Monthly Archives : November 2017

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The Secret Training Plan

November 28, 2017

Recently we had a new sign up for our monthly subscription training plan and on the same day, we received an email requesting a refund. The athlete said the reason was that he saw nothing special compared to previous training plans he had used before, the workouts were simple and therefore he was not satisfied.

It reminded me of another situation in which two of my athletes, who were friends, started training together but were having different results in terms of performance. The athlete who was not improving as much asked me if I had sent a special training plan to his buddy.

I often also get questioned about the type of training my high performance athletes are on. What’s so special about their training that makes them perform so well, win their age groups, qualify to the Ironman World Championships and so on.

What’s the secret training plan that these athletes are on?

This type of question or the attitude towards feeling that you are missing some secret recipe also means you are admitting that there are some special training sessions, a kind of secret training plan. Some athletes have the privilege to have access to that, making them faster.

But it is important to understand that if we want to improve our swimming, get stronger on the bike or have a more solid run, we need to pursue these improvements by increasing our training load, building a good consistency and getting the “right mix” of training. These are the best starting points and a balance of these things will guarantee your improvements. The truth is, there is no secret training plan, as they simply do not exist!

In 10 years of triathlon, I had the opportunity to meet many successful coaches and when I joined ironguides I came across a methodology somewhat controversial in our sport. Part of our training approach can be similar to some other coaches around the world, but certainly the most controversial is Australian Brett Sutton, coach of Olympic Champion Nicola Spirig, 4-time Ironman World Champion Chrissie Wellington among others. Brett is arguably the most successful trainer of triathlon in the history of this sport.

One of my colleagues and co-coach Vinnie Santana, was coached by Brett and says most of his strength is in the way he motivates his athletes. He makes them believe that what they are doing is the right thing and that there was no limit to what they could achieve. Brett has the skill to change how his athletes think. The training itself was certainly hard work, but it was very unsophisticated and repetitive based on some of the training plans Vinnie shared with me that included some of his own sub 9 hour Ironman performance and Team TBB Kona build (Chrissie’s first win). What I learned from this is that the belief in what you are doing is more important than what you are actually doing.

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Behind a victory in a race there are no secrets, but YEARS of consistent practice-Photo Leo Moreira 2011 Ironman Brazil champion in 9h05min, Leo has been an athlete for almost three decades.

Before Ironman 2014 I had many conversations with some top coaches to gather information on how I could improve my own marathon since it was my main limiting factor in races. In one of those conversations, I was told that increasing run volume while pulling back on intensity could be an option since I was recovering from a foot injury. I also had the opportunity to quickly talk to Ironman World champion Chris McCormack and asked him about this, he told me to decrease the intensity and avoid running on very hard surfaces. With these two ideas in mind I designed my new ten week program for the race. During this period, I saw some athletes doing and talking about different things, but I never questioned what I was doing or was annoyed. I had chosen a path and moved on. Pick and stick as they say. The result was that I was able to do my best Ironman marathon, fifteen minutes faster than my previous best time and this led me to my personal best time.

Despite comparing different realities of an age grouper triathlete and professionals, the message remains the same, the secret is having the knowledge and the understanding of why you are doing what you are doing. That’s the secret! Belief is essential in triathlon. Workouts or sets are only the second piece of the puzzle. When you find these key sessions, place them in your training program, work with a coach to do this, and most of all, try to understand why these sessions are important to you. When I think of all the sessions that I or any athlete of mine is doing, none is more important than the other, but I understand why we do each. All sessions that I, my athletes or professional athletes do, can be adopted by each of you, but when, where and how, is what is really important. Get the “right mix” is the key to better results over time. But we must be patient and understand that these results do not appear from night to day, instead, are built over months or years with a lot of consistency, discipline and hard work.

We never knowfor sure when we are getting enough when it comes to triathlon training. Be open to change and be prepared to try new things in your journey to become a better athlete. In this sport, it is not as difficult to improve as it seems. Often the biggest problems is not worrying about the process, but the result.

Enjoy your training!

Rodrigo Tosta

ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!

Train with ironguides!

Personalized Online Coaching:  Starting at USD190/month

Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months

Event based training plans:

Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)

Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)

X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)

Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)

 

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Strength Training: Benefits for Endurance Athletes

November 20, 2017

By Alun Woodward, Online Triathlon Coach, ironguides.net

The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. ironguides coach Alun “Woody” Woodward explains why and how strength training can be an extremely effective tool for endurance athletes.

The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. Over the past few years strength training has really started to make a big comeback; almost every magazine dedicated to endurance sports will have a section on strength training. Articles in this section always relay the same message: functional exercises are the only type of strength work that will benefit endurance athletes.

Functional exercises are essentially movements that follow the movement patterns used in sport—they don’t work muscles in isolation. These typical articles predominantly look at exercises that involve the legs such as dead lifts, squats, split squats, one legged squats, and so on.

While these exercises are great, they are also extremely demanding and require a lot of recovery, which can significantly impact our sport-specific work.

This approach, I believe, is looking at strength training in the wrong way. Yes, we need strong legs to perform our sport but we must consider what we, as endurance athletes, need exactly from strength training in order to improve our performance.

The key things I am looking for when designing a strength program are:

  • Stressing the central nervous system to stimulate hormone release.
  • Improving core strength.
  • Recruiting muscle fibres.

These are the 3 main benefits of a strength program; I will go through each one in this article and show how it will bolster your training.

1 – STRESSING THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

When we perform strength training with heavy weights that force us to use a large amount of muscle mass and we also add an element of balance to activate our core, then we stress our central nervous system.

The load we have placed on the body is above normal, safe levels and the body does not like this. As a result, it tries to get stronger, which it does by releasing growth hormone and targeting strength in ALL the muscles activated.

This has numerous benefits for an endurance athlete, including that core strength is increased which I will go into more below.

The key, however, is the hormone release; our bodies are ruled by hormones. The more growth hormone we have circulating in our body, the more we can maintain or build muscle mass and burn fat. Reducing body fat is a great way to improve endurance performance.

Most athletes, though, will straight away fear lifting heavy weights, as we fear building muscle, and the associated weight gain. In reality, endurance athletes like us are never in such an anabolic (i.e. build-up) state that we’d be able to do this.

As endurance athletes, we use the increase in anabolic hormone production to counteract the negative catabolic (breakdown) effect of hard endurance training and to keep our bodies healthy and balanced.

Conventional wisdom tells us that endurance training will make us healthy and lean but the reality is that this alone is not the key. Watch any big-city marathon or major ironman event to see a fair proportion of athletes competing with excess body fat, despite extreme and hard endurance training.

The reason that larger endurance athletes remain heavy is almost always that the body is not balanced; adding some heavy conditioning training to their program would help them get leaner and improve body composition, and so performance.

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Exercises

While leg exercises may be the most effective for stimulating hormone response, they are also very damaging and can affect our endurance training consistency, as I mentioned above. I prefer exercises that focus on the upper body and core. My favourite exercises are:

  • Standing Military Press – Perform 3 x 5 reps at a weight you feel you would fail after 7 reps.
  • Chin Ups – Perform 5 sets to one chin up before failure would occur.
  • Bench Press – Perform 3x 5 reps at a weight you feel you would fail after 7 reps
  • Renegade Rows – 5 x 5 slow and controlled repetitions.

Next time you’re feeling drained and are really suffering in training, go to the gym to perform a routine such as the above—you will be amazed at how energized you feel the next day.

2 – IMPROVING CORE STRENGTH

Core strength has been a major topic for a while now and we have seen many fitness inventions come to the market claiming to increase core strength. Many people believe that core strength is about doing 100s of sit ups, crunches and balancing on gym balls—while, in fact, the opposite is true.

True core strength is the ability of the core muscles to hold your body in a strong stance protecting your spine and allowing your major muscles to work more effectively in performing their task. If we have a strong core, we will move very efficiently and so save energy for any given activity—this is the key to performance in endurance events.

If we watch videos of the greats in our sport, such as Craig Alexander, we notice that their movement looks so easy and relaxed despite the speed and effort they are putting out. This is all due to a strong core and, essentially, movement efficiency.

As endurance athletes we look at the likes of Alexander, Chrissie Wellington, and the great runner Haile Gebrselassie, and we believe that their huge training volume is the key to their success. We may focus on Gebrselassie running 200km a week but we don’t recognize the other work he is doing—the time he spends in the gym to ensure he can maintain his great technique when tired.

Wellington has commented many times on the strength and core conditioning work she does in the gym with Dave Scott and how important it has been to her continued development.

So what exercises are core strength exercises? Well, they are the same exercises I outlined above. The military press is one of my absolute favourite exercises because you need your full abdominal muscles and glutes to be tight and activated to perform it. You will notice after a few reps that it’s not really the shoulders that are giving out, it’s your core that starts shaking first!

Push ups are a great core exercise, again as you need your full abdominals activated. Most athletes, on completing push ups after a layoff, will notice stomach pain the next day, rather than chest and shoulder soreness.

Pull ups also are an amazing core exercise. It has been said that 90% of the population, and also many top athletes, are unable to do these. That’s because you need good body position to be able to get into position for the correct muscles to work to lift up the body and the only way to get into this position is by having an extremely strong core.

I do not believe in separate core routines as I think they should be part of the strength program. As endurance athletes we do not have the time to be in the gym four or five times a week so we should get everything we need with two visits per week.

I suggest going through the above routine once a week, and once a week I like to throw in kettlebell work with some body weight exercises. I like a set which I call the 50’s challenge

  • 50 pull ups – rest as needed to complete
  • 50 kettlebell swings – start with double arm and progress to single arm
  • 50 push up walk outs – from a push up position walk hands forwards and then back
  • 50 kettlebell clean and press OR 50 kettlebell snatches
  • 50 push ups

3- RECRUITING MUSCLE FIBRES

This is a key area where we can improve endurance performance. When we perform endurance exercise we tend to use a very, very small proportion of our muscle fibres. Typically we use as little as 20% of our quads, for example, when riding and we always use these same fibres every session. As a result, our other muscle fibres are not used to working and when our working fibres get fatigued, the body has nowhere to go and so we slow down.

One area of training that is coming to the fore now is working to improve muscle recruitment. Renato Canova, coach to top Kenyan runners, uses 100-metre max speed hill sprints at the end of easy runs in order to do this, In our ironguides programs we use ALL OUT sprints in the pool and on the bike regularly to do the same, i.e. using a larger proportion of our muscle fibres. By regularly training these muscles, the body has somewhere to go when our normal endurance-trained fibres start to fail.

While sport-specific work is good, I believe we can get an amazing training effect for these fibres in the gym by using isolated muscle machines! While most strength coaches try to avoid these machines at all costs, I think they do have their place in our training programs.

An example is the leg extension machine that isolates the quadriceps. This machine will have an endurance athlete in a lot of pain very quickly as the isolated movement and weight means all muscle fibres are activated straight away and after 8-10 repeats, your legs will be screaming! To get the most out of these exercises, it is important to make the weight heavy so that you can perform around 10-12 repeats before failure. Do not lift so much weight that you fail after 3-5 reps as this will place too much stress on your knee joint. The only machines I use for this work are the leg curl and leg extension.

Summary

Strength training can be an extremely effective tool in your endurance training. Just remember to lift heavy and be specific in what you’re looking to achieve, whether it be specific recovery work, core strength or muscle recruitment training.

Enjoy your training!

***

Alun Woodward, ironguides Online Coach 

Train with ironguides!

Personalized Online Coaching:  Starting at USD190/month

Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months

Event based training plans:

Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)

Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)

X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)

Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)

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Off-season: Races are over, now what?

November 17, 2017

Your last race of the season is behind you and it is time to take that well deserved break. However you know how much work you put in to get to where you are right now, and if you would like to preserve most of your new fitness level, you should stay active in the off-season while you train certain things.

Approach it as a maintenance phase rather than aiming to improve. You know you will lose some fitness and that is part of the process as it will give your body a break and boost your motivation for next season, however, to stay fit you still need to do some work, especially if you are a beginner without a swimming background.  The list below will provide you a guideline on what you should do:

  • Swim often

Minimum once a week, ideally twice. Swimming is a very skilled sport that you lose the feel for it very fast, unlike cycling or running. Use a different pool or swim open water if you can to mix things up a little

You don’t need to swim for too long or too intensity, but just being in the water and do some laps will maintain your feel for it. Twenty minutes is enough.

  • Focus on strength and speed:

Whenever you are out, do a quick set of speed or strength in any of the disciplines, these are the core of your fitness and unlike endurance if you loose it, it takes longer to recover.

On the bike or run you can head to the hills and just let the course help you with your effort, ride it hard up and run it fast down. In the pool do some casual sprints across the pool.

  • Avoid longer sessions:Endurance comes and goes very easily. Let it go for now, a month or so of a good training plan once you are back and you will be fit as before.Another reason is to also let your hormonal system restore, staying away from long workouts will be beneficial to bring the “building” hormones such as growth hormone and testosterone up, and decrease the catabolic hormones like cortisol. Ideally keep sessions to shorter than forty minutes
  • Execise often:Note the word exercise rather than training. Just get the heart rate beating with other sports or activities. If swimbikerun, just head out for casual and unstructured sessions.Short, frequent and easy sessions boost your metabolism without draining your motivation and has no negative response on your endrocrine system. You will also feel more relaxed with a little bit of endorphin, another hormonal response that makes you feel good and relaxed
  • Get a mental breakAvoid the triathlon media or the internet to restore motivation. In terms of burnout, 99% of the causes are MENTAL/NEURAL. When we tap our entire being in one way without giving ourselves a break, we are in “always on” mode.Triathlon forums, websites, magazines, stores, people — this always-the-same-thing preoccupation, night and day, flattens us. Our entire nervous system breaks down. People burn out on non-physically demanding things like fly fishing.

It’s not just physical. Your challenge right now is not so much to recover physically as that you need to give yourself a rest from all things triathlon.

  • Be patient when back on the training planif you stayed fit in the offseason, you will be in decent shape once you get back to your training plan but still off your previous splits or paces. Don’t rush things. As a general rule, it takes as long to get back in shape to how long you were taking a break.Aim to build the consistency first, then add the volume and only after a couple weeks you add the intensity into the mix. You will be fresh, motivated and raring to go, this is a dangerous combination thay can potentially make you train too hard, wait until you have a decent level of fatigue before you push

Enjoy your training and have a great end of season!

Vinnie

ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!

Train with ironguides!

Personalized Online Coaching:  Starting at USD190/month

Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months

Event based training plans:

Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)

Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)

X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)

Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)

 

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Off-Season: Start with the most important step

November 13, 2017

By Coach Alun Woodward

At ironguides, our whole philosophy is based upon improving one step at a time or, as we like to call it, brick by brick. As coaches we are here to guide you in your fitness journey and take you to where you want to go.

The first thing we need to know from an athlete, though, is where it is that you want to go—what do you want to achieve? Once an athlete, and her coach, knows the key goal we are aiming for, it is time to get to work.

As we head into the off-season, now is the perfect time for novice and experienced athletes alike to sit down with their coaches, family and friends, or simply by themselves, to determine the goals for the coming year.

Off-season is always an exciting time for many athletes; the race season is finished and we are looking ahead to the future and all the big improvements we will make over the coming months. We see ourselves being more dedicated than ever, following routines that we failed to follow this year; we promise ourselves we will not be lazy this year; we will not have that cheesecake so often; we will not stay in the office so long; and we will not press the snooze button so often in the morning and miss swim practice.

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We all see how we can improve, we all believe we will improve but habit is habit and after just a short few weeks we all fall back into our lazy routine. Never forget that this is human nature. We are born lazy. We are created to feed and survive—once that’s done it’s time to rest! Take lions, for example, once they have caught their prey and eaten their fill, they will literally do nothing until they need to feed again. We are not really all that different, primarily speaking.

So, is there a way around our natural laziness? What can we do to make sure we stay on path and fulfill our goals?

The good news is that there are many ways to do break our habits and make sure we stay focused on pursuing our athletic dreams. Looking at the top athletes, we find some great examples. Let’s look at some ideas about how to make this coming season the best ever.

PUBLIC HUMILIATION

This has to be one of the most motivating of all methods, which is quite simply stating publicly what you are going to do. There are many ways to do this, either via a blog, at the office, within your local tri club. No matter which public avenue you choose, this will have an amazing effect.

When you’re tired one morning and the thought of the cold swimming pool is not going to get you out of bed, you will remember what you said, you will remember why and what the consequences will be if you just roll over and go back to sleep as maybe you did the year before.

One classic example of this strategy has to be two-time Ironman World Champion Chris McCormack: we always hear about his goals, what he is going to do and who he is going to beat as he publicly announces it as often as possible. It’s the fuel he needs to get out there and train and, needless to say, it works amazingly well for him.

IN YOUR FACE

Put your goals on paper and stick them some place you will see them every single day. Put them on the mirror in the bathroom, on the wall in your toilet or in front of your dining table. We can all set goals and most of us do. We also write them down but, honestly, once that’s done most athletes will never see that piece of paper again and the goals simply do not become reinforced or important.

WE NEED TO SEE OUR GOALS EVERY DAY

Once we start seeing our goals every day, we make sure that we take steps every day to achieve them. Visually reminded of our goals on a daily basis, we subconsciously make better decisions throughout the day. Say, your goal is to reduce body fat. A visual cue by way of a note on your desk reminding you of this every day will make you think twice before taking the doughnut offered around during lunch. If you did not see or think about the goal for a few weeks, it is much easier to cave in and grab the doughnut—after all, what difference is one doughnut going to make?!

MINI TARGETS

Set goals along the way so that they are in the here and now, rather than only for six to eight months down the road. Having a target so far away is rarely productive as it’s easy to lose sight of that in the short term. We always think we have time before we REALLY need to focus. This is the most common situation with athletes and they are so relaxed until they realize it’s too late and they only have a few weeks to get fit! These are the athletes who cram their training and get injured as a result, these are the athletes who you will always hear saying NEXT YEAR, NEXT YEAR is when I will be more disciplined, prepare better and earlier, this will never happen again. But it happens every year.

So let’s see what you can implement from all this to make next year your best ever.

First, let’s set some goals. Maybe your swim has always let you down as you spend most of your time focussed on the run and the bike. Let’s make swim the primary focus for a while. Maybe add one extra swim session a week or a couple of swim camps (4-day swim-specific blocks) over the period of the next two months.

On top of that, set a performance target to achieve at the end of this block. If you can swim all day, but speed is your limiter then set a target to work on speed. Maybe a simple set of 4×100 ALL OUT beginning on a 5-minute start time with the goal of hitting all below 1:30. On the other hand, if you can swim very fast but struggle with race distance then we can make endurance the target. Push the boundaries and target a 5km continuous swim as your goal. Once you achieve your goal make sure it’s maintained. Test once every two or three weeks to make sure you’re not losing all your hard-earned advances.

TAKE CARE

Old-school training methods coming out of Germany had athletes divide the winter into 3 blocks with 2 months of swim focus, followed by 2 months of run focus and then ending with 2 months of bike training. The aim was high mileage for the blocks in the chosen sport and just very minimal maintenance work in the other sports.

What this achieved, unfortunately, was amazing swimming in January, amazing running but a fading swim in March and then, as the season approached, an amazing bike performance with a terrible swim and an average run.

Never forgEt, we train in 3 sports and key sessions need to be there every week. We should focus more on 2 sports at any one time as we practice with The Method to advance in performance but we never neglect development in all 3.

Always remember, goals are individual and what will make one athlete faster may significantly slow another down—make sure the goal is significant for you and will help you move forward.

Let’s make 2014 the one where we show what you really can do, one where you do not get in your own way and end up following your normal path to destruction. Sit down with your coach, family and friends and have them tell you your weakness, have them tell you where you need to improve, and write it down and then display it so you see every day.

Make your roadmap of where you want to get to next season and then start on your way, building

brick by brick toward the new you.

By Alun ‘Woody’ Woodward, Certified ironguides Coach – UK/Hungary.

Alun Woodward

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* * * Your best is our business.™ * * *

ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!

Train with ironguides!

Personalized Online Coaching:  Starting at USD190/month

Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months

Event based training plans:

Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)

Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)

X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)

Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)

 

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Gain Weight for Improved Performance

November 10, 2017

We seem to have a non stop stream of articles in the triathlon media regarding weight loss and getting down to race weight, how to plan your year to be lean and light for race day. Having worked with athletes of all levels from beginner to ironman winning pro athletes i have to ask the question is lightest and leanest always the best solution for race day?

Performance is the goal of coaching and body weight is a huge factor in performance, but when we look at long distance triathlon and typically ironman then i really do not think lightest is best.

Lets look at the individual sports to see how this works, there is no question that to run a stand alone fast marathon the top athletes are ultra lean and light but when we take runners and introduce them to triathlon we tend to see very poor swim and bike performance and then the run performance is nothing like we would expect.

If we then look at swimmers we see long distance swimmers are strong and powerful and hold a little more body fat than runners, if we then look at long distance open water swimmers this becomes even more apparent. History has shown us that swimmers move to triathlon well and are powerful on the bike while struggle a little on the run as they move to the sport.

If we then look at cycling and in particular the top time trial athletes we see the bigger stronger riders are dominant, Fabian Cancellera being a prime example of this. In Ironman there is no question the race tends to be dominated by strong cyclists, not only does this strength lead to great cycling times but also a strong athlete will have more in reserve to use on the run!

Over the years we have seen time and time again in ironman that the big strong looking cyclist who should not be able to run i our eyes have great runs and the skinny smaller athletes who should be flying on the run suffer and run slower than expected.

While there will always be exceptions to the rule for longer distance races having a little more muscle and weight is going to lead to better results and in my opinion better overall health which is something we should always look at. While the extra weight may have an impact on run performance the benefits to the swim and bike will far outweigh this impact.

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Within endurance sports i think we have a culture of restricting calories and always tend to be a little underfed versus overfed and to gain muscle this is the hardest obstacle we have to overcome. In order to gain muscle our bodies need to be in a constantly fed state. This is not going to make us fat so long as we are training appropriately, so how to do we train for gaining muscle?

Gaining muscle is really all about 2 main factors, hormone stimulation and feeding. We need to switch the correct hormones on for growth and then we need to feed the muscles in order for this growth to occur.

As endurance athletes we have a major stumbling block in place that prevents this occurring and that is cardio exercise. Cardiovascular exercise breaks down muscle and prevents this growth taking place, in particular running has the biggest effect on this. So if weight gain is the goal for improved performance then the best time to start this process is the winter when large run volume is not of prime importance. Taking a period of time off from running or with significantly reduced run volume will enhance your ability to gain muscle mass. Once that muscle mass has been added it will be possible to maintain once the run volume increases later in the season.

How to switch the hormones on,

Strength training is how we switch the hormones on for optimal muscle mass development, we can do this to some extent with sport specific strength training such as low cadence high resistance work on the bike or swimming with paddles for increased resistance on the pull but some weight training added into your program will speed up this process. With the goal of gaining mass we need to be lifting heavy but not near our 1 rep max level, more in the 70-80% range and looking to perform 3-5 sets of 8-10 repetitions on each of the following exercises.

  • Deadlifts
  • Squats
  • Bench Press
  • Pull Ups

These exercises are the big bang exercises in weight lifting and deliver the biggest gains. When i say we want to switch growth hormones on we need to stimulate the central nervous system for this to occur and the instability element of these exercises and the fact they work a large range of muscles in each movement lead to this result.

These exercises especially the squats and deadlift need to be performed with good technique and i would recommend you consult a professional coach for advice and guidance when you get started into any weight lifting exercise.

In order to get the results we want from this program the lifting would need to be added to your program 2-3 times per week and the time commitment should not be much with each session taking approximately 20-30 minutes, important to remember at this time of year the sessions are in place of regular triathlon sessions not alongside. These sessions also need to be scheduled in your week away from the longer endurance sessions, no point in doing these directly before a long run for example so make sure you work with your coach when planing strength into your week, better the next after a long season so you have the positive hormones flowing for longer!

So now we have the hormones switched on its time to eat, assuming all is good with your diet then you need to add approximately 500 calories to your daily nutrition to start seeing some gains. We all hear of body builders eating tons of protein for weight gain and while protein is important carbohydrates are also very important and without them you are going to feel drained in your regular triathlon training. Make sure post training you are consuming a large meal that has a good balance of both carbohydrates and protein, if you are time crunched then a recovery drink containing both protein and carbohydrates is a good alternative until you can eat. Always aim to get this first nutrition in within 30minutes of the session – you can even start drinking this if you decide to go with this option during your session.

We always hear the saying do the same thing expect the same results yet as triathletes we are so set in our ways and the only way we think about to get faster is to train harder and push ourselves more each year with more intensity or volume. Instead make this radical change, reduce your regular triathlon training for a period or time to focus on gaining muscle, the time benefits you experience will outweigh any gain you can make from simply pushing harder in your triathlon specific training and you might find this new focus improves general health and boosts your motivation for the season ahead.

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Starting Back – Strength

November 6, 2017

By Alun “Woody” Woodward, coach, ironguides.net

Many of you will have recently been enjoying an end of season break, be it a total rest from any endurance training or just a period of time with some unstructured training sessions. As we head towards November its a good time to start thinking about stepping back into a plan and starting the process of preparing for your 2018 season.
So when putting together that first training plan starting back the focus should always be strength, always remember a strong body is a healthy body and being strong is going to greatly reduce your risk of injury as the intensity and volume of your training program ramps up.
So when i say strength we can look at hitting the gym for some conventional strength training but i am also talking a lot of sport specific strength work, paddles in the pool, hills on the bike and run for example. Lets have a look at how we can hit strength in many different ways to make you a stronger better athlete in 2018.
To start off lets look at a core routine, you can search the internet and find many examples of core exercises and it would be very easy to overcomplicate any program with a variety of exercises. What we want ideally is something very simple and easy to add to our program. Kettlebells are continuing to grow in popularity and are a great piece of equipment for providing pure strength and core strength at home. Adding kettlebell swings into your weekly program 2-3 times per week will see you develop a range of benefits from increased hip power, stronger abs and a functional posterior chain, an area that tends to be particularly weak in triathletes.
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As a coach one of the most common problems i see in athletes is weak and non functional glutes also known as gluteal amnesia, kettlebell swings have been shown in a study by Dr Stuart Mcgill to lead to significant gluteal activation and power development. We have seen many gluteal exercises using bands and tubes come to popularity over the last years but can something as simple as the swing replace all these tedious exercises with much bigger results, it is definitely worth giving this a go.
Another problem we face as triathletes is the postural problems that occur from spending hours on the bike and especially in the TT position, this leads to tight hips which can lead to loss of our normal functional movement patterns. By this i mean tightness in the hips alters posture and the body gets around this by finding different ways to move using muscles not designed for those movements. This is not something we will not really notice at first but is like a ticking time bomb in terms of injury. When looking at a strength program we want to be looking at getting back to functional movements and as the core exercises we want something simple in order to achieve this rather than a large list of exercises. Again using the kettlebell we have a great excursive called the Turkish Get Up, this exercise teaches the body to move once more the way it was designed to move, tracing the movement patterns we use in childhood development. This is definitely not a exercise to just try alone and i would recommend you search an instructor for some technique lessons before adding this to your exercise routine. The get up has a great added bonus that it works on developing shoulder stability which is always a good thing for our swimming.
So above we have 2 basic strength exercises that added to your program 2-3 times per week will see a significant development of strength and while this will enhance performance it will also go a long way towards preventing injuries and at a very minimal time commitment, a basic program of 5×20 swings with a 1 minutes rest between and then 3-5 get ups each side should take no more than 15 minutes.
Lets have a look at sport specific strength now, and swimming is a great place to start, swimming is non weight bearing and so a great place to add sport specific strength as there is very little injury risk associated. In the swim we have many tools for adding strength such as the pull buoy, band tied around ankles and of course paddles to increase the resistance of every pull.
Sticking with the simple theme of this article paddles have to give the best benefits of strength to the swimmer, the paddles do not need to be large to have an effect and you should be starting out with small paddles, at ironguides we recommend the TYR Catalyst paddles. When we swim with paddles we force more muscle fibres to be activated during the pull and have to work harder to pull the hand through the water. Not only do paddles increase strength but they also work on improving technique without us having to think – aways a bonus! The way this works is due to the bigger area we have to pull through the water we slow down the pull and have a greater awareness of hand position during the pull. A big mistake a lot of swimmers do is pull the hand too fast through the water, this causes the hand to snake during the pull and water to slip off the hand, by pulling slower with more awareness on the hand due to the paddles we tend to pull back in a straighter line and keep the water fixed on the hand all the way back. As you start back i would recommend adding some paddle work to the last half of your swim sessions.
Biking in triathlon i see as the strength sport, when racing ironman we need to be strong on the bike and use our power as we want to be saving our cardiovascular system as much as possible for the swim and run sections. As with the swim biking is a fairly safe sport to do sport specific strength work and riding hills is the perfect way to do this.
Power hill riding is a great session for strength development and used correctly in your program will lead to some big strength gains and performance gains on the bike. The idea of power hill riding is not to get to the top of every hill as fast as possible, in fact it is the complete opposite. What we want from this session is to go as slowly as possible up the hill, turning a big gear with max resistance on the pedals the whole time. Interval length should be very short for this type of session due to the demands on your legs, starting at 1 minute and working up to a maximum of 5 minutes at a time. Cadence is key here and we are looking for a cadence under 50, this will ensure the exercise is more strength than cardiovascular dominated.
Adding at least 1 power hill session into your weekly program is key at this time of year. That leads us to running and the most risky of the 3 sports when it comes to sport specific strength work, due to range of motion when running and terrain variations any strength work on the run comes with a risk so should be very minimal and come at a time in your week when you are not heavily fatigued. With running the strength work needs to slowly come into your program as your fitness develops, to start with hill running is great for strength development but i am not talking about running hard intervals uphill rather just adding some hill running into your easy runs is enough to start developing your run specific strength. We leave any hill intervals until we have gained a good level of fitness.
Starting this year lay the foundation of strength as you start training and you will reap the benefits through the winter and into your next racing season.
Enjoy your training,

Coach Alun “Woody” Woodward

Alun Woodward

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Switching Off And Tuning In

November 3, 2017
Its that time of year again, the race season is pretty much wrapped up and it’s time to take a little downtime and refresh the body and mind for the new challenges ahead.
I like to look at this time of year as a time to switch off and tune in, by this i mean switch off the noise, the digital media and all the distractions its brings and tune in to how your body is really doing.
Our world is changing rapidly and digital media is becoming more and more part of our everyday life, now thanks to applications such as Flipboard we can have a daily newspaper that features only stories we would be interested in and these are collected from all over the world creating a never ending stream of information. In a typical day we wake up and now the first thing people do is check in with social media or applications such as Flipboard to make sure we are not missing out on anything. The same tends to go for any free time in the day, instead of relaxing we immediately turn to digital media.
I have athletes who are sending emails and reports during their warm up on the trainer, a time when you should be listening to your body and seeing how the muscles feel ahead of the main session.
Last thing at night we are no longer reading books or winding down but having one last check online before the lights go out, a situation that is leading to many sleep disturbances.
This state of being constantly on and up to date has created a situation where we are becoming less and less aware of what is going on in our bodies and how we are responding to training and other life stresses. When i ask an athlete or anyone how they are the most common answer is busier than ever, never seem to have a moment to themselves! If you are honest though how much of that busy is now a result of digital media and the need to be constantly up to date? How many times do you just quickly check in to Facebook or a newspaper app during a typical day, how many times do you get distracted by emails arriving as your email app is set to update you on every new email? – i would bet a lot more than you may think!
As we enter the off season this is a perfect time to start looking at how you schedule the day and making some changes to tune back into how your body is feeling.
I am not saying don’t use digital media rather just schedule it at certain times in the day so we can get back to a more relaxed body that you are in touch with.
Waking up every morning resist that urge to go online straight away, rather add in some gentle body calisthenics to wake the body up and tune in to how the body moves and how the muscles are functioning, not only will this have you feeling more awake but will have the body functioning optimally and you will feel more alive. If you have been suffering during the season with postural problems make this time in the morning the time to do any corrective exercises. Modern life has led to most of us having various postural problems and very basic exercises that may take just 30 seconds to complete are rarely done as we put off and put off during the day and then forget about – putting these exercises into a morning routine after waking up will make a big difference.
An example of such a routine may be going through the following exercises 5 times each
  • Arm swings/ circles – this will open up your shoulders and add range to movements
  • T-Spine rotations – adding mobility to your thoracic spine is something we all could use
  • Side twists to mobilise Sacro-illiac joins
  • Body weight squats
  • Push ups
Go through this routine twice and then get on with your day – you will notice a big difference in how you feel and move within 10 days.
Listen to your body when training, if you always have music playing while working out then try some sessions or warm ups without and just focus on how your feeling and moving. Turn off your phone or notifications at least while you train so you are not distracted during training time – amazing how much calmer your body will be and how much more you will enjoy your sessions.
As its off season adding something new to your schedule for a change and mental refresh is always good and think about adding in activities such as Yoga or Pilates which not only will aid your relaxation but will provide positive feedback that you can take into your triathlon training.
Full body relaxation techniques are another great tool that used to be common practice at schools and sports clubs but has become rare practice today. Again this is about getting in touch with your body relaxing without any other distractions. To do this you need to lie in a dark place with no distractions – in bed before sleep is a perfect place to do this. Now lie down and the idea it to start at your toes and work up to the head systematically relaxing all the muscles in your body, to do this we can first create tension within the muscle and then relax the area, so if your working on your hands make a fist and squeeze hard this will make the muscles in your hand and forearm contract and then open and relax the hand and feel the tension disappear – breath deeply for 3 breaths and then move onto the next area. Spending 10 minutes at night going through this routine will lead to improved sleep quality and can help if you are finding it hard to fall asleep in the first place.
Finally as in the morning try to have a period of time before bed where you are not checking in with digital media, instead read a book or a newspaper if you wish and then go to bed and go through the relaxation method i describe above.
This off season make a change and get back in touch with your body, learn to switch your brain off and stop the over thinking that is leading to much of our daily stress. We always say at ironguides that we have to balance the stresses of life, if you reduce the noise of digital media and have a more relaxed body you will be able to cope with more training stress and see some good gains in your performance.
Enjoy your training,

Coach Alun “Woody” Woodward

Alun Woodward

ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!

Train with ironguides!

Personalized Online Coaching:  Starting at USD190/month

Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months

Event based training plans:

Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)

Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)

X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)

Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)

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