(light music)
- Welcome back to the triathlon training explained show,
powered by Training Peaks.
And today, I'm gonna be explaining exactly what
a brick session is, how you do one
and how it can benefit your training and racing.
(light music)
If you've ever done a triathlon before,
you'll likely have experienced
that dreaded jelly legs feeling.
Sadly, you never completely get rid of that feeling,
it's kind of part and parcel of triathlon.
But you can help to reduce that feeling
and to get a little bit more used to it.
Which is where brick sessions come in.
Now you might be wondering why it's called brick sessions
and there are actually a number
of stories behind the origin of that name.
Like your legs feel like bricks as you run off the bike.
Or it feels like you've run into a brick wall.
Or even that the fact that
you're piecing disciplines together,
like you would with bricks.
But the most plausible I've heard is that a chap called
Doctor Matt Brick coined this term brick,
for these back-to-back sessions
where he's doing swim to bike,
bike to run and even run to bike.
Well whatever the origin, they've become extremely popular.
You'd actually be hard-pushed to find a triathlete
that doesn't do them nowadays.
And the idea is that you do one discipline
to the next in quick succession.
And therefore sort of testing the body
in the same way that you will on race day.
Because after all, there's no point in being
a super swimmer, an uber biker and a great runner,
if you can't put it all together
on race day or your triathlon.
The reason that it does feel so hard
is because of a thing called blood shunting.
So when we're swimming, we're predominantly using our arms,
so all our blood is pumping to our arms,
to transport that oxygen and energy there.
But then we come out of the swim and we start running
to our bike and we start cycling,
suddenly we try to use different muscle groups
and all our blood needs to be shunted
to different areas of our body.
And that is why it feels so hard.
If you haven't trained that to do it quickly
and efficiently, it feels pretty awful.
Now the other reason it can feel so hard,
is due to the different demands we're placing
on our muscles throughout a triathlon.
If we take our legs for example,
we're expecting them to propel us forward,
to support us and even to take quite a lot
of impact during the run.
That takes quite a lot of getting used to,
as well as the different body positions
throughout a triathlon.
But most importantly, that can be trained
through the brick sessions.
And that can be any order of things,
it can be swim to bike, bike to run
and even run to bike for the duathletes out there perhaps.
Basically, it's prepping us for race day
as best as possible.
So let's get stuck in, let's run you through how to do one.
(gentle music)
So today I'm gonna be doing a bike to run brick session.
Now this is probably the most popular type of brick session,
partly because it's probably
the easiest one in terms of setup.
Unless of course you can jump straight
on your bike out of a swimming pool
or out of an open water venue.
In terms of the setup, you have a couple of options here.
Some opt to do this all or part indoors,
using a turbo trainer, a static gym bike
and then jumping off onto a treadmill.
Whilst others opt to do it outdoors.
The reason that some people like
to do it indoors might be due to the weather,
might be due to available daylight hours,
or also just in terms of getting
the quality out of the session without any disruptions.
And actually some people like to do hard sessions
and work hard right up to the point
that they jump off the bike and on to the run.
So you can do that quite easily indoors.
And also if you are training for racing in a hotter climate,
you can obviously turn the heat up indoors
and prepare for that.
Either way, they both work really well.
And today, I'm gonna be doing mine indoors,
using my turbo trainer and treadmill.
And I've already got my running shoes set out ready
to slip on after the bike.
This doesn't necessarily need to be
a flat out race day transition,
but it's always good to practise.
Too long and it sort of negates
the point of doing the brick session.
(gentle music)
So in terms of kit, you'll probably have noticed,
I've changed out of my cycling jersey.
And that's because running in a cycling jersey
can feel a little bit uncomfortable.
That's not to say that you can't,
but what I tend to do is wear my bib shorts,
with a running top over the top,
or of course you can use your tri-suit.
If you are going outdoors,
then you might like to use your cycling jersey,
with your spares in your pockets behind.
And then when you come in to change over to the run,
you can just do a quick transition and change your top.
But right now I'm warming up ready for my brick session.
So whether you're doing a swim to bike,
bike to run, or run to bike, there are loads
of different kind of sessions you can do within those.
If this is your first brick session,
or you're new to triathlon,
then it's really important that you simply go through
the motions of a brick session to begin with
and get used to the feeling of it.
So keep it to a steady, aerobic pace,
so something like a 30 minute steady ride,
followed by a 15 minute steady run.
And then as you get more comfortable with that
and you feel a little bit fitter,
you can start to increase that gradually,
by increasing the duration or the distances,
in line with your triathlon.
But if you're slightly more experienced
and past that point already,
then you might want to spice things up a little bit.
And you can start including some race pace
specific intervals within your session.
So first example we have is this one here.
Now this is focused more
on those shorter distance triathlons,
your sprint and Olympic distance triathlons.
In fact, this is the session that I'm doing today
and it's got some relatively short, high-intensity efforts,
with again some relatively short recoveries between them.
But if you're dong some slightly longer events,
like a Half Ironman, or an IronMan,
then we have this session here,
that has some relatively long sustained efforts.
We've got two lots of 20 minutes on the bike
and two lots of 10 minutes on the run.
And that will really help you to dial into your pace
and also use your aerobars for some long periods
of time on the bike.
Okay, but now let's really mix things up a bit now.
Because there's no harm in going from one discipline
to the next, over and over and over.
Sort of creating a monster brick session, like this one.
Now this will be a really high intensity,
it's quite short reps from one to the next.
But the focus is really on going from those transitions
from one discipline to the next,
practising that process and that feeling.
And of course, you can increase the durations,
depending on the distance that you're focusing on.
It really can be tailored any way you like.
(upbeat music)
So today I've been working by power on the bike,
so that I really hit my numbers specific to race day.
You can of course use heart rate in a similar way.
And then there is perceived effort of exertion,
it's a little bit more subjective,
but still a really good measure of your intensity.
If you would like to use these metrics
for your brick session, the suggested values
for each distance during the bike are on screen right now.
And if you like, why not just take a screenshot.
Now on to the run as I am now,
you can continue to use heart rate
and perceived effort of exertion.
But right now, I'm actually working by speed.
So I've set the treadmill to my ideal race pace
that I'm gonna work to and if I was out on the road,
I can also just use my GPS watch to monitor my speed.
So again, those values for the run per distance
are also on the screen right now.
There are a few methods
to working out your threshold run pace,
that you can see on one of our previous videos,
where we talk about tempo and threshold running.
These can be really tough sessions,
in fact a lot of athletes just keep it
to one hard quality session per week.
But of course there's no harm in doing some
of your easy sessions back to back,
in a brick session like format.
It's also a really good way of just getting
your training done and freeing up time during the week.
Well the jury is out as to whether
you should do all of your training like this.
Some say that you still need to focus
on the quality of individual sessions.
But that aside, there's clearly
a very big training benefit to doing brick sessions.
So I definitely recommend doing
at least one brick session per week.
If you like this video, hit that thumbs up button.
And if you'd like to see more videos from GTN,
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And if you'd like to see our tempo running video,
where we explain how to work out your threshold run pace,
just click down here.
And if you'd like to see
our functional threshold power video for the bike
and how to work out your FTP, just click down here.