- Morning Trainiacs.
As requested on a recent edition of News Day
please make a video on how to be a power lifter,
body builder and get stronger, build muscle
while training for an Iron Man?
Dash you don't know how timely that is.
We're doing it.
Roll the intro.
(upbeat electronic music)
So Trainiacs, recently a video popped up
on my home screen that said Iron Man prep begins
by a guy named Nick Bare.
Nick Bare is the founder of BPN supplements
or BPN performance nutrition.
Basically he is like who we are asking to find out about.
He's a body builder.
He's a Cross Fitter.
He's a power lifter.
He's a big dude that is now trying to do an Iron Man.
He's preparing for an Iron Man.
And I've followed Nick for a little while
and when I saw this video I was like damn buddy, right on.
So I started looking into it after watching that video
and then I found out that Nick actually follows me.
So I reached out to him and I said hey Nick
if there's anything that I can help with
let's get you trained up, let me know
and he was into it because his history
is as a power lifter.
He's a big guy, most of his heaviest times
being like as shredded and focusing on the strength
as he possibly could be.
He was like 215, 220 pounds of muscle, that's a big dude.
(upbeat electronic music)
So Nick and I just chatted and we're gonna train him up.
We're going to bring him into Team Trainiac.
He's going to train on Team Trainiac.
I'm gonna work with him a little bit
because a lot of my experience with Trainiacs
and people on Team Trainiac is like people
coming from diverse walks of life
maybe let themselves get a little bit out of shape,
maybe had a little bit of a background in another sport,
but not elite athletes it's like average people.
I've never worked with somebody
who is essentially an elite athlete,
but an elite big athlete.
So this is gonna be a really big learning experience
for me working with him that I'm gonna be able
to take all of you through the process
of what are the things that are unique
to power lifters, body builders, big muscular athletes
who want to still lift while training
for a half Iron Man or an Iron Man.
(upbeat hip hop music)
So as Nick and I were talking and I thought about it after
there were basically three things that weight lifters,
body builders need to consider
when they get in to triathlon
and these are what are going to be unique
to those types of people.
The first one is to understand what your goals are.
- Priority needs to be like body building,
power lifting and when I went to the military
it's like okay my priority shifted a little bit
to running, metabolic conditioning
and training for races
and when I transferred that's when I was like
all right I'm kind of bored of
just going to the gym and lifting weights.
So first it was like marathons
and then it was like these long endurance ruck marches
and an Iron Man was always that one thing I was like
man that's on my bucket list
and I had never done a triathlon before you know,
but I was like if I'm gonna do it I'm gonna go big.
- It's Iron Man Florida, right?
- Well as of right now it is Florida,
but based off of like me being ready,
I didn't sign up for it yet so I can always
push it back a little bit, but I want to be fully prepared
going into it.
- Okay.
- So the one I selected was November
it's Pensacola, Florida, but if I'm not prepped for it
I'm all right with pushing it back a little bit.
I want to enjoy it and enjoy the process
of leading up to and doing it, not just like
hey I'm gonna train for this one thing,
knock it off so I say I did it,
struggle through it and never do it again.
- So understanding your goals like Nick does here
is really important to do.
If you're looking to build muscle
while training for an Iron Man
it's gonna be really tough.
If you're looking to finish an Iron Man
while still working out really really hard
and focusing on strength that's totally doable,
but your performance then in the Iron Man
isn't going to be as great.
If you're looking at performing in the Iron Man
while essentially just staying strong,
staying healthy we can do that
it's all just a balance of what do you uniquely
want to do and how do you want to mix and match
lifting with Iron Man training.
You can do both it's just that you have to understand
you know how much focus you're gonna have on each
and that relates to what your
outcome is going to be in the race.
Next thing you need to think about is
when you are going to lift.
- So my plan going into this was endurance is the priority.
So if I lose muscle, if I lose size,
if I lose strength down the process that's okay with me.
- Okay, it's gonna happen.
- Yeah, so I'd like to still lift weights
three days a week, three or four days a week
in the evening and then endurance like six days a week.
- Okay, what could be a big week for you
with everything together, three strength days
or three strength workouts and then six endurance workouts?
How many hours could you earmark?
- I could do 15 to 20.
- Really?
Okay, cool.
We can get you sorted in that easy.
- I love training.
No matter what the training is like I enjoy it.
- So some of the things to keep in mind
is that lift on hard days.
You don't want to have say certain days
that are your Iron Man days and then certain days
that are your lifting days and not
have any rest days whatsoever.
Let the hard days be really hard
and let the easy days be really easy.
In Nick's case we're gonna load up his hard days
with the intense days, so they are going to be brutal days.
He's going to be getting off the bike with wobbly legs
and then have to do a leg day and then after that day
he's going to have to do his endurance run
so that we're training his legs to run on tired legs.
What we're not doing is smattering all of the things
across an entire week never giving him a proper rest.
- Monday run, Tuesday swim, Wednesday bike,
Thursday run, Friday swim, Saturday bike.
- And then Sunday rest?
- Sunday rest, yep.
- What were the days that you were gonna lift?
- I could do the two swim days, one of the bike days,
maybe even two of the bike days actually.
Cause I prefer the run days just be run
cause it is slightly more.
- So you can continue lifting you just need
to figure out when you're going to work it into training
so that they support each other,
they're not in competition with each other.
You're not going to dig yourself a hole,
you're also going to allow yourself
to have good strength workouts
and good Iron Man workouts and actually use them both
in conjunction with each other
to have like the whole being greater
than the sum of the parts.
Next thing that you need to understand
when you're getting into it is adjusting your lifting.
Only thing that I might change a little bit for you
and I could leave this up to you is in the lifting
on any one of the days, doesn't matter
and it's not really changing,
but just doing some lateral stuff.
- Yeah.
- Like if you're doing squats,
instead of doing walking squat lunges
do like a side lunge.
Something like that cause the big thing
that is going to zap a lot of your energy
in a marathon is if every time you land
you're going like this and like energy
is going that way and that way.
So if you can stabilize that side to side
that's gonna be big, big difference for you.
- Okay, that's good to know.
- Yeah, you got a lot of weight coming down
so a lot of straight linear stuff
you're gonna do gobs of that with biking and running
and we need to make sure that
you're lifting offsets that atrophying going straight.
- Okay.
- So, I'm gonna leave that up to you
cause I've seen your stuff, you know what you're doing.
So that final thing that you need to think about
when you get into Iron Man training
while you're lifting is adjusting that lifting.
So, a lot of the things that we do
in triathlon are linear.
We run dead straight.
We bike dead straight.
We try to swim dead straight.
A lot of the things that we do lifting
are straight and linear, but what we need to do
is offset some of that linear forward motion
with strengthening our sides and the big things
that we need to focus on keeping strong
when we get into Iron Man training are glute mead
and our lower side backs.
So our side bum, our lower side back
so that we don't squinch like this
with every single step that we take
and that's gonna be particularly critical for somebody,
a big guy like Nick who's coming down really hard
with every single foot strike.
It needs to be tremendously strong.
So the two things that we want to adjust
is having a little bit of lateral movements
in the strength workouts that he does
instead of doing say linear walking lunges
maybe do lunges that are to the side
and then we also want to make sure
because he's a big guy and you might spend
a lot of time on the ground with each foot strike
that we speed up that foot strike
with a little bit of plyometrics
and that is going to help him stay nice and fast,
nice and strong and stay in a forward motion
without energy leaking out the sides
or the energy leaking into the ground.
Other than that everything largely stays the same,
a triathlete is still a triathlete,
the progress of ramping up the training it stays the same.
The polarized training that I like to do on Team Trainiac
with a lot of low intensity training
and then a lot of high intensity training
and slowly building that up to being ready for race day
with some race pace training that stays the same.
Nutrition largely stays the same.
Requirements to build up your V02 max that's the same.
Figuring out race pace, swim comfort,
all of these things are tasks
that every single triathlete needs to accomplish,
but the biggest thing that Nick is going
to have to work on is incorporating
that strength training with the triathlon training.
He's gonna work on that.
I'm gonna work on that with him
and you all get to follow along.
So that's going to be super interesting working with him.
I will keep you all updated on this
as we chat more with Nick and as his training
gets closer and closer to the Iron Man
that he's going to do later this year or early next year,
but for know make sure you subscribe
like go check him out at this video over here
and make sure you're subscribed to this video
because we'll keep you posted
and he'll keep you posted and we will answer
one of the most commonly asked questions.
How do big dudes become Iron Men?
We're gonna find out.
Later Trainiacs.
Also, Nick welcome to the pain train.
I'm the conductor here.
Choo-Choo.