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Train with ironguides!
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Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
As we head full on into race season, tapering is the topic on everyone’s mind. Should we taper for every race, how do we recover from the race, and how do we get back to productive training as soon as possible. The process of tapering I have talked about in previous articles. What I want to talk about here is the process of training through smaller, less important races that we use as stepping stones to our BIG races.
We can only really go through a full taper process 2 or 3 times per season without losing fitness—these tapers should ideally be a month or more apart.
For smaller races we do not maintain our full training schedule right up to the race either. Instead we have a mini refresh before the race and train as normal immediately following the race, essentially treating the event as an important training session.
RACE REFRESH
As we head through a training program at ironguides, we have our athletes training with a certain level of fatigue. This fatigue is an insurance policy against going too hard—it allows really good consistent training without the risk of going too hard as the body is too tired to do so!
When we have a small race coming up and we are in full training, the idea is to allow the body to freshen up without dropping all the fatigue and to not allow the body to change its hormonal state to one of deep recovery. With this, you are never going to be fully race sharp but you will be surprised at what you can do on a little fatigue.
I also use this to show athletes how hard they can push their bodies—tired body will not give you that top 5% speed but without that level you can’t blow up so you can really hammer away at your limit without fear of crawling home. This race suffering is a great lesson to take to your main races.
So how do we go about that freshening up?
I like to take the 3 days heading into the race as freshen-up time; any longer and we lose the training pattern and risk the body shutting down and going into deep recovery.
DAY 1: 3 days before the race
This is your day off, but I prefer it to be an active recovery day with just 1 training session, which is best done in a non-weight bearing sport so either swim or bike. The session should be all easy and 40 minutes is the maximum you should do. Listen to your body and just enjoy your training. I personally love to choose a route I know to be around 30 minutes and to not take a watch; BE FREE and feel your body. If you feel like a little more then go for it and if you feel terrible do not push through.
TRAINING
* easy 40-minute swim or bike
DAY 2 – 2 days before the race
This is an easy aerobic day, training the same hours as normal but the intensity is lower. This maintains fuel burning as normal within the body. This day would normally include a short run and a longer bike. The run would include a short period or set of moderate-pace intervals, while the bike includes a few 10 second ALL OUT sprints to make sure all muscle fibres are activated and kept in motion for the race. During a period of heavy training these 10-second sprints can really refresh the muscles very quickly—at the end of 10 seconds you get a short but intense burn throughout the muscles and this is exactly what is needed to produce a short secretion of growth hormone into the body to accelerate recovery.
TRAINING
* RUN – 30 minutes with 10 minutes of moderate pace intervals
* BIKE – 60-90 minutes easy with some 10-second sprints
DAY 3 – 1 day before the race
This is a short training day where we touch on all systems, so a little strength, a little speed and a little tolerance work. It is always good to do a little swim on this day and I prefer the bike also as it’s non-weight bearing and allows for faster recovery than a run session.
TRAINING
* SWIM – 20 minutes with some short accelerations to above race speed.
* BIKE – 40 minutes ride with some short all-out intervals and some moderate-paced strength intervals on a climb if possible.
RACE DAY
As we are still going to be a little fatigued heading into the race, a good warm-up is essential. This does not need to be fast but, just as in training, sometimes we need 20-30 minutes for the body to wake up, you should also be prepared to not feel great for the first part of the race, just keep positive and keep faith in the fact your body will come around.
POST-RACE RECOVERY
This is the important part to maintain consistent training; it is essential you do not stop as soon as you cross the finish line. It’s always tempting, but think that you would never do this after a hard session. Keep mobile, walk around a little or a small bike/ jog as you would after any hard session—remember, you have to think of the race as just a hard training session.
The next day you are right back into your training plan as though you had done a hard session, not a race. This style of training is the reason pro athletes can maintain such good shape all year despite racing almost every weekend; they do not taper for each race and they are straight back into training following the events.
Most ITU athletes will race Sunday, wake up sometimes crazy early on Monday morning to run before traveling home or to the next race. Running at airports etc is all part of the lifestyle to not allow the body to go into rest mode and then on Tuesday it’s back to the hard work. Typically these athletes are back to track intervals on Tuesday, training through the fatigue!
Alun “Woody” Woodward, Certified ironguides Coach – Europe
* * * Your best is our business.™ * * *
ironguides is the leading Lifestyle Facilitation company for athletes of all abilities. We provide coaching and training services, plans and programs, as well training education, health and fitness products to help you learn and live a healthy lifestyle. Come get fit with one of our monthly training subscriptions, event-specific training plans, coaching services, or a triathlon training camp in an exotic location! ironguides also provides Corporate Health services including Corporate Triathlons, Healthy Living retreats and speaking engagements. At ironguides, your best is our business!
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Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
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Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
Training hard, your chances of getting sick are relatively high. ironguides Coach Alun “Woody” Woodward has the cure that will help get you back on your feet as fit and fast as possible.
Sickness seems to be hitting plenty of athletes right now with the very changeable weather this spring. Training hard in the final weeks before the main races of the season start, your chances of catching an illness are high.
If you’re unlucky enough to pick something up, what should be the protocol with training?
Firstly, maintaining your level of training as normal when you’re sick is not wise and can do a lot of damage to your body. It can also prolong, or increase the intensity of, the illness. As soon as you start to display any sign of illness, you need to move away from your planned training and into recovery mode.
How you approach the next days really depends on the symptoms and the intensity of the infection. The main workouts that need to be stopped are any that stress the cardio system, which means anything that raises the heart rate significantly and increases breathing rate above a comfortable level.
Fever
If you have a fever, then training is a no go—you need rest until the fever has passed. In this situation, normally your body is going to tell you quite clearly it does not want to train and all you have to do is listen, which is harder to do than to say, I know.
As with all our training at ironguides, we really want to teach athletes to better listen to their body.
Once the fever has gone, and you are feeling better and motivated to train again, then I like to set 2 easy aerobic days with some power work on the bike, before resuming your regular training.
Power training on the bike is going to activate muscle fibres helping to maintain fitness while ensuring your heart rate remains low and does not stress your cardio system.
Common cold
The illness to strike most frequently is the common cold. The intensity of the cold is always different and affects different people in different ways. The main point though is that it usually hits an individual with the same symptoms so you know how it is going to affect you. Again, the main thing is to listen to your body; if it says you shouldn’t train then rest.
If you still feel like training, then keep workouts lower-end aerobic and keep your heart rate from climbing above walking-pace level. I would advise that training be limited to cycling at this time as it is much easier to maintain heart rate in the lower levels on the bike.
The same power training I mentioned above can be used during these bike sessions in order to help maintain fitness. Once you feel good enough to resume training as normal then take 2 more easy aerobic days but this time in all 3 sports.
Chesty cough
The chesty cough can be your only symptom or it can follow after a cold. Regardless, as soon as that cough moves to the chest then it’s time to rest and go to see the doctor. I find a lot of confusion with this one in terms of where the cough is coming from.
Sometimes when you have had a blocked nose that starts releasing, it will drain downwards into your throat which will lead to coughing up mucus. This is not a chesty cough that would require rest.
A chesty cough tends to be dry and very deep in the chest, almost producing a rattle when you breathe.
When resuming training following this illness, I would always recommend one full easy week of aerobic work at normal training volume before you start to train with intensity.
Resuming full training
The time it takes to fall back into your full training plan depends on the period you have been sick. If the illness has lasted less than a week, then 2 days of easy aerobic training at normal daily training volume should see you able to resume your pre-sickness training schedule.
If the sickness has lasted 7-10 days, then I would set the easy training duration to 4 days, again at your normal daily training volume but keeping the intensity way down.
If the sickness has persisted for any longer than 10 days, then a full week of easy training is advisable before you jump back into full intensity.
Tricks to maintain fitness
As I mentioned above, power training on the bike helps maintain fitness while sick.
When I say power training I am talking about riding with a low cadence and pushing against a high resistance; you are going to feel more muscular fatigue building than cardio stress. This is a great way to train while sick as it helps maintain neuromuscular pathways, making it much easier and faster to get back to normal training speeds and feeling once healthy again.
On the run we can also use tricks to maintain fitness. One of the things we don’t want to lose with running is leg speed as this can take a long time to build up.
We can do a short treadmill session that is designed to maintain leg speed without placing stress on the cardio system. Warm up on a bike at a very low intensity and then head over to the treadmill and set it to your 5km speed; now perform 10 x 10-second runs at this speed and take 50 seconds complete recovery between the efforts. After this session, it will not feel like you have done anything, but when you come back to full training it will seem like you had no time away.
Summary
Nobody has the perfect solution for training when sick as we are all very different. The above are a good set of guidelines to follow but the most important thing is to listen to your body’s signals. We all panic when we get sick and imagine we will lose all our fitness. This is not really going to happen unless we are out for more than 10 days and even then we still only see a slow rate of decline. Follow the tricks I have outlined in this article and you will find yourself back to normal much faster than you believed possible.
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)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
Alun ‘Woody’ Woodward, Certified ironguides Coach – UK/Hungary
http://www.ironguides.net
* * * Your best is our business.™ * * *
By Alun Woodward, Online Triathlon Coach, ironguides.net
ironguides coach Alun ‘Woody’ Woodward looks at some crucial elements of triathlon preparation that will ensure you get to enjoy your fitness in a goal race.
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At the very heart of race season, we are looking to be in the best shape possible for our goal races; the training has been done and now the key is getting to the start line healthy and mentally ready to tackle the day.
In 2005 I was watching ironman Austria and saw Marino Vanhoenacker before the start of the race – he was incredibly calm and seemed lazy in all his movements. During a pre-race interview Marino was asked if he was nervous, and he replied simply, No. The work had been done and he knew he was ready! This is exactly the mindset we need to be taking into race day in order to maximize performance.
We all head into the race differently, though rarely in a completely perfect scenario: we may be a kilogram heavier than we would like, have missed one long run or long bike, taken too little rest or did too much travel. There is always something but come race day we all need to realize there is nothing we can do to change our current circumstances.
On race day we have to be content with our preparations and realize we can only do what our body is capable of. I have a saying on race day that is simply: “Enjoy your fitness.”
Practice
Unfortunately in ironman, fitness is not the only element to a successful race but it is the area where we spend most time preparing. Other factors are present on race day, and those can very easily derail all your training and lead to a bad performance.
These factors are transitions, equipment, nutrition and weather. If we want to enjoy our fitness in our goal race, we must have prepared in all areas to get the most out of our day.
Practicing your race plan
One thing I find is lacking in most athletes’ preparations is practicing race plans. Most athletes have a race plan and know how many and what type of calories they will take during the event, what drinks and what concentrations of liquids they will have during the race, and so on.
But the main element to a successful plan is missing and that is practice: you need to practice your race plan in training.
We want everything to run smoothly on race day and to achieve this we must have practiced everything thoroughly including transitions, removing the wetsuit, eating on the bike and at high intensity – it’s amazing how different an energy bar can taste and how hard it is to eat at race pace, compared with the way does at easy training intensity.
When training for Ironman on The Method system, you are going to have some sessions that are very similar to race day in the final weeks leading up to your goal event, and it is during these sessions that you should be practicing everything for race day.
Let’s look at some things to consider for your race-day practice.
Equipment
* If you have race wheels, then use them for this session. This will allow you to know how the wheel feels when riding, braking, descending and climbing.
* Mount your aero bottle on the tri bars. Use this set-up in training so you’re familiar with drinking from the aero bottle and with refilling it while moving.
* Practice aid stations. Get a friend to hand you water as you ride past so you know how it feels. Taking a bottle from a stationary person when you’re going at 30km/hour is not easy.
* Transitions bags: use these in training so you are familiar with the process. On your brick session, have a run bag ready at home, so that when you change from the bike to the run in training you go through the same procedure as you will on race day in T2.
Nutrition
Problems with nutrition on race day are among the biggest complaints of triathletes. This is typically due to not having practiced in training. If you usually drink 500ml of fluid every hour when training, then suddenly taking on 1 litre per hour during a race is going to be unfamiliar for your body and it will not react kindly.
Also, taking on nutrition at different intensities is important as it is harder to consume calories when going hard. For example, you might have a 30-minute hard bike effort in training. Most athletes would do the 30 minutes hard without fuel, and then drink or eat after, but in fact this hard 30-minute session is the perfect time to practice your race nutrition.
It’s amazing how easy it may be to eat a Powerbar during an easy ride, but becomes impossible to take in at high intensity. If you do not try in training, you cannot know what will happen on race day.
Weather also plays a part in choosing nutrition. Don’t count on chocolate bars for fuel if you’re going to be racing in extreme heat as everything will melt, making it impossible to eat them. At the same time planning something like a Powerbar in a cold race is not ideal either as these become almost impossible to chew in low temperatures.
So you can see that fitness is not the only element to performance on race day. There are several other factors at play and if we attend to these in training, it will make our race day experience more routine and we can expect to carry our fitness to the line successfully.
We have all heard the saying, ‘Practice makes perfect,’ and in Ironman it’s the practice of the little things that make a big, big difference on race day! Don’t be fooled by watching the pros race and see that everything looks so easy – you forget that the pros race 10 to 20 times per year, and every race is practice. If you only compete once or twice a year in major races, then you need to practice your routines in training!
Enjoy your training ,
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Alun Woodward, ironguides Online Coach
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Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
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Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
Conventional wisdom and training practices have created a void between coaching of endurance sports and that of high-skill sports such as basketball and soccer.
Are these sports really so different in their demands and as such should the training be so different?
In endurance sports it seems almost set in stone that any program must start with building a base, aimed at spending all available training time logging slow easy miles to build aerobic fitness. This practice has even created a paranoia and fear of speed sessions and interval work.
Many endurance athletes now only start working on their speed shortly before their main race, typically eight weeks out. That is a very short speed phase and it is during this time that injuries typically occur.
Speed training itself is not at fault here – the fact that these athletes have not developed the skills needed to go fast is the cause of such injuries.
Athletes focusing on improving their speed only within the final two months before a goal race are forcing a new skill on the body at a time when they’re tired and under pressure – a recipe for poor development and disaster.
Speed is the essential skill for performance as a triathlete – we need to develop this at the start of our program. If we take basketball as an example: they don’t start training programs with developing fitness to ensure they can last throughout game time.
Instead, they start by building the skills for success: athletes learn how to shoot, how to move on court and how to pass at speed. Essentially it’s not worth being ultra fit so you can run around the court for for two hours like a headless chicken if you can’t pass, shoot, block and score with a high percentage of accuracy and success.
The same goes for triathlon. We can train to be ultra fit so we have no problem with the race distance. But without developing our skills to go fast through consistent speed work our performance capacity is going to be limited.
When I mention speed work it scares most athletes as they picture pushing their body to its limits. This is simply not the case and it is not the way to teach your body new skills. Let’s first define what skills are and how we learn them, then we will look at pure speed work as a whole other area of training that I like to call hyper-setting.
WHAT IS A SKILL
A skill is simply another word for motor pattern. This is a pattern of muscle movements controlled by the brain to bring about a specific movement. For example, if we want to run at 4-minutes per kilometre pace we need to train at this speed to develop this motor pattern. Creating a skill requires practicing something repeatedly for short durations (up to 60 seconds) so it is committed to our short-term memory. Then over time it will be transferred to long-term memory (up to 5 months) – in other words it will become automatic, a skill we don’t need to think about.
Top performers in all sports perform with ease. It appears as if they are not thinking but are simply doing. They are in the zone, performing with effortless skill. This is possible as the skills they display are so deeply ingrained that they can switch off the thinking process and just achieve. We can all accomplish this with a well-designed training program.
PROCESS OF SKILL DEVELOPMENT
Developing a skill is a lengthy process. It’s not something we can perfect overnight. The longer we spend developing the stronger and more efficient that skill set becomes. We can train for speed in an eight-week period, as many studies have shown. But, as I mentioned above, it comes with a very high risk of injury and the skill is not deeply set into our long-term memory. In other words we have speed but we don’t have efficiency at speed.
The true factor in endurance performance is this efficiency. When we can perform at speed and use as little energy as possible to do so then we can approach our own performance potential.
Developing your speed.
If we want to run a fast 10km off the bike we want to train to develop the skill of running fast off the bike. If our goals is, say, running a 40-minute 10km in an Olympic distance event it means that we want to train our body to perform at 4min/ km pace.
So we need to consider how we commit something to short-term memory: we must perform the movements repeatedly in short intervals and we must allow the brain time to reset and recover before repeating again.
Intervals of 200m are great for this. We can set a session of 8km broken down into, say, 40x200m with 30-second rest intervals. The 200s are performed at race pace, so 48 seconds. This is within the 60-second limit for short-term memory development.
TOTAL RUN = 51 minutes, not including warm-up and cool-down. If we asked the athlete to wear a heart rate monitor then we would expect to see a similar heart rate in this session as the athlete would show in a straight 51-minute easy to moderate run.
RESULT = we worked on developing race-specific skills, we achieved aerobic conditioning similar to a 50-minute easy run and the recovery due to the constant resetting of neural patterns and catabolic processes will be faster than it would be for an easy run of similar time. The Number One point missed by most endurance coaches is that in developing skills we are still developing aerobic fitness.
If you run 40x200m at 10km pace you may consider it a speed session but you are not going to produce the fatigue and soreness like a straight 8km run at 10km pace. This is not a demanding session but it is a skill development session. Repeat this often enough and you will become very efficient at running 4min/km pace and come race day it will be automatic. By following this procedure we make much more efficient use of our time.
There is another form of speed work that is performed at above-race-pace and compliments this skill development that I like to call skill hyper-setting.
HYPER-SETTING (hyper-learning)
This phenomenon is used frequently in the business world by typists looking to increase accuracy. Say a typist wants to touch type at 100 words a minute with 100% accuracy. To do so, they will practice typing at 120 words per minute. This will bring about more errors but when they then lower their typing back to 100 words per minute they will now feel like 100 words per minute is slow. That means they have a perception of having more time and as a result accuracy increases because they no longer feel rushed and out of control.
In the context of sport we can hyper-set all skills (and – another very important factor – we can hyper-set for pain too but that is the context of a whole separate article and exploration of Dr. Tim Noakes’ work on central governor theory).
The process of hyper-setting allows us to more easily achieve a zone-like performance or simply enhances our feeling of control. By performing at above-race-pace we teach our bodies to perform faster than they need to, then when we come to perform at race pace we are given the perception of extra time/ease. Running at race pace now feels much more controlled, we do not feel so rushed and stressed, thought processes are more relaxed and as a result that feeling of being in the zone is enhanced.
SUMMARY
By focusing on skill development – not base – we streamline our training and we still get the aerobic benefits anyway. The only difference is come race day we have the skills necessary to perform deeply set into our long-term memory. We can just switch off and perform and if we have added some hyper-setting into our plan we increase the chances of achieving the zone-like performance of top pro athletes!
Enjoy your training!
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Alun Woodward, ironguides Online Coach
Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months
Event based training plans:
Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
By Alun Woodward – online coach ironguides.net
Finally race season has arrived and all your hard training over the winter months is going to be put to the test, we have all heard the saying winter miles equals summer smiles. While this saying does hold true to an extent in order to make all your effort over the winter come to fruition a little bit of focus on planning now will go a long way towards making your races successful.
So many times an athlete can do everything right in training and yet their race season can be summed up as consistent bad luck – how many times have you heard a fellow competitor complaining of bad luck? The bad luck always tends to be in the form or nutritional problems, mechanical problems, pacing problems and the list can go on. While there are of course going to be cases of bad luck most times its more an issue of bad planning and preparation for the race.
Racing triathlon is a lot more than simply swim bike and run, we need to make sure the fine details are looked after in order to enjoy our fitness to the max.
Equipment is one of the biggest issues i see time and time again and the problems present in many forms.
Heading to those early season races we never truly know what the weather is going to do on race day, do not trust the forecast as they can be wrong! Pack for all outcomes, don’t be that athlete running around the expo searching for cold weather gear as you have just packed for a warm race. Bad weather is not bad luck, not being dressed for the weather is your own fault.
Aside from weather issues punctures are the biggest mechanical issue that destroy peoples races, yes a puncture is bad luck to an extent but we can go a long way to reducing the issue, making sure you look at course and environment and weather leading up to the race can help you make sensible tire choices to reduce your risk of punctures. If your racing late spring early summer and the local area has just seen a lot of stormy wet weather then you can bet a lot of debris has been washed onto the roads – even if the roads are great quality this debris increases risk of puncture and suggests you should use a more puncture resistant tire over slick pure racing tires.
Other issues on the tire front could be the bike course passing farm land that is heavily in use at that time of year, hedgerows that have recently been cut placing thorns onto the roads.
When we put the time commitment into training and financial commitment into racing big events with potential qualification at stake then thinking about your tire choice for the race is very important. Andy Potts finished 4th at the Kona World Championships in 2015 riding ultra protective tires over the without question much faster slick racing tires he could have chosen. There has been a lot of talk over the fact this choice could have cost him the win but a puncture on faster tires is a lot more likely and that could have cost him a lot more time or even a DNF.
While there are many more mechanical examples something coming loose is the other major complaint – and once again this is not really bad luck more a case of the athlete did not check the bike over before putting into into transition. Travel and the vibrations involved will loosen screws, also the change in temperature and air pressure will have an effect on the tightness of screws so make sure you check everything over before placing your bike into transition – just because you have had no issue for months does not mean you will not have on race day, the extra tension and strain on the bike during a race will cause any loose screw to lead to a major problem.
For those using electric gears – travel with your charging cables and make sure to charge the battery before your race – amazing how many times recently i have read that peoples gears suddenly ran out of power on race day!
One you have done your best to ensure mechanical issues are minimised to the maximum effect you need to look at other areas that could effect your race. The next big issue is nutrition, how you fuel your body is very important and even without too much thought when your home you will have the bases covered with what your eating and when but when your suddenly put into a new environment away from home the same food choices are not always available. Packing your favourite or regular snacks and scouting out race location for restaurants that serve the food you like to eat pore race goes a long way to solving any potential issues. Don’t just rock up to your race location and expect top find what you want, not only then is finding a restaurant that serves what you want an issue also you have to remember there are going to be a lot of other athletes in town looking to eat the same thing so restaurants may well be booked or out of your typical athlete dishes by the time you get served!
Race nutrition is also important, if you have a favourite energy drink, gel, bar, salt tablet make sure you have plenty of these to travel with to the race, amazing again how often the jar is suddenly empty when you go to your first race and you only notice with one day to go – while your favourite tri shops will do their best to get your product delivered in time its better to have taken care of this a little while out from the race not 1-2 days before you travel. NEVER count on the race expo having that your looking for – always take your own, a different product on race day can make all the difference between a good race and a terrible race – also if your travelling to a foreign country to race you need to be aware that the same product can be made with different ingredients – a mars bar in the UK is very different to a Mars bar in the USA!
While mechanical and nutritional issues are the main things a lot of athletes overlook there are many more things we can think about in order to maximise race results. Sleep quality before the event is important, sleeping in a foreign environment is unsettling for the brain, most people do not sleep well the first night in a hotel, maybe travelling one or 2 days extra before the race will ensure your sleeping better and therefore fresher and more prepared to race come the big day. Making sure you have race kit and shoes ready weeks before the race too – don’t remember you need to print kit the week of the race as its unlikely you will be able to get this done at such short notice.
As we head into the race season spend a little time making sure you have everything ready to race, put effort into your planning to make sure your race day goes as smoothly as possible – booking flights and a hotel is not the start and end of your planning!
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 (USD95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
It’s said that genius speaks its own language but seldom understands it. If you’ve had the opportunity to spend a little time with geniuses in different fields, you’ve probably noticed something else – they share the ability to master complexity to produce simplicity.
Triathlon remains a pretty small field but we can lay claim to a few technological innovations and feats of endurances that can be called inspired genius. But when it comes to the ability to develop winning athletes, the field narrows to the point that only one man merits the label of genius – Brett Sutton.
I had the good fortune to spend a good deal of the last eight years in almost daily contact with Brett. His achievements leave little doubt that he has a unique ability to generate consistent top-level results in a very complicated sport, working with the finicky personalities of professional endurance athletes no less. A quick summary of his coaching pedigree lists eight ITU world champions, over a hundred ITU World Cup wins, wins at every major triathlon held including the Hawaii Ironman, and more podium finishes than the pages of this article could list. Today a second wave of coaches around the world emulates Brett’s methods in the hunt to develop the next generation of champions in the pro ranks.
My discussions with Brett totally transformed my views on human performance, focused perseverance and human psychology. Although my days as a professional triathlete were over by the time he and I started our dialogue, my understanding of endurance and triathlon training was only beginning. Elsewhere our sport was gravitating to the increasingly generic training protocols that I used to rely on, including zone training, power targets and lactate testing, but Brett’s methods were entirely unorthodox and challenged convention at every step. The more I learned, the more I let go of my quantitative ideas and outdated notions on training and embraced the common sense of his approach.
Imagine – little to no periodization throughout the year, but instead a steady diet of skills acquisition and working on one’s weaknesses. No “key” races and generic tapering formula, but rather a flexible approach that takes into account recent training context. Weekly recovery derived from the structure of carefully designed programs that had athletes training every day, often using a strongly repetitive program. No reference to triathlon’s component sports to train, but rather triathlon-specific techniques to develop skills in each component more relevant to triathlon.
Although professional and Age Group triathlon are two very different sports, there are principles and perspective on training that you can learn and apply to your own training to make it more effective, save time, enhance recovery, all in a more enjoyable, qualitative way. No need to sift through the tea leaves of daily heart rate or power downloads, no need to spend money on expensive gadgets, and no need to plan daily training months in advance.
In this series of articles, we’ll take a look at how we’ve applied some of the principles of professional triathlon training to create a counter-intuitive approach to training we call The Method. By the end of this series, hopefully you’ll come to understand triathlon training from an entirely different, simplified and holistic perspective.
SwimBikeRun
To understand triathlon you need to look at our sport not as the sum of its parts, but as swimbikerun – a single event taking place in changing environments, requiring different skills applied at similar levels of exertion. Training in each component needs to take place in a broader context than single sport training, so when you see someone referring to what swimmers, cyclists or runners do to prepare for a race – tune out! Triathlon takes place under completely different scenarios.
We’ll take a look at specific training for each of triathlon’s components, but here’s a few examples of what I mean. In a triathlon, you’ll rarely ever find calm, flat water. Instead you’re faced with flailing arms, chop and murky water. If you’re a relatively unskilled swimmer, long distance-per-stroke glide phases open you up to “stroke interruption” every time you pause, leading to time-consuming re-acceleration at every stroke. It’s much better to adopt a short, choppy but powerful stroke that minimizes glide and maintains forward momentum with a more rapid arm turnover.
Likewise, contrary to conventional wisdom for cyclists, triathletes benefit from a lower cadence on the bike, not just to preserve fast twitch fibers for the run, but also to make maximum use of training time to generate strength on the relatively limited number of miles we ride. And on the run, it pays to train at a high stride rate (greater than 90 steps per leg per minute) because taking more, smaller steps is a more efficient way to run faster on tired, depleted leg muscles. We’ll take a detailed look at how to we structure training in each component in later articles in the series.
Five Systems
From a general perspective, fitness can be divided into five categories: Aerobic fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, and body composition. At ironguides, instead of viewing your training as “Zones”, which take into account only your level of aerobic fitness, we refine the above aspects of fitness further to come up with a more triathlon-specific view on training needs.
We call these categories the Five Systems and use them to classify all our training so that we can achieve a more complete training structure that stimulates multiple components of fitness consistently, shifting emphasis to one or the other depending on the time of year, race calendar, individual needs, life circumstance, and so on. Looking at training this way helps you understand how training can be structured to enhance recovery while continuing to train hard everyday.
The Five Systems we use are Strength, Speed, Neuromuscular (or Skill), Tolerance and Endurance. All of these can be combined to various degrees, but by viewing training with these categories in mind and understanding how they relate to one another, you can create a training structure that helps you become “the complete athlete” without ever having to refer to a training zone or power output. With a properly structured plan you can focus your training more specifically and gain aerobic fitness anyway!
You’re so hormonal!
An obscure study from 1995 entitled Blood hormones as markers of training stress and overtraining. (Urhausen A, Gabriel H, Kindermann W. Sports Med. 1995 Oct;20(4):251-76) showed that an athlete’s testosterone/cortisol ratio indicates the physiological strain of his or her training load. To understand why this matters and how you can use this information to create an optimal training structure without falling into the trap of zone training, you need to have a basic understanding of human endocrinology.
Our hormones govern how our body responds to stimuli, including training stimuli. While all training is by and large a “catabolic” process (it breaks your body down through the action of cortisol), if you incorporate short, intense training such as strength work or very fast, very short intervals (which demand high muscle recruitment), you can promote a higher release of testosterone and human growth hormone and support a more “anabolic” training response (a building up of the body). By incorporating Strength and Speed training in your weekly routine at the right times, you can mitigate the effects of more catabolic Endurance and Tolerance sessions, while still using your training time in a sport-specific way.
By categorizing training into Five Systems and understanding how training in those systems affects your endocrine system, you can structure your training to maximize training effort on a daily basis while still permitting day-to-day recovery. While one System rests, another works! In this very basic way, you can design a training program in which you can always train hard.
For example, we like to assign a set of Power Intervals on the bike (such as 10 x 60sec of very high resistance at very low cadence on a spin bike, with equal rest) the day after an athlete has completed an Endurance effort. The anabolic tendency of the interval set mitigates the catabolic nature of the Endurance effort.
Upgrade your skills!
Much of the credit for the incredible performances by single sport athletes can be attributed to the high volume of work they do performing a single or limited range of motions over and over again, which develops extreme efficiencies of movement. As triathletes we don’t have this luxury, so you need to incorporate into your training some form of skill work to really make each session count. Through the use of the right tools or terrain you can do this without impacting the quality of your training and recovery.
For example, instead of heading out the door for 40 minutes in “Zone 1-2”, take a broader view on your run training and incorporate some leg speed training using a treadmill or light downhill gradients. You’ll teach your muscles to fire more rapidly without compromising the workout because you’ll be running faster than on flat ground at the same aerobic intensity. Using the right tools and approach, you can incorporate skills training into almost any session. Swim paddles and pull buoy permit better body position in the water and help develop strength, while a spin bike can help develop your cycling strength.
Keep in mind that if you’re an older athlete, you’ll struggle to acquire new motor skills but that doesn’t mean give up! Instead, you need to train more frequently in the more technical sports (such as swimming) to maintain current skills.
Common sense recovery
Age Group athletes face particular demands that mean life often interferes with our best-laid plans. Instead of taking days off when the schedule says, why not take them when life demands it due to work, family or other commitments or unforeseen events? Training this way ensures consistency and frees up time when it’s most needed – knowing you have trained your best in recent sessions means you’re less likely to worry about missing the odd session due to other obligations.
Cyclical periodization and repetition
The basis of traditional training periodization was founded decades ago when scientific knowledge was far from complete and athletes’ workloads and demands were much lower than today. More recently, progress in sport science has reinforced the contradictions between traditional periodization and the successful experiences of prominent coaches and athletes using a more cyclical approach. The Method stresses repetition and a cyclic approach to training to concurrently develop motor skills, fitness and mental strength.
A cyclic training approach enables you to continually train all aspects of fitness while emphasizing specific components according to your needs, race calendar and other factors. As the race season draws near, you can begin to emphasize more race-specific factors. For example, our Olympic distance and Ironman athletes train in very similar ways for much of the year, but as Ironman approaches our long course athletes pick up the volume. Rather than having fatigued themselves with high mileage and unspecific training all winter long, they arrive at the final race preparation phase with a strong foundation and arsenal of skills.
And, rather than planning training sessions months in advance, we use a more repetitive training plan based on a weekly routine that you repeat. Not only does this remove the guesswork from setting your weekly routine, it also means you use your training sessions as performance benchmarks. By performing the same training session for several weeks, you can also better develop your intuitive feedback skills and learn to “ride out the rough patches” in your training, coming to better understand the effects of recent changes elsewhere, such as in your sleep, diet or stress patterns. Over time you also learn to better gauge and interpret fatigue levels so that you can better predict when you need time off, and when it’s worthwhile continuing a session.
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Combined with a few simple intensity guidelines no more complicated than “easy”, “moderate”, “hard” and “all out”, you can reach new levels of triathlon performance by training more consistently, with less reliance on gadgets to guide your training, while freeing up time and putting the joy back in training.
Heresy!
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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)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
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)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
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 hr half ironman, 4’30 marathon, 2’30 Olympic Distance Triathlon- deep down, everyone has THAT time that they would love to beat.
“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 practiced 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 that you were able to push hard, perform well and really enjoyed yourself. You may have experienced this for a few seconds or a few repetitions or if you have been practicing, for the whole training session. Yes- Focus can and definitely should be practiced whenever we are out there.
Practice 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:
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Run
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Strong
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Think
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Power
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Go
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Smooth
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Feel
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Speed
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Stride
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Quick
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Pull
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Brave
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Pedal
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Light
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Be
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Steady
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Be
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Fierce
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Hold
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Courage
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Enjoy your training.
Shem Leong
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Train with ironguides!
Download our free e-Book “Triathlon Secrets” – Training methods of olympic medalist, ironman and world champions revealed
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months
Event based training plans:
Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
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.
By Alun Woodward, Online Triathlon Coach, ironguides.net
The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. ironguides coach Alun “Woody” Woodward explains why and how strength training can be an extremely effective tool for endurance athletes.
The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. Over the past few years strength training has really started to make a big comeback; almost every magazine dedicated to endurance sports will have a section on strength training. Articles in this section always relay the same message: functional exercises are the only type of strength work that will benefit endurance athletes.
Functional exercises are essentially movements that follow the movement patterns used in sport—they don’t work muscles in isolation. These typical articles predominantly look at exercises that involve the legs such as dead lifts, squats, split squats, one legged squats, and so on.
While these exercises are great, they are also extremely demanding and require a lot of recovery, which can significantly impact our sport-specific work.
This approach, I believe, is looking at strength training in the wrong way. Yes, we need strong legs to perform our sport but we must consider what we, as endurance athletes, need exactly from strength training in order to improve our performance.
The key things I am looking for when designing a strength program are:
These are the 3 main benefits of a strength program; I will go through each one in this article and show how it will bolster your training.
1 – STRESSING THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
When we perform strength training with heavy weights that force us to use a large amount of muscle mass and we also add an element of balance to activate our core, then we stress our central nervous system.
The load we have placed on the body is above normal, safe levels and the body does not like this. As a result, it tries to get stronger, which it does by releasing growth hormone and targeting strength in ALL the muscles activated.
This has numerous benefits for an endurance athlete, including that core strength is increased which I will go into more below.
The key, however, is the hormone release; our bodies are ruled by hormones. The more growth hormone we have circulating in our body, the more we can maintain or build muscle mass and burn fat. Reducing body fat is a great way to improve endurance performance.
Most athletes, though, will straight away fear lifting heavy weights, as we fear building muscle, and the associated weight gain. In reality, endurance athletes like us are never in such an anabolic (i.e. build-up) state that we’d be able to do this.
As endurance athletes, we use the increase in anabolic hormone production to counteract the negative catabolic (breakdown) effect of hard endurance training and to keep our bodies healthy and balanced.
Conventional wisdom tells us that endurance training will make us healthy and lean but the reality is that this alone is not the key. Watch any big-city marathon or major ironman event to see a fair proportion of athletes competing with excess body fat, despite extreme and hard endurance training.
The reason that larger endurance athletes remain heavy is almost always that the body is not balanced; adding some heavy conditioning training to their program would help them get leaner and improve body composition, and so performance.
Exercises
While leg exercises may be the most effective for stimulating hormone response, they are also very damaging and can affect our endurance training consistency, as I mentioned above. I prefer exercises that focus on the upper body and core. My favourite exercises are:
Next time you’re feeling drained and are really suffering in training, go to the gym to perform a routine such as the above—you will be amazed at how energized you feel the next day.
2 – IMPROVING CORE STRENGTH
Core strength has been a major topic for a while now and we have seen many fitness inventions come to the market claiming to increase core strength. Many people believe that core strength is about doing 100s of sit ups, crunches and balancing on gym balls—while, in fact, the opposite is true.
True core strength is the ability of the core muscles to hold your body in a strong stance protecting your spine and allowing your major muscles to work more effectively in performing their task. If we have a strong core, we will move very efficiently and so save energy for any given activity—this is the key to performance in endurance events.
If we watch videos of the greats in our sport, such as Craig Alexander, we notice that their movement looks so easy and relaxed despite the speed and effort they are putting out. This is all due to a strong core and, essentially, movement efficiency.
As endurance athletes we look at the likes of Alexander, Chrissie Wellington, and the great runner Haile Gebrselassie, and we believe that their huge training volume is the key to their success. We may focus on Gebrselassie running 200km a week but we don’t recognize the other work he is doing—the time he spends in the gym to ensure he can maintain his great technique when tired.
Wellington has commented many times on the strength and core conditioning work she does in the gym with Dave Scott and how important it has been to her continued development.
So what exercises are core strength exercises? Well, they are the same exercises I outlined above. The military press is one of my absolute favourite exercises because you need your full abdominal muscles and glutes to be tight and activated to perform it. You will notice after a few reps that it’s not really the shoulders that are giving out, it’s your core that starts shaking first!
Push ups are a great core exercise, again as you need your full abdominals activated. Most athletes, on completing push ups after a layoff, will notice stomach pain the next day, rather than chest and shoulder soreness.
Pull ups also are an amazing core exercise. It has been said that 90% of the population, and also many top athletes, are unable to do these. That’s because you need good body position to be able to get into position for the correct muscles to work to lift up the body and the only way to get into this position is by having an extremely strong core.
I do not believe in separate core routines as I think they should be part of the strength program. As endurance athletes we do not have the time to be in the gym four or five times a week so we should get everything we need with two visits per week.
I suggest going through the above routine once a week, and once a week I like to throw in kettlebell work with some body weight exercises. I like a set which I call the 50’s challenge
3- RECRUITING MUSCLE FIBRES
This is a key area where we can improve endurance performance. When we perform endurance exercise we tend to use a very, very small proportion of our muscle fibres. Typically we use as little as 20% of our quads, for example, when riding and we always use these same fibres every session. As a result, our other muscle fibres are not used to working and when our working fibres get fatigued, the body has nowhere to go and so we slow down.
One area of training that is coming to the fore now is working to improve muscle recruitment. Renato Canova, coach to top Kenyan runners, uses 100-metre max speed hill sprints at the end of easy runs in order to do this, In our ironguides programs we use ALL OUT sprints in the pool and on the bike regularly to do the same, i.e. using a larger proportion of our muscle fibres. By regularly training these muscles, the body has somewhere to go when our normal endurance-trained fibres start to fail.
While sport-specific work is good, I believe we can get an amazing training effect for these fibres in the gym by using isolated muscle machines! While most strength coaches try to avoid these machines at all costs, I think they do have their place in our training programs.
An example is the leg extension machine that isolates the quadriceps. This machine will have an endurance athlete in a lot of pain very quickly as the isolated movement and weight means all muscle fibres are activated straight away and after 8-10 repeats, your legs will be screaming! To get the most out of these exercises, it is important to make the weight heavy so that you can perform around 10-12 repeats before failure. Do not lift so much weight that you fail after 3-5 reps as this will place too much stress on your knee joint. The only machines I use for this work are the leg curl and leg extension.
Summary
Strength training can be an extremely effective tool in your endurance training. Just remember to lift heavy and be specific in what you’re looking to achieve, whether it be specific recovery work, core strength or muscle recruitment training.
Enjoy your training!
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Alun Woodward, ironguides Online Coach
Train with ironguides!
Personalized Online Coaching: Starting at USD190/month
Monthly Training plans (for all levels, or focused on one discipline): Only USD39/months
Event based training plans:
Sprint Distance (USD45 for 8-week plan)
Olympic Distance (USD65 for 12 week plan)
Half Ironman (R$95 for 16-week plan)
Ironman (USD145 for 20-week plan)
X-Terra (USD65 for 12-week plan)
Running Plans (10k, 21k and 42k – starting at USD40)
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