- Morning Trainiacs.
I am finishing
a four-hour
Zwift ride.
That's not a flex, it's real.
And my brain is officially mush.
So what better time to give advice
on how to create a triathlon training plan?
This is specifically going to be for beginner triathletes
who are weak swimmers, doing a half Ironman distance,
could be 12 weeks, 16 weeks, 20 weeks, 24 weeks,
however much time you've got, we're going to address it,
and we're going to address the three biggest things
that you've gotta get right to be prepared for your race.
Those three things being:
getting your training schedule right,
making sure that the swim is not intimidating for you
and does not ruin the rest of your race,
and that you know what gear to buy
without breaking the bank.
I got five more minutes left.
I'll come back to you after this one, my brain is situated.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so as you start getting ready for new goals in 2020
a lot of people start thinking about doing a longer distance
or there are a lot of people
that bucket list want to start off
working their way towards a half Ironman.
The big things that hold people back are,
can I ever go that long?
Spoiler alert, yes.
Endurance is very easy to build
and I'm gonna teach you how to do it here.
Next, are you gonna be able to do the swim?
Yes, we're gonna be able to get you to the point
that swimming is basically like coordinated floating.
And then next is, it's going to be too expensive.
Well, I'm gonna tell you, just a handful of items
that you need to get you to the race
with just what you need, so that you don't break the bank.
And you can decide later
if you're ready to invest big dough.
So let's get those three things figured out for ya.
So the first thing that you've gotta get right
is the training.
And the first thing that people wonder is,
well, how much am I going to need to train,
is it going to be huge amounts of effort,
time away from family, work, friends, real life,
things like that?
Well, here's a guide that we have on teamtrainiac.com.
One thing to really keep in mind with this guide
is that there are different goals for everyone.
In my case, my goal is to get to Kona someday,
make it to the World Championships.
But in some cases, people's goals might be just to finish.
So what we've created here on teamtrainiac.com
is how many workouts you need to do approximately
based on your specific goals.
So let's look here at for a 70.3,
doing just four to seven workouts a week,
finishing becomes questionable.
If you're really fit coming into it,
you have a sports background,
sure, you can probably finish.
Most people are in the finish feeling strong.
You just don't wanna have a bad experience.
You wanna be confident walking up to the start line
of the race that you've done what you need to do,
and you're confident in how the day is going to unfold.
So for that, you need to do around eight to 10 workouts
that are properly designed.
Now, how do you design those workouts?
What are those workouts?
That's where we have here again on teamtrainiac.com
all of this is prompted when people create their settings
on their account, is if you're a swim-focused athlete,
and you wanna get that eight to 10 workouts in,
let's just say you are in the nine workouts category.
You wanna make sure that you get the right
types of workouts in,
and that the workouts are on the right days
because if you design the week incorrectly,
you might be leading yourself to injury,
you might be underpreparing yourself,
you might be overtraining yourself.
You also might not be focusing on the right things.
So for an athlete who wants to focus
on improving their swim, what a week should look like
is Monday, an easy recovery swim;
Tuesday, an intense bike;
Wednesday, this is the main run,
this is a run that builds up in duration longer and longer,
and I'll explain how.
Thursday, a recovery bike and a strength day;
Friday, a technique swim, kind of an easier swim;
Saturday, main bike, this is the big bike
that builds up longer and longer, followed by a brick run,
and then Sunday is the main swim.
We wanna make sure that you're swimming enough
to succeed in the swim.
If you start off with a bad swim,
you aren't going to do well.
And three swims per week is kind of a starting point
of starting to make progress in swimming.
We also wanna space those swims out.
So that's why we have them Sunday, Friday, and Monday.
Spaces them out a little bit, and it also allows us here
to have a recovery swim after a bigger weekend
where you're gonna be a little bit beat up
from that big bike and the main brick run,
so then we give you a day here on Monday to recover.
We also give you a day on Friday
to just kinda prepare for the weekend
because these two here are very light intensive days.
They're not very destructive on the body.
Finally, how long does all this need to be?
Well, the recovery swim, I would say
could be as little as 30 to 40 minutes,
the intense bike 30 to 40 minutes
as long as it's really intense, this is a hit bike.
The main run, you wanna build up to the point
that you get to a 25 kilometer run.
Recovery bike can be as little as 30 minutes, as much as 60.
Strength, only about 30 minutes, that's lots.
Technique swim, again, only about 30 to 40 minutes.
The main bike, you wanna build your way up
to about 120K bike.
The main brick run only needs to be
a max of about 30 minutes long.
The main swim here needs to build up
to about 75 minutes long.
So those are some guidelines, all of the exact workouts.
We could talk for, well, I've written
7,000 of them and with algorithms
and things on teamtrainiac.com
and gets delivered to you because it's quite intense,
what the actual workouts are in this video would be
five days long, I think it's already fairly long.
Next, let's address the swimming.
The test that I use is that
if you can swim 400 meters or yards continuously,
without feeling out of breath whatsoever at the end,
and without taking a break at any of the walls
while you're turning,
then you're ready to start doing workouts.
If you're not yet ready to start doing workouts,
your time is best going to be spent working on develop
comfort and basic fundamentals in the water.
And for that...
I'd recommend a phenomenal book
written by a really good looking triathlete
called "Triathlon Swimming Foundations."
You can get the paperback book
at any Amazon all around the world.
You can get an e-book and the audiobook
at triathlonswimmingfoundations.com.
It'll straighten out all your swim problems,
just take a look at the reviews, it works.
And then once you've developed that basic ability
to be comfortable in the water and have basic form,
so that the rest of the race isn't suffering
as a result of the swim taking a lot out of you,
you need to do a few things,
make sure that you get into open water,
four to six times in either the wetsuit
or the swim skin that you're gonna be racing in,
so that you can get comfortable in the open water
and your wetsuit and swim skin can stretch out a little bit
so you don't get that (sighs)
this is so tight kinda feeling.
You also in the two months leading up to the race,
you wanna start doing some deck ups in the pool
so that your body gets used to standing up,
rerouting the blood flow really quickly.
It's the same principle as doing a brick run,
going from the bike to the run really quickly.
This is making sure that your heart rate
doesn't shoot through the roof in transition one.
Again, being detrimental for the rest of the race.
And then finally, you wanna swim
with some people around you.
So if you have a swim crew that you can work with
just getting used to having people around you,
so that it's not terrifying when you get in the water,
that's about all you need to do.
Now, let's talk about the gear that you need.
There are only really seven pieces of critical gear
that I think people need.
And you can get all of this for probably under $1,000
if you already have access to a bike.
First thing that you need to get is a wetsuit,
I recommend buying a very inexpensive wetsuit
for your first race.
There's an Xterra one on Amazon that costs $140.
And I recommend doing this because renting a wetsuit
is probably about $100.
And then even if you don't end up
continuing on with triathlon, you can probably sell
the Xterra wetsuit for probably about $100,
and you won't be sitting in somebody else's pee,
trust me, it's there.
Next, I recommend that you buy a pair
of very basic mirrored goggles,
and you can buy these for about $15.
The reason I recommend mirrored goggles
with basic kind of profile, not these big things,
is because you can wear them very easily in the pool
and that mirrored finish is going to help you
with reducing the glare on the water
when you get into open water.
So you can use it in open water,
you can use it in the pool; cheaper.
Next, I recommend that you buy yourself
a pair of tri shorts, not cycling shorts.
If you're tight on money, and you don't wanna buy
a pair of swim trunks and a triathlon kit
just go with tri shorts because the shammy in them
is so minimal that you can use them as swim trunks,
you can also use it as biking shorts,
and you can use it as running shorts.
Cycling shorts, you can't really swim it,
too much diaper butt.
Speedo or Jammers you can't really bike in
because there's no shammy.
But tri shorts with a really minimal shammy
can kinda serve all purposes.
The reverse goes for a cycling top,
I recommend getting a cycling top instead of a tri top.
And why I recommend this,
is because you can cycle in a cycling top
and you can race in a triathlon in a cycling top
that's fitted tightly to you,
but a tri top is really best just for triathlon
when you don't really necessarily wanna do
all of your training in a tri top
because all of the shoulders are exposed
and it's just not as practical.
The pockets aren't big enough,
you can get shoulder sunburns
if you are translucent like me.
Just a more versatile option.
Next, use whatever bike and whatever helmet you have,
literally whatever bike and whatever helmet you have,
don't go and feel like you've gotta spend
thousands of dollars if that's an issue to you.
What I do recommend getting is a pair of clip-on aerobars.
About 80 to 85% of the drag that you have to push
through the air is created by your body,
and if you can just get a $20 pair of clip-on aerobars
and get comfortable in that tucked in position,
you're gonna be way more aerodynamic
than even if you had a fancy $3,000 road bike
with no clip-on aerobars, but you were up on the hoods.
That is kinda counterintuitive.
And then finally, a decent pair of running shoes.
And this is a decent pair of running shoes,
something that is meant for running,
something that you didn't buy for like $20.
We're talking shoes that cost about $100,
there abouts and up,
because this is gonna have the most cushioning.
And as you're getting used to running more frequently,
you wanna have shoes that are designed properly
for running to help avoid injuries,
'cause that's what's going to get you to the race
and reach those goals that we laid out.
Now, you're still probably wondering
how do I actually design a training plan?
Not really ready for a coach,
well, couple of options, number one,
you can go to triathlontaren.com/plantemplate,
and you put in the distance of the race that you wanna do,
how many workouts a week that you want to do
and when the race is, and it'll give you
kind of a skeleton of a week and a build.
So you can use that, it doesn't have any workout details,
because we save that for the next option teamtrainiac.com,
that's our online training program,
where for just 57 bucks a month
you get every single workout,
you get audio files guiding you
with how to do these workouts
so you start understanding what all the lingo means.
You get free stuff from all of our sponsors.
You can get one-on-one consultations
from professional triathlon coaches
and professional triathletes for like a fraction
of if you had hired an actual triathlon coach,
and you get to be with one of the biggest coolest
triathlon clubs in the world.
We are in between about 500 and 1,000 members,
and they're all really solid people,
and we've got a social media component
so that you can all help each other out with questions
or just motivate each other as races come up
and training gets hard.
And of course, check out "Triathlon Swimming Foundations"
on all the Amazons across the world
or if you're more into e-books and audiobooks
triathlonswimmingfoundations.com.
That's a whole lotta calls to action for one video.
I think that's a long video.
Hopefully, this helped a fair bit; very excited.
If you're watching this, that means that you are
probably thinking about doing one of your first
half Ironman's this year.
I think it's fantastic distance,
just long enough to be really challenging
but just short enough to be really practical for real life.
So good on ya, keep me posted on how it goes.
Later Trainiacs.