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By Shem Leong, ironguides Coach

When does your training session actually start? Do you only mentally switch on as soon as you take that first stride/pedal stroke/swim pull of your main set?

To improve the quality of your training, I challenge you to tune in at least 10, or even 20, minutes before you get changed for your session. For most of us, this would take place on the way to your various training locations; in the train on the way to the track, in the car en route to the pool, walking out of the office to the gym for a quick lunch-hour workout. You likely only have this one window in the day to train so make it work for you.

Dial out all distractions and put the mobile to silent. Give yourself the luxury of being unreachable from that point onwards and use this time to daydream a little. Just what was that Personal Best time again?

Rehearse in your head the set that you are about to do. What kind of set is it? Speed, Strength, Tolerance, Endurance? What is the underlying goal of this set? What were Coach’s instructions and/or feedback from this session in the last couple of weeks? How am I supposed to feel after completing the set? What am I going to do for a quick and convenient recovery meal after?

Am I going to change anything about the way I executed this set, and if so, what? Think about how you have been executing it in the past weeks and pick out the areas that could be improved. Did you go out too hard and blow up half way through? Could you even out your pedal stroke a little more? What does a good catch feel like underwater? How do you breathe when running efficiently?

If you nailed it previously, consider how to replicate that perfect set. Rehearse the current motivations that have been helping you focus when the going gets tough. Run through your mantras, decide what playlist is going to work for you today, do a quick and honest check on current fatigue and/or stress levels. How many hours of sleep you are functioning off today?

Now is also the time to manage your expectations. If have you been on holiday, sick, returning from injury or just had a patchy phase recently, don’t expect to perform at your previous best level. Instead, shed all preconceived ideas of where your fitness might be and leave the data behind. It is better that you start with a clean slate and re-configure your perceived-effort barometer. Redefine what it feels like to go easy, moderate, comfortably uncomfortable, hard, and all out.

Trying to force it in an attempt to fast-track your way back to your previous fitness level will only work against you. You’ll push too hard and will not finish the set and/or wipe yourself out for the next day. Avoiding this is especially important if you’re coming back from illness.

Put together a pre-training ritual. Chances are you already have one; just pay attention the next time to what you do before the session and aim to replicate this every single time. Mentally it’s a process that transports you from the wider world around you with its constant demands and to-do lists to your training zone, a place where you are alone with your thoughts, hopes and dreams.

For the record, after I prepare my bottle, I sit on a certain step to strap on my shoes (to a certain tension), fold my towel in a certain way over the bike, clip in my headphones, string the chord under my top and go through my playlist, selecting the one that I feel is going to work for the day. I do all this even before climbing on the trainer. It’s simple and takes me all of two, maybe three, minutes but going through this ritual makes me aware of what I am about to embark on. It takes my mind into the present and prepares me mentally for the rigours of the next 40 to 60 minutes.

Only then do I start my warm-up … and that’s another article all together.

Till next time, enjoy your training!

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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)

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

Training Zones: Effort or Numbers?

February 14, 2018

Home

There is a hype around training tools that measure effort, be it in training or racing. But is this the best way to track and analyze your efforts?

Age group athletes are bombarded from all angles with tools that measure data such as power meters, heart rate monitors and portable GPS. They all provide a certain type of information that, if used in the right way, can provide you with very accurate feedback that is supposed to help improve your performance in training and racing.

But is this really the best way to measure our efforts?

Let’s start by looking at swimming, a sport in which records are being broken year in, year out. Swimmers are getting faster all the time, without a doubt. However, we don’t see them caught up in the gadget trend. Swimmers are still being coached under perceived effort, using minimalist terminologies similar to the ones ironguides use, or very basic terms such as A1, A2 and A3.

Their sessions give swimmers a lot of flexibility and freedom, since they are usually structured on fixed send-offs or rests in between sets. It is up to the swimmer to develop a feel for the session to achieve the goal and train the right system.

Another example comes from my own experience, when I was racing an Ironman in 2007. In preparation I had done heart rate zone training and my race strategy was based on either heart rate or pace (splits).

Once out of the water and onto the bike, I realized my bike computer wasn’t working. If riding 180km in itself wasn’t stressful enough, I now had the worry of not knowing if I was riding at my goal pace. I either felt too quick, or too slow.

I made the decision to just forget about my heart rate and my pace, and use perceived effort to guide me through that race instead. I tried to remember how I’d felt on my training rides and just hoped for the best since I’d so far been a slave of numbers. With a broken bike computer, I had no statistics to chase.

Little did I know that it was the perfect opportunity to learn how we can improve when we listen to ourselves and our bodies.

Until that day, my best Ironman bike split had been was 5hr 50—in this race, guided by perceived effort, I managed a 5hr 15, and an overall finish time PB to boot.

When we stick to the numbers alone, we run the risk of misreading our fitness which can result in either an under performance race or going faster than we should be. Let’s say, you are used to running at 12km/hr in your race efforts. However, there will be days that you simply won’t achieve that speed—yet the aerobic load remains the same, regardless of your speed. On the flip side, you might not be training hard enough if you are having a great day with fresh legs—you could have been training at 13km/hr.

Heart rate is no different. If you test yourself and set your anaerobic threshold zone at about 170 beats per minute, you might be under-performing when training at that rate, since it was based on only one day. On a day that you are feeling great, you perhaps should be training at 180bpm. And when you feel tired, training at 160bpm will give you the same benefits of the original zone.

You see how we can limit ourselves by using the numbers?

Most age groupers face a lifestyle that does not allow the human body to work as a precise machine. Fatigue, lack of sleep, improper diet and, most importantly, levels of stress (including personal, financial, work) have an impact on your physiology and on your motivation. They will also impact the numbers you’ll read on the gadgets you’re using to guide your training, including heart rate and power output.

Try to do your next bike ride or run without the heart rate monitor. Stick to that for a couple weeks and you will soon understand the benefits of being able to listen to your body, to train by effort and to detach from numbers.

Enjoy your training!

Rodrigo Tosta, Certified ironguides Method Coach Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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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)

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

Video – Technique Short Cuts

February 9, 2018

Home, Uncategorized

Training to perform is hard enough without poor technique getting in the way, poor technique costs us in efficiency of movement but also costs us with increased injury risk. By working to improve technique we can gain time in our races and also make our training a lot more enjoyable.

A good step to starting any change in technique is by studying the top athletes in our sport, if we want to mimic a style then we should be looking at someone doing our sport, by this i mean look at an ironman athletes run technique to copy rather than looking at a pure marathon runners technique. The same would hold true for biking, we want to look at top athletes in our sport and there position and cadence styles rather than looking at a position and cadence of a tour de france rider. We have to take into account the demands of our sport when looking for the best technique to follow.

From this stage we then need to look at our own technique and see what we are doing, the availability of video on phones and the booming sports video market with products such as the GoPro camera’s have made taking sports video very easy and accessible to us all. From this point we can watch video’s of the technique we wan to mimic and see what we need to change to achieve this.

I like to break the movement down to make 2-3 drills/ movements that need to be perfected in order to move from a bad technique to good technique. I am going to use running as an example for this.

If we look at a great runner in ironman i think Craig Alexander is a great example of good form. If we look at how Craig runs compared to your average runner the main thing i see is

Feet land always directly under centre of gravity
Leg is not driving forward from the hips
Movement is hamstring dominated

When i look at other runners i see them driving legs forward from the hip bringing the foot high in front of the body an landing in front of the body. They tend to run using quads and hip flexors and significantly over stride and runner with a lower cadence/ turnover than Craig.

So it is quite easy to highlight what needs to change now we just need to go about doing it, most of us are pretty impatient and want fast results, i have found it is possible to accelerate the learning process using resistance bands to ensure correct muscles are working an by performing small movements repeatedly. By doing this we build new muscle memory very quickly and can then go about putting this new memory to use in our sports.

One of the biggest errors i see with most runners is that they do not use the hamstring muscle as it should be used as the main driving force in running. Essentially our foot should impact the ground directly under centre of gravity and then rebound off the ground pulled by the hamstring directly under the body – the movement of the leg is controlled then simply by our forward movement through to the next impact.

A good test to do is stand 30cm away from a wall facing the wall with both legs together. Now try to pull one foot up directly under the body – this is what should be happening when we run. The foot should come up staying inline with the supporting leg, for most the foot will go straight forward into the wall as the hip flexors are the muscles used not the hamstrings.

So we want to develop the ability to pull the foot up under the body using the hamstring muscle. If we attach a short resistance band ( a great example of this is produced by Perform Better) around both feet we can add resistance to this movement which will allow more muscle fibers to be activated and accelerate the learning process. Using the band we can perform 3×30 pulls per foot to really get the muscles firing correctly. See video for exercise.

I always like to follow a drill with a short run so we can use the muscle in full sports specific motion, so maybe 3×30 pulls with one leg and then a short 50m run before repeating with the other leg.

To build a complete new run technique look at the other areas where changes need to be made and find how to get that movement drilled into the body and you will be running with a new and improved technique in no time!!

Enjoy your training!!

Alun Woodward – ironguides Coach, Austria.

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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)

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

“ALL OUT” means “ALL OUT”

February 5, 2018

cycling, Home

By Shem Leong

“ALL OUT” means (slightly more) “ALL OUT”

I recently had my eyes opened by Matt Fitzgerald’s article in Inside Triathlon- “You are a Quitter”. He references Marcora’s ground-breaking study that suggests that our decision to pull the plug on any strenuous endurance effort, weather in training or racing, is a voluntary decision that originates from an “off” signal in our mind, a psychological phenomenon, and not a function of any bio-physiological determinant of our potential maximum exertion effort.

Immediately after a high intensity endurance ride to exhaustion, Marcora’s research subjects were able to triple of their power output in short 5 seconds bursts. (Similar to having a sprint finish at the end of a marathon). According to the conventional model of endurance fatigue, that proposes an involuntary decline in performance when some physiological limit is encountered, this would not be possible.

In short, this new theory states that our mental tenacity to “hang tough” and endure discomfort, rather than our ability to clear lactic acid/ absorb and carry oxygen/ store glycogen is a more significant determinant of true maximum potential performance.

This information plays special significance when training by perceived effort, as ironguides athletes on The Method do. As we have experienced, our ALL OUT efforts are not defined by wattage or speed or even heart rate. Instead, our efforts are entirely determined by the intimate communication between mind and body and this is a powerful realisation to make. Here’s why:

An ALL OUT effort is just that- whether on your 1st 25m sprint of a swim strength session or a 10 min time trial effort at the end of a 4 hr ride, “ALL OUT” should describe your mind set and attitude more than a certain speed or lap split. It should imply a readiness to pull your body and mind to a slightly new level of discomfort. That place will be somewhere you have never been before, somewhere that requires the sprouting of new blood vessels and recruitment of dormant muscle groups, somewhere that forces gaseous exchange at new maximum levels. More importantly, that someplace will cause you to redefine your perception of effort. It is here that you learn to handle new levels of discomfort. It is here that you force yourself to hold perfect running form/ a powerful pull through on your swim stroke or a smooth, even and powerful pedal stroke.

The question is how you respond when you’re there- “in the moment”? When every ounce of energy you produce is begin channelled to forward propulsion and you’re tethering on the verge of blowing up. Mental attacks rain down in the form of split second thoughts to let up and catch your breath or to get off the front of the pack; thoughts that- once you give in to them- bring a flood of relief and comfort. I challenge you to override these signals- like carrying a bowl of hot soup- your fingers are burning, yet somehow you resign yourself to holding on until your broth is safe and sound on the dinner table. You flick your fingers to cool them down. They’re a bit red but everything is alright. Your body’s reflex to let go of the bowl is a feed forward safety mechanism that kicks in way before any real threat to your physical make up materialises.

In the same way, those invading signals to your brain telling you that holding this pace is too tough or that one more ALL OUT repeat is too much are just pre-emptive safety mechanism signals that, given the right practice, can be dealt with effectively and positively. So resign yourself to finishing that ALL OUT effort your coach may have set you, as best as you can.

In our quest to go even more ALL OUT, it helps to break it down into the smallest little portions. Here are some tips to help you out with this:

1. Break it down into even smaller bits. When you are in “ALL OUT” mode, dissect your pedal stroke- think and feel. Are you applying power all the way round through 360 degrees? Which part of the circle needs evening out? Play around and feel the difference between activating the different cycling muscles involved- your glutes, hip flexors, hamstrings. A tiny shift in your saddle can help awaken under-used muscle groups. It’s a great feeling to “find” and develop a new set of muscles that will eventually help you pedal more efficiently. Don’t doggedly sit in the same position mashing down over and over again, as hard as you can until your quads cramp. When you eventually develop a coordinated pedal stroke with all the involved muscle groups firing in the right sequence with the right timing, you’ll find yourself flying along in the big gear, with your HR sitting comfortably low and your legs churning out smooth, even circles.

2. When running, towards the end of a tough intervals/ hills set, you’re close to your limit- break it down. Don’t think, “How hard is this?” Or, “I’m dying…” Instead set your focus on just 1 thing- could be simply driving your elbows to maintain a high stride rate, or breathing that tiny bit deeper to get in more air, or reminding yourself to “Run tall… Run tall or focusing on picking up your heels quickly for a faster foot strike. Whatever proprioceptive cue you’ve called upon, bearing an ALL OUT effort when it’s unbearable, breadth by breadth, second by second, lifts the ceiling of what you had previously thought possible. The next time your body is under the same physical duress, your mental “ALL OUT” signal is only going kick in a little later, or at a slightly higher pace.

You can imagine my disappointment, on urging one of my athletes to “Think about how you want to run the next hill rep”, when I got the sarcastic and uninspired answer “Uphill.” : )

3. It’s the same with swimming- when your arms go cold and are filled with useless deoxygenated, lactic acid blood, when you want to stop in the middle of the pool and just cruise in- Dig Deep. ALL OUT means you’re reaching for more water at your fingertips, ALL OUT means your focusing on thrusting water back with your triceps because your Deltoids and Lats gave up 10meters ago, ALL OUT has you exhaling 3% more air so that you can inhale 3% more.

My advice is that you heed this subtle shift in endurance training paradigms that has us moving away from a pure numbers game, towards a “Brain Training” approach, and tune into what you’re thinking and feeling the next time you are ALL OUT. Always look to redefine perception of effort and go slightly more ALL OUT.

Here I am, doing just that…

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!

Shem Leong is our ironguides coach in Singapore. He has been hooked on triathlon ever since winning his age group in his first Olympic-distance race. Many top performances later, Shem still enjoys the challenges of training and racing at a high level, while balancing this with work and family. He is a firm believer in the benefits of an active lifestyle and loves being able to positively affect his athletes’ lives in this way. In the four years that Shem has worked as an ironguides coach so far, he has helped more than 60 athletes achieve their goals. They range from newbies hoping to complete their first sprint race, to 70.3 podium contenders, to seasoned Sub 10-hour Ironman athletes. Shem’s care for his athletes and his attention to detail set him apart. He completely understands the varied pull factors of life’s demands as well as the fiery motivations that drive everyday age groupers and is able to craft sustainable, effective training plans for their time-crunched schedules. An Honour’s Degree in Health Science has given Shem the knowledge to explain and expertly administer The Method. This, in turn, helps his athletes understand how each session contributes towards their ultimate goal; as a result, countless personal bests have been improved upon as his athletes continually get fitter and faster.

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)

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

Ironman Training – Time to review and listen to your body

January 26, 2018

base & off-season, Home

Alun “Woody” Woodward, Coach, ironguides.net

As the New year is well under way its a great time to take a step back and review where you are with your training. We all get over excited with the start of the new year and push harder in training with the prospect of racing again now much closer!

While the race season is indeed approaching rapidly in training terms it is still quite a way in the distance and now is not the time to be training all guns blazing with the end goal in sight! Most of you will be training for a major Ironman race mid summer which is likely to be around 5-6 months away still and right now your focus should still be on building the base of speed and strength before any major endurance work begins.

While speed and strength is what we are looking to build at this time of year we must remember that this building process has to be a step by step, imagine building a house we have to go one brick at a time in order to have a well structured house. The new year always brings that little bit of extra enthusiasm in some athletes and at the same time fear in others that forces us to push a little bit too hard and try to rush the gains in fitness. The results of this enthusiasm are clear to see with the body, if we are pushing too hard then breakdowns will start to occur. These breakdowns can be in the form of illness due to a compromised immune system or small niggles or injuries from pushing the muscles too hard too soon.

Sickness

Illness is inevitable at some point, there is no way we can avoid this but if you are constantly falling ill every 2-3 weeks then this is a sign your immune system has been comprised. When we train we are putting our body under stress and this stress is needed in order to stimulate progress in fitness. If we do not allow the body enough recovery when training then stress levels build up and the result is a compromised immune system than is not able to ward off sickness as easily as normal and so we end picking up more infections.

Our training programs are designed with recovery build in but if you start pushing a little harder than planned in your sessions then the recovery in that plan will no longer be sufficient to the work load.

So if you have found you are getting sick more than normal recently maybe its time to review your training plan and check you are training at the right levels and not pushing too hard. Pushing too hard is not only something that occurs on your hard key sessions but more often than not it is the long easy endurance sessions that are designed to be slow and steady that end up being done with too much intensity that lead to breakdowns.

I find this is a major problem especially with runners who come to triathlon with the mentality that long runs need to be done at marathon pace, we have to remember that we are triathletes and we have residual fitness coming from 3 sports so the specific requirements of certain sessions to a single sport athlete are not always the same to us! The long run in our programs is for many an active recovery session designed to deliver more oxygen to tired and recovering muscles and speed up recovery from the intensity of previous sessions.

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Injuries

If your training and have a little injury or niggle going on then now is the time to get this looked at and do something to remedy the problem, all too often we think these issues will just go away and we ignore and train through the pain. What happens when we do this is not only do we make the existing injury worse and delay any healing process we also invite compensatory injuries to take place. For example of you have a sore hip going on when you run, if you do not fix this problem and keep on training your running mechanics will be altered to compensative for any lack of movement in this area and resultantly you can expect to start developing tightness in your legs and this can eventually lead to further injuries.

Pain when you move is not normal and should not be ignored, seeking professional help at the time of injury can get you back on track very quickly whereas waiting until the pain is so bad you simply can’t train anymore before seeking help will put you out of action for a long time. It may be a case of simply getting some massage or changing position on the bike so seek help and make sure you do not lose precious training time.

We all watch and read about the stars of our sport and how they train and we can read about amazing swim, bike and run sets but what we rarely see is the little things they do on the side of their main program to keep there bodies in one piece and maintain training consistency. We all tend to develop little issues such and a tight back, achilles pain, knee pain etc. These are most often caused by muscle tension brought on by slightly off perfect mechanics. The more you train the more these issues are highlighted and the more problems exist, successful athletes are not the athletes who have perfect mechanics and do not get these issues they are the athletes who make sure they look after the side effects of these poor mechanics regularly with stretching, foam rolling, massage or corrective exercises.

Patience is key right now, great results and breakthrough performances do not come from big sessions and pushing harder in certain sessions they come from consistent training over long periods of time, always remember consistency is key and sickness and injuries are the two major obstacles to your consistency.

Enjoy your training.

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Train with ironguides!

Download our free e-Book “Triathlon Secrets” – Training methods of olympic medalist, ironman and world champions revealed

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Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

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More info at www.ironguides.net

An Example of Progression via The Method

January 19, 2018

Home, various

The Method sets up a training plan for your ability level and provides a framework for your consistent improvement over time. The program’s structure and specific order means athletes improve aerobic conditioning quickly while also training more specifically for the demands of triathlon — which are different than swimming, cycling and running as individual sports. Here’s a little insight into what an athlete is telling me, and why his improvement demonstrates exactly why The Method is so effective:
• Sustainable training over time
• Framework for monitoring response to changes in life circumstances (sleep, work, travel, etc.)
• Realistic comparisons of efforts over short and long term mean it’s easy to track progress
• Focus on the current workout only lightens “thinking” overhead and reduces stress
• Framework that enables monitoring of increases in training load — no random changes to the schedule, no random “new workout” — just gradual additions, slight changes, shifts in emphasis between the Five Systems as training phase demands.
From an email:

Swim: Generally going well, on Monday I improved my 40x100m time again – 1:09:01, didn’t swim on Tues as had to travel. On Wednesday I did only three long efforts in the pool and was feeling really tired during the third one (probably travel and lack of sleep). Yesterday I was good again swimming with the club and during 8x 100m set on 2min I was swimming comfortably around 1:31-33, on last rep we were supposed to push harder and I did 1:19 and it didn’t feel that hard. I couldn’t even break 1:30 last year!!

Bike: Long ride in again windy East London – first 2 laps felt hard despite I was going easy but than it was OK, last 2 laps (hard) I was going quite fast and on the last one I improved my pb by some 20sec. Run off the bike was feeling at the beginning (first 2km or so) hard on legs but not lungs/heart but than it was much better and last 3 km I run between 4:20 and 4:30. Didn’t do the Monday session as had to go to the airport but yesterday’s session was feeling comfortable.

Run: The hard rep session on the treadmill – you should like it – completed again but faster, at 13.2 kmph. I started with longer warm-up – 30 min and continued running at this pace for another 10 min after completing 8% 2 min rep – including warm down I spent 2 hours on the treadmill and run 25.3km – I was v happy when I finished this set. I did the intervals in Como and ran each one between X and Y time – started a bit too fast at X but then settled for comfortable Y – HR around XX and YY. On Wednesday did the descending split session and run at 13.5/14.0/15.5kmph – was feeling much easier than last week. Also did some weights but not too much.

* * * SELECTED PORTIONS OF RESPONSE * * *

NICE WORK on that long treadmill session!!! 🙂 That is what we like to see — listening to the body, pushing it as you can and coming out of it with a best-ever effort. A great week, all in all. Note how the work is getting harder – but you are still getting faster.

What are we learning here?

Answer: That motor skills overcome aerobic fatigue.

And on race day, what will you be experiencing?

Correct – a lot of aerobic fatigue late in the race. And what’s going to carry you through then?

Correct – motor skills!

Summary: You will be very aerobically tired late in an Ironman REGARDLESS of your training – everyone is. The winner is he or she who slows down least. But if you enter the race ill prepared having fixated only on aerobic conditioning, you will not have the motor skills late in the race to translate that conditioning into improved results. Instead of training yourself in one dimension only, you can train using The Method to train multiple dimensions of fitness simultaneously.

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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)

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

12 Weeks to Your First Triathlon

January 12, 2018

beginner, Home

There are many ways to combine three sports and train for a triathlon. Whether this is your first race or you have already a few seasons under your belt, here’s a simple approach that will ensure you’re ship shape in twelve weeks, without resorting to expensive tools and leaving room to mix it up from week to week

Week 1-3: Studies show that it takes 21 days to build a habit, so weeks 1-3 are all about building the routine of your training regime. Don’t think past Day 21 and focus simply on executing each day’s training to your best abilities.

1) Aim for 4 – 5 short, easy training sessions per week.
2) If you’re new to swimming, keep your efforts short, but with many repetitions and lots of rest in between.
3) Establish a routine that ensures you don’t take two days off training in a row.
4) Each week, add a little volume to each session so that by the end of Week 3 you are roughly at the maximum time limit you want to consistently spend in the next 9 weeks for that session on that day.
5) Use the tools available at your gym (treadmill and spin bike) to help ensure consistency if the weather is bad.

Weeks 4 – 6: Now that you’ve established the routine and structure of your workouts, let’s add some triathlon-specific workouts to the mix.

1) On the day you have most time, include a transition workout in your training: Either go for a bike ride and a short jog after to get used to running off the bike (can all be done indoors), or head 2) to the pool and immediately after your swim, do an indoor or outdoor cycle or run. Both sessions will teach your body to make the switch from one sport to the next on race day.
3) Use the tools at your disposal! Hop on a spin bike once a week and crank out a set of very short (one minute) but very hard efforts with low cadence (pedal turnover) and equal rest. This builds 4) your cycling strength quickly.
5) Use a treadmill and focus on running at a high stride rate (steps per minute, per leg). Aim for over 90 steps per leg per minute. This way you teach your triathlon legs, already tired from cycling, to “break up the work” of the run into more but smaller pieces. You can focus on this outdoors, too.
6) In your swim training, start using some very small paddles (size of your palm) to build strength in your swim muscles. And yes – DO use a pull buoy, especially if you are a weak swimmer. Swimming is difficult enough when you are new to it, and a pull buoy helps you position yourself properly in the water, without additional effort, so that you can focus better on your stroke. Finis makes some great “finger paddles” for neophyte swimmers.

Weeks 7 – 9: Let’s spice it up a bit! You’ve got six weeks of consistent training under your belt, so now it’s time to throw in a little higher effort.

1) Once a week in each sport, add in some hard efforts to your training mix.
2) In the run, aim to complete a set of 60-90 second efforts with equal rest, making each one faster than the last. Stop and cool down when you can no longer hold the pace of the previous effort.
3) On the bike, ride the final third of your transition bike hard – as if you were racing. Then do your run after at a moderate pace. At the end of the three weeks, run the run hard.
4) In your swim training, start adding a set of short, fast efforts with short rest to the mix. Keep each effort only as long as you can hold technique. Rest only long enough to feel recovered to do it again. Try to make the total volume of this set equal to the length of the swim at your goal race.

Weeks 10 – 11: You’re in the home stretch. Let’s make sure you’ve got all your equipment finalized by the time you enter this phase. You don’t want to try anything new on race day.

1) Familiarize yourself with the course and try to simulate in your training rides or on a spin bike or windtrainer what to expect from the hills.
2) You don’t need to “go the distance” at race intensity before race day – that’s what race day is all about after all! But if it helps you build confidence, go for it and simulate a moderate effort triathlon of the same distance 2-3 weeks before race day.
3) Keep up the consistency of your training. Build up the duration of your intense efforts and reduce the duration of your rest. Avoid the temptation of long, all-out efforts in training. Always leave something in the tank.

Week 12: Race Week! This is it, race week! It’s time to rest up and put the finishing touches to your preparations.

1) Contrary to popular belief, don’t over rest! If you have been training on a moderate volume, keep up the frequency of your training but reduce the volume and greatly reduce the intensity.
2) Look back on your training and be honest about how consistent you were. If you were ill or took time off, you need to taper (rest) less for your race than if you trained hard these past 12 weeks.
3) The weekend prior, just train easy – but do train!
4) Three to four days out from the race, take one or two days off, depending on how hard you trained over the past months.
5) On the days prior to the race, train very, very easy in each sport. You only need a total of 30 – 45 minutes total training time each day to keep yourself limber and loose for race day. Hold yourself back and think of just “keeping the engine turning over” to keep your body systems prep’d for race day.

That’s it, you’re all set for race day: Put it all together and enjoy the experience! Nice work!!!

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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)

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

6 Tips to Race Well Early in the Season

January 8, 2018

base & off-season, Home

By Vinnie Santana, Coach, ironguides.net

Taking a break at the holidays season and end of year is normal but this puts you in a very unique situation, you do want to race well early in the season, but feel a little out of shape from the lack of training and weight gain from the holidays.

The 6 tips below will help you handle this situation better and make the most out of your early season races

1.All athletes are on the same boat

Taking an yearly break (passive or active) is something every athlete should be doing, it gives the body some healing time and will boost motivation for the upcoming season. Even professional triathletes may take a few weeks of very little training every year.

Certainly, there’s always someone who will be targeting that early season race and will prefer to have their off-season in the middle of the year, but that’s usually not normal and you will then have an advantage over those athletes later in the year.

If you are a competitive triathlete, most of your competition is on the same boat as you at this time of the year.

2. Ignore most early season training indicators

You must understand that you don’t need to be at peak shape early in the season and most athletes tend to compare their current fitness only with their best past performances. If you have a key workout that you do year around, for example a 20km time trial on the bike, and early in the season your performance is 10% worse than what you were able to do at the end of last season, this may hurt your confidence leading into your events, but what you don’t remember are the other not so great sessions you had later in the season. Most athletes can only remember the great days and tend to benchmark against them. While in reality, on average you may be only 3-5% slower than your past average performance.

Your training goal at this phase is to build a good consistency and manage training while fatigued, this can result on a slower than normal training speed, but it’s the most effective way to get in shape in the pre-season.

3. Race Day Benefits: Build experience, gain motivation and race fitness

Have you noticed the boost of motivation you get immediately after you sign up for an event? This is a great way to kickstart your season and get you training harder and with more discipline earlier in the season which will get you stronger to your key events later in the year.

To get some races under your belt early in the season will also provide you a real race-day feedback on your fitness and may expose some weakness that you weren’t aware of, you will then have plenty of time to fix these before your main events later in the year.

Race day experience is also never a negative thing, the more races you do, more your ‘learn’ how to race, from handling pre-race pressure, to dealing with traveling and race day pacing. Better you will perform at the key events.

4.Race day: Low risk, high returns strategies

With very low race day expectations you will find yourself with two options when it comes to race day strategies:

a. If your goal is to use the event to build your fitness and acquire more experience, opt for a more conservative strategy and aim to negative split each discipline, start out slow and finish stronger. This is a bonk-proof strategy and will help you achieve your goals.

b. Another option is to use these events to try different things that you wouldn’t normally risk on major events. For example, if you know you can run well after a conservative bike split, but have always wondered how much slower your run would be after riding hard, a low key race is a great option to test this. Try pushing and doing things on race day that are the opposite to your usual strategy. Other than an intense training day, this may also provide you feedback (either from a good surprise or a terrible blow up) on your ideal race day performance.

5. Schedule events that will build your fitness to your key races

Sign up for smaller races in the pre-season that will serve as stepping stones and build your fitness and develop you to the key events later in the year. The best way to achieve that is going from general fitness to specific racing, also known as ‘reversed periodization’.

For example if your targeted race is an Ironman or Ironman 70.3, sign up for short course races early in the year as they will provide you enough speed and strength allowing you to focus on the more specific work later in the year.

If your key race is in a short course format, then consider doing a long distance race early in the year as this will also provide you several benefits that you won’t get from your short course racing, for example pacing and nutrition will be essential for your ‘training race’ success.

The key rule here is to understand that ‘base’ training means going from general to specific fitness, not necessarily the traditional long and slow to fast and short (Bompa prediodization), this idea was created on single discipline sports that are very quick, such as pool swimming events and track running.

6. Experiment with different mental strategies

Now that we’ve discussed several opportunities for your body to perform better on race day, it’s time to also experiment with something new but for the mindset. It is normal that you’ve developed a certain pre-race routine and that some stress comes with the main events of the year, people react differently to this and if you are under-performing on your key events, the culprit could be the mindset.

Many athletes have never been able to race compeltely stress-free and using low-key events early in the year is a perfect opportunity for this. Enter race week with absolutely no expectations for race day other than do a ‘brick session’, avoid using a watch, GPS or powermeter, go ‘by feel’. You may find yourself not only enjoying the race a lot more, but also having a great performance as a result of such a relaxed state.

Enjoy your training.

Vinnie Santana

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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)

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

Tips to Kickstart your 2018 Triathlon Season

January 5, 2018