FEATURE: No Slowing Down for Bryan Little

It's been over three years since Bryan Little played a game for the Winnipeg Jets.

Even though the 35-year-old isn't competing on the ice right now, he has found something else to keep him busy:

Triathlons.

Little started the journey toward his newest sport back when he was still with the Jets.

"When I moved out into the country (in Cambridge, Ontario), I bought a road bike because there are a lot of cyclists out here and so I did that while I was still playing, so I wasn't getting out much. I would do like recovery rides on it and stuff," said Little.

"I just came across it looking at YouTube videos on it. This Canadian professional triathlete posted a lot of stuff on YouTube, his workouts and stuff, and I just thought it was so interesting."

The triathlete Little is referring to is four-time Ironman champion Lionel Sanders who has 185,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel. From there, Little's trainer asked him if he wanted to compete in a sprint (a shorter triathlon, comprised of a 750-metre swim, a 20-kilometre bike and five-kilometre run) in the summer of 2018, right before he headed back to Winnipeg for training camp, something Little would repeat again in 2019.

"I loved it. The first time I tried it, and I knew after I was done playing, I would actually train for them and maybe do some longer races and that's kind of how I got into it," said Little.

"I didn't do any training for either one because I was doing my hockey training. It was kind of like a fun race at the end of the summer or whatever and I got humbled for sure. I didn't do any swimming or running outside of sprint track work so even the short race was pretty painful."

Even though he wasn't training for it specifically, the Edmonton product saw an improvement from his first race to his second one.

"There was a seven- or eight-minute time difference and my goal for that one (the 2019 sprint) was to swim the whole time, to not stop," Little explained.

"I ended up swimming the whole way and I don't think I was much faster at all but somehow, I did swim the whole time. I was in pretty good shape because I had been training for three months for hockey, so I wasn't really sore or anything after the race."

In November of 2019, Little was hit by a puck in the head during a game in Winnipeg. He obviously didn't return that season and COVID arrived soon after shutting down the National Hockey League for a significant period of time. As he continued his recovery, Little decided to venture more into his new passion and ended up googling triathlon coaches. That's how he found his current coach, James Loaring.

"I had never met him before even though he lives not too far way," explained Loaring. "It was during COVID so there weren't any real group training opportunities. But he just sent me an email. He was looking for someone to provide some personalized coaching and during that time in COVID that meant basically providing a personalized web-based training program for him.

"There is a lot to it, nutrition, fueling, and equipment and he was relatively new to the sport but he's an exceptional athlete and motivated. I've been able to provide support for roughly the last year and a half or so and have got a chance to see him make some pretty good improvements at a few of the local races he's done."

One of the first things Loaring mentioned about Little was about how humble he is.

"A lot of people (in triathlon) might not be aware of his (hockey) background, and it is, I think an interesting and inspiring story," said Loaring.

"It's pretty cool to see him competing at these events, that really have all different levels of abilities, and I think he's just super passionate about trying to lead that healthy lifestyle and also is motivated to continue to make improvements."

Little admitted his weakest discipline is swimming and he's worked very hard over the last couple of years to get better at it. To assist with that, Loaring jumped into a pool and did some underwater video analysis.

"When you go into a very technical sport like swimming, there is a large learning curve with it. But in his case, he is very good and if he can see what the two or three areas of stroke correction he should be focusing on and it's hard to know that without actually getting some underwater video of your stroke," said Loaring.

"When you get that video and a coach can show you are to make some refinements to it you can make some big improvements to it can be made."

Being the world class athlete that he is, and with some help from Loaring, Little's work ethic and desire to get better at swimming has paid off.

"I try to get in the pool as much as possible and I'm finally starting to see my time going down and started to see myself getting faster and that's when I started to enjoy it," said Little about swimming.

"I'm like 'oh I can actually get better at this and get faster,' so that's when I started to like it more. I probably like it a bit more than running right now actually."

Jets fans may miss Little on the ice, but they will be thrilled to know that he is happy with all the time he gets to spend with his wife Brittany and their soon-to-be five-year-old daughter. On top of that, his newfound sport is occupying his time.

"Honestly like it's basically what I do now between being a dad," said Little. "Shuffling things around between doing stuff with my daughter and taking her to activities. When she is at school, that's when I train, go to the pool to swim and bike ride so it kind of keeps me busy and gives me something to do.

"I'm probably in the best shape in my life in the last couple of years at least in terms of anaerobically and stuff. But mentally it's been huge cause I do enjoy it. I enjoy how different it is I guess compared to hockey training I did. It's not as much time in the gym, you actually get outside and go for runs and get to be in the sun. It's one of the most important things for my mental health since I stopped playing."

Little, along with his younger brother Shawn, is currently training for the 2023 IRONMAN 70.3 in Muskoka, Ontario at the beginning part of July.