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How to Incorporate a 2nd Workout in a Day

August 6, 2018

Home, Training

The Art of the Double Day

Many top age groupers train twice a day as this is a logical and practical way to increase their training load while still putting in a full day in the office. Adding double session days into your weekly schedule is a great way preparing for that special goal ’ A’ race coming up later in the season.

If you are consistently putting in a 60 – 70 minute session per day on the weekdays with the requisite longer endurance sessions on the weekends, and your Family, Work and Life is well balanced, then you could consider using this strategy to get even fitter. But be warned; the uninitiated should handle double days with care because of its implications on increased recovery needs, dropping immunity and risk of injury. If you simply combine 2 days’ worth of training into one day, as and when, you will find yourself very quickly fatigued, flat and in the worst case, injured.

As with each session in a schedule of single session days, double days should be planned, thought out and completed consistently every week; not done as afterthought on a day that you have an extra hour free in the evening.

If you’re new to double days ease into them using the following guidelines.

Aim to start with just 1 double day in the week for at least 8 weeks before even thinking of putting in a second double day into the weekly training schedule. This allows your body to adapt gradually to the increasing demands on its immunity and the recovery functions.
Start with 2/3’s of a ‘full session’ training load in each of your double day sessions and gradually increase the training load each week. Do not start with 2 ‘full’ one hour sessions twice a day. The more time you give your body a chance to adapt, the more you’ll be comfortable transitioning to the new load and able to maintain consistency

Put the priority session 1^st and then the ‘filler’ session as the second session of the day. While all sessions are important, and produce a specific training stimulus, the 1^st session on the day, should work the system that you are currently developing (Eg – speed/ tolerance/ heart rate/ endurance). Training this system while you are fresh off a night’s sleep will increase the probability that the quality of this session is high. Practically, you also get the essential session done and out of the way.

Leave at least 3 – 5 hours before the second session of the day. This will give you some recovery time in-between the 2, even if it’s just sitting at the desk/ walking around the office. The break is also important as it allows you to refuel. As a habit, make sure make sure you stay hydrated in between sessions and treat yourself to a healthy nutritious meal so that your body has enough quality raw material to repair and recover between sessions. If you sweat a lot, top up with simple effervescent electrolyte tablets in your water.

While it is a luxury for many age-group athletes working regular office hours, a short nap of even 20 minutes will help to shift your body into recovery mode that sets up the process of rebuilding.

When starting off with double days, think of the second session of the day as a ‘filler’ session but do not regard this as an ‘Optional’ one. In fact, while the 1^st session of the day elicits a certain physiological response it is the second session that is often used to build fatigue resistance. Simply put – that is the ability to keep pushing when your arms and legs are already tired. This characteristic is especially useful when training for the Ironman distance.

The second session of the day should be of a lower intensity and volume; a 40 minute session is physically much less demanding than keeping it going for the full hour. It should also be loosely structured so that it is not mentally stressful to start, execute and complete. Furthermore, the more open these sets are to your own interpretation the better as this will give you the freedom to listen to your body as you ‘go by feel’. For example, a 40 mins run done as 10 mins easy/ 20 mins moderate/ 10 mins easy allows the athlete a wide range of intensity to play with.

On double days that simply aren’t going to happen, do not try to squeeze both sessions in back to back. The accumulated load of 2 sessions done continuously is much higher than if they were done separately. Recovery needs are much higher and risk of injury or falling sick increase dramatically. Chances are that if your day is too busy for a double, then it is also too busy for a large combined single session. So just get the 1 session of the day done well, forget about the double and move on.

There is no hard as fast rule whether it is better to work the same or different disciplines on the same day. It depends on a number of factors:

The current area of weakness that you are trying to improve on,
Your individual capacity to recover,
The most convenient session for you to perform,
The training session on the day before and on the day after the double day.For example, it you are working specifically on improving your overall bike fitness, you could plan 2 sessions on the bike trainer. The 1^st one could be a Tolerance style, high cadence, short rest interval type of session while the 2^nd one, to be performed in the evening after work, would be something that could safely build strength on your already fatigued legs without stressing the cardiovascular system too much – something like a steady big gear time trail comes to mind. Of course you would want to make sure that the next day is easy on the legs – so a swim with paddles and pullbuoy or a very easy 40 min run is in order.

So the take home message is not to rush headlong into a heavy schedule of multiple double days in a week just because so and so is doing this that and the other.

Instead, ask yourself if you have been consistent enough on your daily tasks to deserve to a double day. Firstly, examine your current life situation and consider if you can manage training twice a day without negatively impacting the other areas of your life and secondly, do you currently need to be logging a high training load. Are you in a specific build phase towards a key race or just keeping fit in between races? Because when it comes to entering that dedicated training ‘tunnel’, as busy age groupers with the full spectrum of other important life demands, we can and should only do so a few times a year.

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Rest Days and Focus: Learning How to Read your Body and your Actions

August 3, 2018

Home, Training

Learn how to read your body and think about what you’re doing.

By Shem Leong, Certified ironguides Coach – Singapore

This article is written for the obsessive competitive streak in all triathletes and runners. Every athlete putting in dedicated training to a well-thought-out plan will eventually approach their physical limits for that season of their athletic career.

Getting this far along is very commendable, but having invested so much time into their pursuit of peak physical potential, many athletes begin to dream big about breaking through to their next level. It could be a sub-5:00 half ironman, a 4:30 marathon or a 2:30 Olympic distance triathlon—deep down, everyone has that time they would love to beat. In looking for that last 10% of performance improvement, many make the mistake of hammering away at harder and higher training loads. This would probably work if you had the luxury of ample training and recovery time, coupled with sound guidance from a good coach. However, for the majority of us, time-crunched athletes, the extra time required is simply not available and the “cherry on the cake” towards a truly satisfying race performance may feel so close, yet so far away.

Think back to the last race you did a PB. You’ll need to run that race again—and then some! Where could you have pulled back precious minutes and seconds? Chances are that you could have made significant gains from handling the low-energy patches of the race better; such as the moment you decided to ease up three-quarters into the run so it became a whole lot less painful, or when you couldn’t find it in your legs to keep up with that bunch you had been riding with. Regardless of your level of fitness, there comes a point in every race when we have to decide whether to bite the bullet and suffer more, or whether to ease up and cruise for a bit.

Between two identically trained and fit athletes, or two versions of yourself, the one who is able to stay focused and push through the body’s signals of suffering is the one that will cross the line first. That sounds obvious—because it is. Yet I often get this question from my athletes, “How do I tap into the mental edge.”

“Focus” is the uninterrupted connection between the athlete and their task; that trance-like state of deep concentration when you are aware only of the things relating to your performance; that sense of effortless control and a total absence of self-consciousness when the boundaries of self and task have melted away into one seamless activity. Some athletes refer to this as “flow” or being “in the zone”.

Focus should be practised by tuning into your body and body movements while training and competing. This will result in an awareness of key feelings when things are going well. Think back to the last time you were able to push hard, perform well, and really enjoyed yourself. You may have experienced this for a few seconds, a few repetitions or, if you have been practicing, for the whole training session. Yes, focus can and definitely should be practised whenever we are out there.

Practise controlling irrelevant and distracting thoughts (dissociative thinking) during training and competition. Replace them with task-oriented and positive thoughts. Consider your form, breathing pattern, stride rate, hydration/nutritional state, race strategy and redefine your perceived effort to perform more effortlessly. This is known as associative thinking and the tougher the going, the more it’s required to stay competitive.

Here are a few tips to help you stay focused:

Relax.

For the 10-15 minutes before training, as you’re making your way to the track or pool, or are setting up your bike on the trainer, clear your mind of the daily distractions. You only have this slot in the day to get it done so make it count and put aside thoughts about those last few items of your to- do list.

Meditate, on the coming task.

How did you perform it last week? How could it have been improved? Remind yourself of what it feels like to swim/bike/run with good form. How your arms feel in the water catching a good pull, how you ride better turning perfect circles, what it’s like to run tall and light. Don’t simply rush through the warm-up (or, worse still, skip it) and charge headlong into the set thinking, “I’m going to smash myself this set.” Remind yourself of the purpose of this set. Is the focus on strength building, leg turnover, spending time at threshold or just getting some volume / distance in. Taking a step out of the “training tunnel” and studying the big picture for a while will help you align your training efforts with the intended purpose of the task at hand.

Have a mantra.

Repeating choice words will direct your mind away from negative or distractive thoughts towards a positive experience. An effective mantra addresses what you want to feel, not the adversity you want to overcome. Use short, positive and instructive words to transcend the suffering you’re feeling. Choose one word from each column to create your own verse. Have a few favourites to get you through different sections of your race.

A B C D

Run Strong Think Power

Go Smooth Feel Speed

Stride Quick Pull Brave

Pedal Light Be Steady

Be Fierce Hold Courage

• Performance checklist. It is important that you are able to access how you’re doing in that moment, while on the go. Practise going through this list to make little adjustments to improve efficiency. While running, start from the top down:

o Is my face relaxed?

o Is my head bobbing around?

o Are my shoulders relaxed?

o Are my arms swinging smoothly?

o Breathing: Is it regular? Can I exhale a little deeper while still keeping a lid on it? Am I gasping for breath? Is it getting ragged? Am I breathing deep from my diaphragm?

o Form: Am I running tall?

o Stride rate: If you don’t have a foot-pod device, simply count. Is it up there at 90 strides per minute?

o Foot strike: Am I striking under the hip? Are my strikes light and powerful, so that I am spending minimal time in contact with the ground?

o Pacing: How far am into my race? How do I feel? How should I pace myself for the rest of the run? Does my perceived effort match my race strategy?

o Nutrition and hydration: How long ago did I last take in some fluids? Do I need electrolytes or gel? How does the stomach feel?

What about swimming or biking? Maybe you could share with me some thoughts that keep you focused while out there on the road and in the pool.

When the all the physical training is done, it’s the psychological factors that most affect our performance. Think about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

Enjoy your training!

Shem Leong, Certified ironguides Coach – Singapore

Shem Leong

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Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month

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Triathlon Cycling: High or Low Cadence?

July 20, 2018

cycling, Home, Training

With the Tour de France just behind us and the top cyclists back in the news, much of the cycling and triathlon media will have made plenty of comments about the higher cadence at which top cyclists rides. Unfortunately, nothing has compromised the average triathlete’s ability to improve on their bike more than the common assumption that maintaining a higher cadence equates to improved performances on the bike regardless of the rider’s ability and fitness. Not only do professional cyclists compete at far higher power outputs than the typical triathlete, but they also do not have to run at the end of the bike and can afford to push their legs and body much closer to the point of exhaustion by the end of the bike.

To better understand the importance of cycling cadence and effort in triathlon, you first need to understand how your bike cadence relates to competing in a triathlon as a whole, and how changes in cadence impact your body while you train or compete.

The easiest way to visualize cadence and its effect on your body is to picture the bike segment of a triathlon as an amount of “work” to be done, like a huge boulder sitting in your backyard that you need to move from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. You can equate trying to move the boulder in one exhaustive effort with trying to complete the bike segment with one enormous pedal stroke using a huge chain ring like the one John Howard used setting the world land speed record on a bicycle. The work you need to do to move that boulder in one go or to pedal that bizarre contraption is going to take a huge amount of muscular exertion that will exhaust you by the time you get to Point B.

Your other option is to break up the boulder into a large number of small rocks that you carry from A to B – you’re on the right track here, unless you break up the boulder into so many pieces that you spend a lot of time hurrying back and forth, increasing your heart rate and putting a lot of aerobic stress on your body as you hurry as quickly as possible to move all those stones. This equates to using a very high cadence to move from A to B on the bike.

The ideal strategy lies somewhere in between: That is, breaking the work up into many manageable-sized pieces so that you can move as much of the boulder with each trip from A to B and can complete the work in as little time as possible. In other words, the right cycling cadence balances the stresses placed on your aerobic system by higher cadences, and the stresses placed on your muscles using a low cadence.

To understand this a bit better, you can picture the contraction your leg muscle makes with each pedal stroke as momentarily blocking the flow of blood into and out of the contracted muscle. A short contraction (high cadence) enables blood to flow into and from the muscle more often, which supplies nutrients and oxygen to the muscle and transports waste products and carbon dioxide away from the muscles more often – but at the expense of a greater stress on your aerobic and nervous systems. All those contractions force the heart to work harder and the nerves to fire more frequently. Conversely, a longer contraction (low cadence) blocks the transport of oxygen and nutrients into the muscle and traps breakdown products in the muscle for a longer period – that’s the “burn” you feel when you are riding with a slow, high contraction. However, your aerobic and nervous systems are not taxed as much.

The right cadence balances these stresses so that you can apply the greatest amount of force for the longest possible time. But contrary to what you might expect, “manageable” in the above context does not mean “relative to my fitness level.” Manageable means relative to the amount of work you are doing – in other words, the right cadence for you is relative to how much power you can produce on the bike, which depends by and large on your fitness and cycling-specific leg strength.

In other words, don’t compare yourself to what professional cyclists are doing – instead, look at what you are able to deliver on the bike. The stronger you are, the more forceful the contractions you can make on the bike. The fitter you are, the longer you will be able to make these contractions. And the greater the sustained force of the contractions you can make, the more you need to increase your cadence and “break the work up into more pieces.”

There’s one more piece to the puzzle, however. Unlike cyclists, as triathletes we also need to consider our approach to cycling in context of what comes next and keeping in mind that our goal is not to have the fastest bike split, it’s to have the fastest possible overall time at the finish. What you do on the bike in triathlon has to be understood in context of the demands you face on the run, too.

The reality of our sport is that we are always running on tired legs. That means that trying to run with a more forceful, longer stride rate in triathlon will quickly lead to disappointment because your tired legs have much less to give after the bike you’ve just done!

Instead, if you look at run speed as the product of stride length x stride rate, the most effective way to run faster in triathlon is to increase your stride rate (which can be learned), rather than trying for a forceful leg contraction. The price on your body for this faster rate of contraction is greater fatigue in your fast twitch muscle fibers.

A faster stride rate also means your motor neurons fire more frequently, which over time more quickly fatigues your motor neurons. This results in less forceful nerve signals, which in turn results in less forceful muscle contractions. But there’s ways to stave off this fatigue – recent research indicates that nervous system fatigue can be delayed by reducing the rate at which your nerves fire (Postactivation potentiation: Role in performance, British Journal of Sports Medicine: Volume 38(4) August 2004, pp 386- 387).

What does all this mean? In a nutshell, you need to ride your bike in a way that reduces the stresses that you will encounter on the run and keeps those systems as fresh as possible. The slow contractions of a slower cycling cadence (think of your legs as boa constrictors squeezing powerfully to drive the cranks around) will recruit fast twitch muscle fibers to a greater degree, which spares your slow twitch fibers for the run. And because a low cadence fires your motor neurons less frequently, you will reduce nervous system fatigue and enable fresher, stronger nerve signals on the run, resulting in stronger run muscle contractions than you might otherwise be able to generate after riding with a high cadence.

As well, because slow twitch fibers don’t contract as explosively and by definition not as often, you reduce the strain on your aerobic system. By riding with a lower aerobic intensity, you also burn less glycogen and can preserve this muscle fuel for the run. Your lower heart rate will also save some of your capacity for lactate tolerance for the run segment of the race.

Is it really this straight forward? Well – yes and no! “Yes” because by and large, triathletes need to factor in all of the above and should opt for a slower cadence between 75-85 pedal strokes per leg, per minute. As well, most age group triathletes do not have the aerobic conditioning or strength to generate the kind of power that requires higher cadence. By training at a low cadence against high resistance, however, you will quickly develop leg strength while reducing aerobic stresses in training – in effect, you tip the balance in your training from a more catabolic (a “breaking down” of the body) type of stress (aerobic system stress) to a more anabolic (a “building up” of the body) stress.

If you are new to triathlon or if you have bought into the “high cadence” approach to cycling for a long time, you’re giving up an opportunity to train strength and recruit more muscle with each of those puny little pedal strokes you’ve been taking! Try a few weeks of pushing a bigger gear, maintaining your speeds while reducing cadence into the low 80’s or lower – remember, you are training for your race, and that means applying effort in a way to improve performance with a goal in mind. Simply turning over the pedals at a slower cadence will not lead to improvements if you’re not forcing the muscles to work harder at the same time!

At the same time, I said “No” above because there are exceptions to the low cadence approach as your cycling abilities improve. As well, the shorter the distance at which you compete, the higher the power you are able to generate. If you are in the top echelons of performance in your age group you will need to increase your cadence for sprint, Olympic and even half

Ironman events.

Putting all this together at ironguides, we use some fairly simple tactics and tools to improve our athletes’ cycling splits in a triathlon-specific way. One of the sessions most of our athletes see on a regular basis is best done on a spin bike or computrainer, or a windtrainer you can rely on to generate very high amounts of resistance. After a thorough warm-up, complete anywhere from 10 to 30 efforts of the following:

60sec against heavy resistance

followed by

60sec zero-resistance easy recovery

We assign a cadence of 40 to 45 pedal strokes per leg per minute for this session, with a note explaining that the cadence should be this low because the resistance is so high that you could not possibly push any faster! For example, a 40-45 Age Grouper we coach pushes 20 of these efforts at 520 Watts – no wonder he’s been winning all of his sprint races this year and frequently placing top five!

You can create variations of this approach by pushing a massive gear out on the road, too, for longer intervals and aiming for that “boa constrictor” feeling, while staying in the aero position to simulate your race position as much as possible. Your consistent efforts to push hard against resistance will recruit more muscle and train your bike-specific strength quickly. With a properly structured training program, your all out, high-resistance efforts over varying durations will not over-stress your aerobic system while they consistently develop your leg strength.

It’s important to remember that a “properly structured training session” does not mean that you should use power goals to outline the session. Instead, each athlete completes his or her assigned sessions on a “best effort basis.”

You can use your power readings to provide feedback on how you are improving over time or to quickly spot fatigue and track improvement. But it is the structure of each session that generates the physiological changes we are after, whether these are high-resistance short intervals that do not overly fatigue your aerobic system while developing strength, or longer time trials done at the end of long rides that develop lactate tolerance.

Putting it all together, if you want to improve your overall triathlon times and your abilities as a triathlon cyclist, you need to adopt a lower cadence than you would use if you were training purely for cycling.

• If you’re a typical age group triathlete, avoid emulating cycling styles and approaches that are used by the top professionals, especially in cycling. We triathletes lack the combination of specific cycling strength and fitness to implement these approaches effectively.

• Remember that your cadence on the bike as a triathlete can be tailored to take into account what the run demands of you. A lower cadence than a cyclist would use for the same power output will contribute to fresher fast twitch muscles and less-fatigued motor neurons, helping you run faster.

• As a triathlete, you can’t ride to exhaustion. Using a larger gear and lower cadence reduces your heart rate and spares glycogen, while leaving capacity for you to run longer at threshold levels.

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E.Y.T. – 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:

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Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)

Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)

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

How to Deal with Ironman Blues

July 13, 2018

Home, ironman

By Coach Alun Woodward

Ironman is an epic undertaking and can take over our lives for a significant time period as we plan, train and mentally prepare for the big day! Not only does the training side take a huge commitment but there is so much more involved from making sure your getting the best nutrition to fuel your training, keeping your equipment clean and in good condition and also making sure other area’s of your life are maintained. For an athlete with family and working long hours this can mean very busy times in the run up to ironman, having this full on life suddenly stop after the event while we may crave it at times during training is usually greeted with despair after the race and leaves an athlete feeling lost and not knowing what to do. There is so much information on getting ready for this big day in your lives but very little advice and guidance on what to expect after ironman and how to deal with it.

Following your big day you will be sky high, remembering every little detail from the event and telling your story time and time again to friends and fellow competitors. This glory though does not last forever and along with the pain and aching muscles you will experience after the event it will fade and be replaced by a feeling of loss! Not only are you lost without a goal but so many friends family and colleagues will have been building you up to the event, always wondering and asking things are going, what your doing and usually in awe of the task your undertaking. Having this removed post event and just that return to ordinary life can be hard.

This is not a phenomenon just for ironman it is seen a lot with professional athletes when they retire from sport, this is an extreme example as sport will have been dominating their lives for years but at the very top level in sports like American Football there is a documented high incidence of depression following retirement.

Like anything in life when one thing has dominated our thoughts and daily routines for so long having it removed will lead to a sudden feeling of loss. Maintaining training and staying active can to some extent can help but it does not remove the feeling of loss and you will find these feelings wash over you again and again for a period of time, this feeling is the ironman blues.

So what can we do to overcome this and avoid these feelings?

Firstly when planning your season and especially your first ironman try to ensure that the ironman event is not the final event of your season, having one or two other goals following the ironman can be a big help in avoiding the ironman blues. Your goals do not have to be sport related they can be family or business goals just something significant for you to focus your time on after your ironman event.

A family event such as a holiday can be great immediately after the ironman. This is a great way to say thank you to family who have supported you during your training and no doubt suffered from your absence and distant behaviour at times while training. Also having a family holiday will allow you to fully recover from your event without the thought and temptation of training, being away from your normal training grounds and group of friends is a good thing at this time.

Once you are recovered and back to training its good to have some new goals to focus your training on and there are many different things you could look at either related to triathlon or not.

Strava has provided a great platform for setting mini goals and many of you will have used strava in your ironman training, maybe you have a favourite route and have always fancied having a go at seeing how high you can get up the leaderboard on your favourite segment but have never done a stand alone effort as it simply did not fit in with your training. Now you can focus your training on becoming as fast as possible at climbing or prepare for an all out 20min effort or 10mile time trial.

Off the back of your ironman training you will have a great aerobic base and a few weeks of work focussed on developing speed and pain tolerance will see some great performances over shorter distances. There is a great example of this at the famous Noosa triathlon which takes place over olympic distance 3 weeks after Ironman Hawaii, so many top australians following great performances at ironman have rested after the race and travelled out to complete at this event and had some of the best races of their careers!

Maybe you have always fancied seeing how fast you can run a 5km, the popularity of Park Runs taking place every Saturday morning throughout the country have made this event easily accessible to all and a change of focus to pure speed and pain tolerance over a 6 to 8 week time frame should see you get very close to your potential over the distance off the back of your ironman training.

Your events and goals do not need to be specially triathlon related, in fact having something outside of your triathlon goals can be a great motivator and help refocus your mind to a new task and avoid the blues altogether. Maybe its something that was risky to carry out when training for your ironman or something that would have effected your performance on race day.

A great example of this might be strength training, while you may have been doing this as part of your training maybe you have held off trying heavy weights as this does carry an injury risk especially when you would have gone into sessions heavily fatigued from your triathlon training. Developing the strength for a heavy squat or deadlift for example where a good sign of strength is to be able to lift 1.5x your own body weight – a great target for most individuals.

Maybe you have seen some athletes in the gym performing the olympic lifts, the Clean and Jerk and Snatch and always wanted to try this. Now would be a great time to look into doing this, these are very complex lifts and essential that you get some technique coaching to help you stay safe and lift effectively.

The olympic lifts can be a great addition to your training as they are full body moves that require speed, strength, muscle balance and mobility – working on all these areas will always have a positive effect on your triathlon performance once you start back into training.

A little planning of your time post ironman and you can easily reduce the effect of the post ironman blues or not suffer from them at all.

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)

The Ups and Downs of Ironman Training

July 9, 2018

Home, ironman

If you have ever trained or are in training for an Ironman, you will know that it is an experience like no other, especially if you are an ironguides coached athlete on a daily dose of The Method training programme.

Whether you are an Ironman veteran signing up for your 7^th tour of duty, a top 70.3 age – grouper stepping up to race with the “big boys”, or a brand newbie that’s caught the bug and wants to get one under your belt ( “What’s all the fuss about?” ), the demands of Ironman training will stretch you to your physical, emotional, psychological limits.

The Ironman training cycle is a crazy rollercoaster ride that can take you from good days, filled with hope and confidence to nightmare “off” days that will leave even the fittest athlete discouraged and questioning their ability to even cross the finish line.

This article offers advice on how to spot the patterns of overtraining and how to minimise the “down” days for a more balanced, manageable and effective training cycle.

OVERTRAINING

If you are forcing yourself to get your sessions done for fear of losing fitness and you find yourself half-heartedly “going through the motions”, while getting more tired and desperate as your performance drops- Listen up!

The most common presenting symptom of an athlete who is over-trained is not “Coach, I am so tired, I need a break”. Rather, it is “Coach, I’ve been training hard but I am not improving, I think I need to do more.” The athlete’s drive to excel is so strong that they end up burning the candle at both ends, giving up personal “down time”, recovery and sleep to maintain high levels of work, family and triathlon training commitment. From my experience, the most tell tale signs of an athlete that is overdone are:

Malaise and constant fatigue
Immune-compromised state
Unhealthy obsession with (lack of) improvement
Loss of enjoyment of the sport
Loss of trust and faith in their training
Continual weight loss
Decreased motivation
Flat/ jaded personality
Refusal to admit that they are over-done.

Without timely and well considered guidance, this athlete is headed for trouble.

The risk of overtraining is especially high in the last 6 weeks pre-race- in the middle of the final loading phase. An athlete that has been training hard for the last 4 – 6 months will want to push even harder in order to “cram” in more training before you winding down and resting up for the big day. Here are 3 common situations that can make this last month and a half a tricky patch to navigate:

1) Your dedication and consistency have paid off and you’re fittter than you’ve ever been. You feel invincible and the temptation is to push even harder through the “home stretch” looking for that last 5%.

Quick Fix: If you are feeling good at this stage keep up the good work and don’t bury yourself in the “hardcore” tunnel. Aim to finish each session feeling great, keeping something in the tank for the next day. Aside from getting more rest- don’t change a thing! Unless you have planned it carefully with your coach, don’t turn up the volume or intenisty knob all of a sudden. Overreaching requires a carefully thoughtout recovery period.

2) You only have a handful of weeks left before you need to taper. Your preparation has been a little patchy and your insecurities are surfacing. You think that by hammering every session in the last few weeks will make up for lost time and missed sessions earlier on.

Quick Fix: Don’t panic. Speak to your coach and let him know exactly what has been going on and how you are feeling overall. Recap calmly what you have done and how far you have come since the start of your journey. Chances are that you’ve caught it early enough to salvage the race and you realise that you’re not in that dire a situation. Your coach will know how to tweak your plan to freshen you up while highlighting the key workouts that you must get done. At this point you may need to manage your race day ambitions but this doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great day out.

3) Because of your high training load and the length of time that you have been at it, your body’s immune system, normally used to fight daily germs and bacteria, has been working overtime to regulate muscle and tissue recovery instead. As a result, you fall into an immune-compromised state and pick up colds and flus that don’t go away. You try to train through it but end up even sicker, performing worse and fearful that you’re losing fitness.

Quick Fix: Alert your coach immediately and spell out clearly how long you’ve been under the weather and what training you have done while ill. Your 1st priority is to return to 100% fitness. Load up on Vitamins and antioxidants, get as much sleep as you can and drop the volume of each session to a maxium of 40mins and back off on the intensity by a few nothces too. By doing this, you are are keep the relevant systems “open” and “warm” but not enough to affect your immunity any further. Your coach should tweak your plan for a few days of “unloading”.

In all these situations, you will notice that bringing your coach into the equation is a critical and one of the the first things your should do. It will make the difference between “getting though the race” and arriving at the start line fresh, focused and full of energy. The sooner you speak to your coach, the quicker he can get you back on track rested and refocused on the end goal- your best performance on the big day. This brings me to my next point…

COMMUNICATION

A coaches job extends much further than dishing out training plan after training plan. Don’t wait until you are a burnt-out zombie, shell-of-a-human-being before approaching your coach for help. Timeliness is key.

Your coach’s role is to get you as fit as possible for race day. At times, this might involve a gentle nudge or cracking the whip- at other times, his job is to rein you in from the edge of burnout or in the worst case scenario, nurse you back to health and sanity. A good coach will know:

Your personality/ lifestyle
Your current training load
How far along the training cycle you are
The current stressors on your life

At times, it is difficult to consider all these factors from inside the Ironman bubble so if you need a little extra guidance make the effort to elaborate on how your training has been going. Together with the usual training parameters and assessment of your current perceived level of fitness, some feedback on how you are feeling and your emotional state ( especially your doubts ) will provide your coach with a good insight into how you are coping and what you need to work on.

A good coach will not judge you on what training you have/ or have not completed. Stay open to your coach’s questions and suggestions and share openly with him your goals and motivations. If you catch it early and nip it in the bud, all that maybe required is a weekend off or a few days/ a week of unloading to get refreshed. But keep these things to yourself and you run the risk of digging yourself deeper into the lonely hole of overtraining.

ENVIRONMENT

Even before you sign up for an Ironman, there are a few simple steps to tip the scales in your favour.

The majority of age–groupers today work a demanding 10 hr day. Many are married / with a long term partner and have young families. Before jumping online at 4am to wait for registration to go live, examine your calendar 6 months before race day. Are you getting married/ having a child/ moving house/ country/ changing jobs/ starting a new business/ going to be involved in other big “life” situations? All these things will factor into your training, recovery and performance, especially the 2 months before race day. You will enjoy a much more balanced and successful journey if the forecast of life’s big stressors and events reads relatively “normal” and “boring”. Of course there is no way to predict the future, but an uneventful half year window is a good place to start your Ironman dreams.

Secondly, have that chat with your partner/ wife – The one that starts with “Baby/ Dear/ Darling, I am thinking
of doing an Ironman next year…”

It is of utmost importance that you have buy-in from your loved one because, as much as you think you’re doing all the hard work, they will be the ones playing a major supporting role. Extra understanding and support could make or break your race preparation.

Explain what is an Ironman and why you want to do one (or another one). It is important to give them an idea what kind of training hours are involved. This will help them to appreciate and give reason to what you will be putting yourself through. Your coach is the best person to advise you on the different time commitments required for the different phases a typical Ironman training cycle.

By including them into your decision making process, you are also giving your partner a time frame so that they can appreciate and be mentally prepared for those days/ weeks when you don’t need the extra distractions and social gatherings because you will be more tired than usual. In all fairness, it also allows them to look forward to when they can have a fully present and energetic partner back in their lives!

It is a good idea to take it a step further to roughly plan out your allocated training hours with them. As you proceed, daily duties and responsibilities will surface, and together you will be able to discern much more clearly which are the most convenient tasks for you to stay engaged in to pull your weight.

CONCLUSION

I hope this article has given you some insights into some of the common pitfalls surrounding Ironman training and how to avoid them. Training is not all a bed of roses nor should not be viewed as an excuse for unlimited hours of swimming, biking and running. To get it right and nail it on race day requires a delicate balance of training and recovery guided by a close working relationship with your coach and an understanding and supportive home base from which to launch your adventures and live your dreams.

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Enjoy your training.

Shem Leong

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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.

Race Preparation: Half Ironman Taper Tips

July 2, 2018

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At this stage of preparation, with the months of hard work behind you and a mere 2 weeks until the big day, you should be at your fittest. You’ve done the late night track sessions, given up a social life for 5am bike rides, and rushed to the pool after work to get a swim in. Well Done! There’s not a lot more you can do to improve your fitness. But how do you handle race week so that you are feeling fantastic and raring to go on race day? Too much rest could see you feeling flat, lethargic and unmotivated, while too much training will not give your body a chance to freshen up. The taper is a period of reduced training load designed for your body to rest and repair while allowing the body’s natural physiological adoptions occur. You may have heard some athletes talk about “soaking up” all the hard work- this is what they are referring to.

When tapering after a long period of consistent training, our body’s transition from “fight” mode (training) into “heal” mode (tapering); the cardiovascular and muscular systems that are constantly being stressed for greater adaptation start to wind down and enter a state of deep rest. The hormonal balance in your body also changes as the hormones released to sustain the high levels of physical exertion during training drops, while the level of “restorative” hormones increases. Your muscles will also start to “gum up” as they lay down healing connective tissue. This is why it is important to keep moving and the reason that we don’t take extended periods totally off during a taper. Essentially, we want to do as little as possible (allowing for maximum rest) while still keeping the systems switched on and just ticking over in the background.

These changes translate to a sensation of fatigue and lethargy in the body that is often experienced in the 1st few days of your taper. Your body will feel sluggish as you have been used to a very high rate of oxygenation and movement of fluids. Your metabolism will be out of whack too because the amount of energy you are used to expending drops. Your digestion will feel a little off, your head foggy, and you feel all the little aches and pains that the season’s training brings with it. Knowing why it’s happening and expecting these changes to take place is important because it will help you stay cool and not freak out. In fact, what would be cause for concern would be if you didn’t feel these things at all!

DOs

1. Keep moving and stay loose. As a rule, cut down first on intensity (the most damaging), then volume and lastly, on training frequency. Tapering is not a period of complete rest. 10 days of doing nothing will see you very well rested but also feeling flat, lethargic and possibly carrying a few extra kilos.

Once you get to race week, it’s a matter of getting plenty of rest but not letting your systems shut down entirely. Maintain the same frequency as your regular weekly training cycle to keep the engine purring. Almost all sessions are done at the easy effort level for 50 – 30 mins in duration – with the only exception being a longer and very easy 90 min bike ride in the 1^st half of the week.

Throw in a few short efforts in each of the disciplines to keep your muscles firing and familiar with the effort on race day. Short 5 min race pace efforts work well at the start of the week, while harder 30 – 90 sec bursts are good to fire up the legs/ arms towards the end of taper week. Keep everything else easy. You want to perform the sessions hard enough just to tease out the right physiological response to keep that system ticking over.

All the training sessions that you put in the last week should leave you hungry to do more. In a sense, you’re teasing your body to build energy levels up before the full race day effort. Do not hammer yourself on any sessions during this time to “test your fitness”. Trust in the many hours that you have already put in.

2. Travel days are stressful enough so you can take this day completely off or just strap on the shoes for a 20 min easy run after settling in- just to loosen up the legs.

3. Adjust the size of your meals to account for the decreased activity levels. ) Watch what you eat during taper because your training load (and the subsequent calorific replacement rate) is significantly reduced. You won’t get away with stuffing your face after a short session, even though, out of habit, you may feel like it.

4. Try to keep taper week free of stressful occurrences. Make sure everything is settled on the work and family front early. Mentally (and physically) you want to be in a relaxed place so that you can spend time rehearsing your race strategy and nutrition plan. Visualise different sections of the race and remind yourself of what to expect and how you want to be feeling and how you are going to react, in terms of pacing, motivation and nutrition, at each of these ‘check points’.

5. The fitter you are, the more susceptible you are to common bugs, colds and flus and the more easily we get sick (I’ll explain why in another article). Diet – wise, top up on loads fresh and colourful fruit and veg to make sure you’re getting the vitamins and anti-oxidants required to keep our immunity high. A daily multi-vit is also a good idea.

DON’Ts

1. Don’t plan your family vacation before your race. A few relaxing days by the beach is fine, but a 2 week hiking tour in New Zealand/ Europe/ Canada/ USA is not a good idea.

2. Avoid taking a total day off the day before the race. If you feel like you need it, two days out is better. Do a little touch in each discipline the day before, just to get the engine warmed up.

3. Mental fatigue from the Ironman hype: While the Ironman “circus” is part of the experience, it doesn’t mean that you have to be breathing triathlon 24/7 for the entire week before the race. Being on your feet, swapping stories about racing and training, considering late equipment changes from the expo sale, etc etc… all that is going to zapp your energy big time.

4. Stay low-key – I recommend getting to the race venue as late as possible so that you have a limited time at to hang out at the Athlete Village. Limit yourself to one pass – buy all the souvenirs/ supplies you want, take photos of that new bike, go hassle some Pros, and catch up with all your friends on their training and racing. Then leave it, get out of there and avoid going back. Booking your accommodation a few miles away from the race area helps too.

In conclusion, stay cool and level-headed and move smoothly through any last minute hiccups that you may encounter. All training sessions need to be conservative and should not incur any muscle damage/ fatigue at all. Save your energy, trust in your training and mentally prepare to ‘go there’ on race day.

Good Luck!

10 Basic Tips for Iron-Distance Nutrition

June 18, 2018

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Keep it simple is the name of the game when it comes to Ironman Race Day Nutrition. Here’s how, in 10 easy steps.

Here’s ten ways you can plan on optimizing your Ironman day — after all, as we tell our clients, Nutrition Trumps Training. To lock in a great return on all the time and energy you invested in training, make sure you’ve mapped out and practised a nutritional strategy for race day that is simple and right for you.

1. Take in adequate amounts of energy. 400 Cal/hour on the bike is a rough goal. On the run, two gels and lots of coke per hour. Eat when you feel good, back off when you don’t.

2. Pace appropriately! Yes, appropriate pace is a “nutrition” tip!!

Why? Because your pace and how much fuel you can process are inversely related! The faster you go, the less food and drink you can process. Conversely, the slower you go, the more you can digest. This is simply a factor of diverting more blood supply to the working muscles the harder we go. Go too hard and you can end up shutting down the stomach and intestines!

The right pace is always a compromise between two things: (1) How much blood needs to go to the muscles to provide oxygen and nutrients to sustain your pace, and (2) the minimum number of Calories you need to process to get you to the finish line in the least amount of time! Your fitness, weight (more fat = more insulation = more heat stress = greater demand on blood flow), heat adaptation — all of these impact blood flow demands from the different systems in your body.

A short race such as a sprint tri can be ALL OUT with no food since we carry enough glycogen to fuel ourselves at a high intensity for the distance and we do not need to eat. But when you are racing for 2.5 hours or longer, you will need to count on taking in some food, too.

3. If you get stomach trouble, slow down! Your problems will resolve if you give your body the chance to recover. You can cruise easy for 10-15 minutes and only “lose” a couple of minutes on the day, or you can continue to carry on hard and lose hours!! Or worse, DNF!!

4. Keep it simple. Stick to one brand of electrolyte drink and one brand of sports bar or gel. Take enough supply to race venue, you don’t want to be buying different brands the day before the race

5. Eat your solids, if any, early during the bike (first couple of hours). Aim to keep the rest of your fuel intake liquid.

6. Rely on an electrolyte drink throughout the day and keep water intake to when you eat dense carbohydrate sources (gels, bars, cookies, etc.), because mixing electrolyte with food will only make the solution denser. Mix your drink according to the label!

7. Aim for minimum one large (750mL) bottle of electrolyte drink per hour on the bike, with additional water with gels and solid food. The bottle of drink will give you roughly 140Cal per hour. Add three gels and you have 440 Calories/hour, a good goal. Have some water/electro/coke at every aid station on the run. Never skip an aid station — never, not ever!

8. Practise practise practise. Make every long training session a practice run-through of your IM fuelling and pacing. By the time race day rolls around, it should be second nature what you eat and drink.

9. Plan the details of your fuelling strategy in advance. For example, you can use a Jetstream bottle and mix a concentrated mix in a bottle, then during the bike fill up the Jetstream (once it’s empty) with a marked-off amount out of the bottle of concentrate that is the right amount to ensure a proper concentration when topped up with water. Do this right before an aid station and top off the concentrate with water from that aid station. If you do this right, you can start the bike with the Jetstream full, and carry a large bottle with 3 hours worth of concentrate in it. Then pour 1/3 of the bottle into the Jetstream each time you’re on empty, top it off with water from the aid stations and you’re set. Always keep a little bottle of water on board to wash down gels and calories from food.

10. Food of choice: Find the brand of bar and gels you like, and get used to using them. Remember, gels and bars are only one option — many races have been won on Mars bars, coke and bananas. Find what works for you!

Coach Vinnie

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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)

How to Restart Training after Illness or Missed Workouts

June 15, 2018

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Following a training program on the spot or 100 percent according to plan rarely happens, especially in triathlon where you train for three disciplines.

As an age grouper, the juggle to balance training, work, family time and all sorts of errands and duties is always the biggest challenge with the tri lifestyle.

You’ll miss training days when work unloads on you a big task, when you catch a cold or a flu virus, and of course, when nagging minor injuries becomes a major one if you ignored it.

It is one of the most frustrating moments for a triathlete, especially when you felt you are reaping benefits from all the training you had consistently logged on.

Derailment of training due to illness, injury or work and family obligations is less of an “if”, and more a “when”. To keep your sanity, you just have to learn to be ok with missing workouts.

While giving specific training advice in an article written for a diverse audience is inherently difficult, I do think there are general principles and few rules that can help guide you back on track.

Accept your current state of fitness.
Before your training was stopped by an illness, minor injury or simply by work obligation, you probably have been doing great on your fitness level. Depending on the length of your hiatus, it is important not to be in the state of mind before the interruption. It is common to retain the mindset of past training and racing, along with the feeling that if it worked before your body and mind can do it again. You have to build it up again.

Don’t Push yourself Hard too Soon

The general rule is. Take it easy at first. Give yourself anywhere in between a few days to a couple weeks of easier sessions as this will create some fatigue which works as an insurance that you won’t train too hard at first, then you can start adding the intensity. The combination of a fresh body and the mental guilt that you didn’t train for days, can be a dangerous one as it may lead to some very intense sessions when you first start back which may kill the chance of building some consistency again.

Listen to your body, and don’t dive into those punishing interval or hard rides too soon. A simple cold can turn into a more complicated infection if you padded on a too tough of training stress on top of it. There is always a way to scale back on your training, and be patient in gradually making your way back to the level of training you had before the derailment.

Don’t Try to Play Catch-up
Some athletes, when they felt they had recovered from the illness or felt they are close to the state they where before the hiatus, will try to recover the missed workouts by doing Two- a days or cramming a week’s worth of program into a few days. This is not only detrimental, but may lead back into your illness, overtraining, or worse, an injury.

Transitioning Smart to the Hard Sessions
When you have gone for a week of easy training, and you feel that you are ready to transition to the harder stuff, this is the way to do it. On the first week of doing the hard sessions, initially cut back on the volume of the sessions, make them short. Then gradually increase to the full workout the next week or two depending on how you feel.

It Happens to Everyone

It is very rare, if not impossible, to have a training block leading into a major race where you will complete 100% of the workouts. Some people get sick, others injured, others have challenges with their work, family demands time, it won’t be a smooth road to your race, expect and adjust accordingly, and once you toe the start line, know that all athletes next to you, were also dealing with challenges during their prep.

Getting Back to the Program
You have eased into returning to form after the hiatus, what will happen to my training program?

If you missed less than 5 days, just go back to the same program, don’t play catch up, and just ease into the routine as discussed.
If you missed 1-2 weeks, if you are 8 weeks out from goal race, go back to the point before your hiatus, and start from there. These are race specific workouts, and it is good to gradually build in intensity and volume, rather than skipping, and be faced with harder workouts. Again, don’t overdo and try to catch up by overcompensating on the missed workouts, you are just asked to continue the program on the day you stopped.
If you are more than 8-10 weeks out from race, just continue your program, as if you haven’t missed anything. Just be careful to ease into the workouts by cutting back on intensity and volume on the first week, as discussed.There will be days when you feel that you are not in the same fitness as you were before, despite doing all of the above, smartly easing into it and all. Decrease in performance capability is a collateral damage, and part of being in illness. Just persevere and be consistent, and you will get all the fitness all back.

Triathlon Swimming: Type like a human

June 11, 2018

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The second installment in our series “Triathlon Heresies” was published in Triathete Magazine USA. “Type Like a Human” looks at triathlon swimming and how common mistakes taught in pools nation-wide are keeping you from swimming to your best potential in the open water.

Type Like a Human – By Alun Woodward

If you’re like most Age Group athletes, one of the most challenging (and frustrating) aspects of your training is how to improve your swim time. For many athletes the question that arises once they’ve acquired basic swim skills is: Why am I not getting any faster in my races? To answer this question we have to step back a little and understand that the requirements of pool swimming and open water triathlon swimming are very different.

First let’s start by understanding that “open water swimming” is not about extending the lane in your pool into an empty, 1500-meter long, flat water course with a lane rope on each side (as some swim instructors have recently suggested). Instead, open water swimming as experienced by the vast majority of Age Group swimmers is a churning, rough-and-tumble experience in which all the rules of pool swimming are broken! How long have you been able to hold a delicate, careful, well thought out stroke in a race?

That’s right – about 10 seconds! With every stroke there seems to be something to impede your progress and stall you in the water: Chop from the wind, other swimmers’ elbows, someone pulling on you or swimming overtop of you, ocean swell, murky water, air bubble froth, feet impeding your ability to catch water, and so on. It’s like swimming in a washing machine and needing to re-accelerate with every stroke! Because of this constant interference and challenge at every stroke, the truth about triathlon swimming is that to improve your abilities in the open water you need to do almost the opposite of what you did to develop swim technique in the pool!

In traditional swim training you are encouraged to emulate the top swimmers in the sport, who after a lifetime of swimming twice a day are able to “swim like a dolphin”, able to recruit a large proportion of muscle mass to slip effortlessly through the water lap after lap at top speed, high intensity and with beautiful form. The truth is that these swimmers have literally worked that lifetime to develop an extreme level of aerobic fitness and swim-specific strength and muscle recruitment that has no bearing on triathlon swimming for most triathletes – including the very best of our pro’s! Asking you to learn to swim the same way with limited time, a lifetime of not swimming, modest aerobic development and low swim-specific strength is like asking a dolphin to type like a human!

A typical Age Group triathlete has trained their aerobic fitness to handle “getting through” the distance required by their race. If you’re not coming from a swim background and have a history of limited swim training, or you have learned to swim using a focus on drills and pool technique, you’ve probably learned to conserve your energies using a very careful, deliberate “thought-out” swim stroke. Your stroke appears reasonably proficient, with high elbows, a long glide and a streamlined body, but you lack the strength to power through the difficulties faced in the open water. As a result you are constantly coming to a near stop and need to re-accelerate at every stroke, which is a very energy-consuming process.

In the pool the typical “maximum glide per stroke” approach most of us have been taught (usually by pool swimmers!) works great at first. With a massive acceleration off the wall every 25 to 50m, and with nothing to interfere with our focus and concentration as we carefully apply each stroke in un-crowded conditions, we can end up making reasonable progress as long as nothing interferes.

But apply this approach to the open water and we end up leaving ourselves wide open to the decelerating forces all around us. Without the strength to power through each wave, bit of current, grabbed ankle, chop, or interfering elbow we end up at a near standstill with each stroke! Our long stroke in fact becomes a hindrance –the longer and more “glide-oriented” your stroke is, the longer you leave yourself open to obstruction in the water! Each millisecond is one more opportunity to stall! And without the aerobic engine to support constant re-accelerations we quickly tire and settle into “survival” mode.

How do we overcome this without substantially increasing our swim mileage? The answer: Learn an open water stroke!

Triathlon Swim Technique

Without a doubt the top swimmers in the world have beautiful technique, with long, smooth, powerful strokes swum with little apparent effort. As triathletes we can learn a lot that can be used for our own performance, such as developing relaxation when we swim, correct pulling technique and arm recovery. But beyond that we are best to leave some characteristics of this stroke to the swimmers – their technique is specific to racing in pools, one person to a lane and to get them only to the end of their swim, usually far shorter than most triathlon swims.

For triathlon swimming we need a technique that is both fast and efficient and also allows us to navigate the chaotic conditions of open water. We need a stroke that is not easily disrupted by other swimmers but that also enables us to conserve energy for the bike and run to follow.

Swimming Efficiency

The long, smooth powerful strokes used by top swimmers relies on high power output to carry the glide through disruptions, which only depletes our limited energy stores early in the race. Even with the ability to generate this power, a long-smooth-stroke technique leaves us more vulnerable to disruption from waves, moving water and other swimmers. In open water the stroke needs to be faster, shorter and continuous to minimize the disruption of our forward progress – the opposite of long, distance-per-stroke swimming.

Training for Triathlon Swimming

To train for triathlon swimming we need to move slightly away from the typical swim training prescribed by swim coaches, mainly in the area of technique. Swim coaches tend to spend most technique training time working on increasing stroke length, reducing strokes per length, and developing power throughout the stroke. However, as triathletes we need to focus on:

Powerful front end of stroke to accelerate quickly with each stroke, using major muscle groups such as the pectorals propel ourselves forward
Improving stroke rate (strokes per minute) so that we move quickly from stroke to stroke without leaving ourselves open to external disruptions
Eliminating dead points in the stroke so that we don’t ourselves contribute to the factors that stall our progress

By changing the focus of our swim training we can improve our performance while also reducing energy expenditure, which leads not only to improved swim performance but also better bike and run performances. We carry less fatigue out of the water, and we have increased energy levels later in the race.

How do we develop this new technique?

To implement a new technique takes time because our brain controls how our muscles work to move us through the water. Based on our lifetime of swim experience (or lack of it!), we have set into our brains a motor pattern for swimming that we now need to change from a pool-efficient motor pattern to an open water-efficient motor pattern.

To change our motor patterns from old to new is very hard, especially in older swimmers who have a lifetime of set patterns to overcome (swimming or not swimming!). For this reason it is very important that when we train to change our stroke we ensure that the body is not too tired – for this reason, aim to swim in the morning, or if this is not possible then make the swim session the first training session of the day. We do this because if the body is tired the brain will easily fall back into known and automatic motor patterns, which only reinforces the old technique rather than developing your new, open water technique.

Because fatigue is an important factor in your swim stroke training, your sessions should also be short and broken up into small and manageable chunks. This allows you to focus on your new technique with high concentration for short periods of time, with plenty of recovery between efforts to ensure that every effort you swim is developing good solid technique!

The total length of the session is also very important as there is only so much the brain can take at any time, so swimming 1000m (total) with good technique is better in the beginning than trying to fit in your normal 3000m set – the 3000m of effort will most likely have you swimming good technique only for the first 1000m of intervals, while in the last 2000m as you tire your technique will deteriorate and you are revert to reinforcing bad technique!

One last thing we need to consider is the frequency of your swim sessions. By getting in the pool as often as possible during this period of adjusting to your new stroke, even just for short sessions you will accelerate the learning process. Try to ensure that you are not out of the water for more than two consecutive days during the week.

Summary

Train fresh! Swim when you are fresh – first thing in the morning or as the first training session of the day
Less is more! Keep the interval length as short as necessary to hold good technique
Swim often! Keep your sessions short and frequent – don’t go more than two days without swimming

Technical Focus

No swim instruction is complete without a few technical pointers to illustrate what you are aiming for! However, because new swim skills are difficult to master and you can’t focus on more than one new movement at a time, it’s important that you incorporate these tips into your new stroke one by one. Get familiar with one aspect, learn it well, then incorporate the next into your training. Remember that old trick about patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time? Learning a new stroke is no different!

Hand Entry
With each stroke, enter the water fingertips first and “send” your fingers on a continuous downward trajectory towards the bottom of the pool. By getting the fingers in first and driving them down instead of forward you set yourself up to immediately start the pull phase. There is no glide phase!

If you’re a “careful placer” of your hand into the water from too much technique swimming then you are not developing energy-saving momentum in your stroke. Break yourself of this habit by forcefully PLUNGING your hand into the water with a powerful thrust! It’s important not to “slap” the water surface – think of the rest of your arm tucking in behind your hand and slipstreaming into the water behind it. You want to put a lot of force into this component of your stroke because this sets you up for a quick, strong catch. Remember – no glide!

Once your hand is in the water, imagine coins sitting on your fingertips. You must keep constant water pressure on the coins to prevent them falling off your fingertips. Use this imagery to eliminate any remaining dead glide in your stroke and ensure that you develop a continuous, constant rhythm in your stroke. Your arm is always moving into the water and immediately catching the water! A nice byproduct of this approach is that the timing of each stroke improves as your hand is immediately in position to pull. There is no glide!

With no glide component your whole stroke speeds up and you remove your own worst enemy – the thinking process – and the resulting robotic, “careful-placement” swim stroke learned by the majority of swimmers who follow classic swim drill training (especially those trying to swim like dolphins!). More momentum in your stroke sets you up for a more powerful pull, and ensures that the force you apply then goes towards maintaining speed and not re-accelerating in the water.

Pull

Now that you have your hand entry sorted you need to develop what happens next. After you have started “catching” the water with coins on your fingertips, pull back straight and powerful – picture your arm wrapped around a barrel as you initiate this. You can train yourself to apply plenty of power in this aspect of your stroke by incorporating plenty of “water polo” freestyle into your swimming. At ironguides, we also incorporate plenty of lengths using small paddles so that you are consistently training swim strength instead of spending your time doing drills that don’t teach you the power or rhythm needed for open water. By focusing on a powerful pull you ensure that your stroke is continuous and not disrupted by currents, waves, or other competitors – or thinking!

Stability and Body Position

To propel yourself forward you need to establish a strong body position in the water. In open water we use our hand as an “anchor” to pull our body through the water. The best way to do this is to keep your hand relaxed and to slightly open up the fingers – no water will pas through your fingers when they are slightly spread, and this will greatly increase your hand’s surface area in the water. When your hand enters the water at the front of the stroke aim to enter slightly wide of center and just in front of your head – this stabilizes your body and limits snaking of your body through the water.

As well, in conjunction with the use of paddles, especially if you are a less-skilled swimmer, make sure that you incorporate plenty of pull buoy work into your swimming. The bigger the pull buoy, the better! The pull buoy helps your body achieve a more optimal (higher, horizontal!) position in the water – again, without you having to think about it! In swimming especially “thought” is the enemy!
When you swim with a pull buoy you reduce your focus on maintaining body position, freeing yourself to focus on other aspects of your stroke, and reducing struggle and aerobic work trying to kick frantically in order to hold your body position. And, without needing to think about it, the pull buoy helps you train core stabilizers that work to hold proper body position when you swim in your wetsuit, and helps you apply other aspects of your stroke from a more optimal position. End result – you develop better technique without having to think, and without spending your limited time on low-intensity, drill work.

Summary

For effective triathlon swimming you need to develop technique that is appropriate to our sport. Triathletes do not have the strength or conditioning and in most cases the physical stature to use the technique used by swimming legends such as Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps, or indeed ven national class swimmers. Using a technique that is momentum-driven, avoids gliding to a stall, and applied in more frequent, shorter strokes is more efficient and faster in open water, and also spares your energy stores for later in the race.

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