it gets hard. You clip the watch on and let a number run the session. None of that makes you a poor swimmer. It just means the work has been dodged, not done.

So here is what I ask of you. Turn up to think. Put the toys down and let the swim be honest, even when it is slow. Get a real hold of the water out front and pull yourself past your hand. Take the watch off once in a while and feel how you are actually moving. That is where the swimming lives.

I will not make your sets boring, and I will not let you hide. If you are ready to stop grinding out lengths and start swimming with intent, come and do the work with us.
coaching

23/06/2026

Elite isn’t something you’re born into. It’s how you train, and it’s there for anyone willing to put in the work

That’s where we start with every athlete, and it’s the whole idea behind Cartel.

For years I’ve coached at the elite level. Olympic triathletes, high performance athletes, the top of the sport. And I kept coming back to one thing: this knowledge shouldn’t sit with the few. The principles that take an athlete to the Games are the same ones that’ll take you to your next start line.

So we found a way to share them properly. We don’t chase someone else’s numbers. We take the science and apply it to the athlete in front of us. Your body, your sport, your life.

That’s why we’ve built different ways in.

For those chasing the big goals, there’s one to one coaching, us beside you the whole way.

And now there’s membership too, at a few different levels, so you can work off the same principles in a way that fits your life and your budget. The plans are there, the coaching calls are there, and you scale the support up as you go.

Different doors, same room. Whichever one you come through, we’re in your corner.

So here we are, doors open.

One to one with me, or membership at a level that meets you where you are. If this sounds like the support you’ve been after, you know where to find us.

A race is won long before anyone’s watching.

I have been coaching an athlete for a couple of months now. Not a professional, but someone who genuinely wants to get b...
12/06/2026

I have been coaching an athlete for a couple of months now. Not a professional, but someone who genuinely wants to get better, and honestly her swimming isn’t as bad as she thinks.

In her first week she came to me with a question I didn’t expect.

How do I do these sets?

They aren’t in fifty meters and I swim in a fifty meter pool. I found that really interesting, because it had never occurred to me that the length of the pool was the thing on their mind.

But it makes sense. We get so caught up in the meters and the round numbers and the long boring swims. I see the same thing across our community on Skool .coaching , my goal there is to unlock a different level of thinking when it comes to swimming in the age group levels.

So here’s my take. I could program you fifty meters on a clock all day long. But what are you really getting out of that? A set is a question, not a distance. Turn up to answer it and you leave a better swimmer than you came.

Becoming a dad changed how I coach. I didn’t expect that, but it did.Early on, I thought coaching was about holding the ...
31/05/2026

Becoming a dad changed how I coach. I didn’t expect that, but it did.

Early on, I thought coaching was about holding the line. Set the bar, stay steady, don’t flinch when someone wants you to lower it. That’s real, but it turns out it’s only the first part.

The bigger job, the one that takes longer to see, is slowly working myself out of one.

I notice it with my kid at the playground. The instinct is to hover. Catch them, step in the second something looks risky. But every time I do, their world gets a bit smaller. The harder thing is to stand back far enough that they find out what they can actually do.

Coaching’s the same. Early on I give a lot, the why behind every session, tight structure, the calls made for them. But if I’m still making every call four years in, I haven’t coached them. I’ve trained them to wait for me. And the thing they need most at 30km, when I’m nowhere near them, is the one thing I never let them practise: deciding for themselves.

There’s decades of research that says this in fancier language. Take away someone’s sense of choice and their motivation falls off, they persist less, enjoy it less. Give it back and you get an athlete who’s more durable, races better, and genuinely wants to be there. Control gets you obedience. It doesn’t get you someone who can think on a bad day.

So I measure the job differently now. Not by how much they need me. By how little.

Funny how it works. Coaching taught me to hold the line. Parenting taught me when to drop it.

Three weeks ago we opened the doors on something a bit different.I’ll be honest, the dates are already a blur. First of ...
22/05/2026

Three weeks ago we opened the doors on something a bit different.

I’ll be honest, the dates are already a blur. First of May, I think? Either way, three weeks into our .coaching Skool program and it’s been a real change of pace for me.

For years my coaching has lived in one place. One athlete, one plan, a lot of back and forth. What we’ve been trying to do with Cartel is find a way to take some of those same principles and make them reach further. More accessible, without watering down the thinking behind them.

So far that’s looked like six coaching calls, a lot of curious questions, more than a few swim drill conversations, and plenty of learning on the fly.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. Learning is hard. There are always growing pains, and they show up most when you ask people to start thinking for themselves and making their own decisions. That can feel daunting. A bit uncomfortable. But it’s also where the good stuff happens.

Watching this first group, our OGs, start to back themselves has been the best part of these three weeks.

If you’re curious, and you’re after something that sits between one on one coaching and just grabbing a plan off the shelf, come find us on Skool the link is at the top of my page.

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