(door rattling)
- (groaning) Morning, Trainiacs.
You know what my least favorite triathlon training is?
Long runs done on a treadmill,
but here we are five weeks out
from Half Ironman Puerto Rico.
It's minus 44 outside in Winnipeg,
but I do have a fairly, what I feel,
interesting thing to talk about today
because here we are February
and a lot of new triathletes are just startin'
to wrap their head around doing their first race.
So today, I am going to give a four workout per week
beginner triathlon training plan
that encompasses swim, bike, run, brick sessions,
strength and mobility in just four days a week,
and it is going to overcome a few of the biggest hurdles
that new triathletes need to face,
getting comfortable in the water,
not freaking out at the start of the swim
and not turning into cement when you hop off the bike.
Let's do it.
(energetic electronic music)
(bright upbeat electronic music)
One hour, 25 minute run, going 40 minutes easy,
25 minutes at race pace,
20 minutes building well above race pace.
Now, we swim.
Don't worry, beginners.
Don't do what I do.
Wait until I tell you what's easier for you to do.
Gotta go swim.
(bright upbeat electronic music)
(groaning)
Alright, so a lot of you are probably watching these videos
for the first few times.
Maybe you're new subscribers.
Maybe you've been around for a little while
and you're just watching the odd video here and there
and you're still new to the sport,
watching me train every single day or twice a day,
like today, and thinking like
oh my God, that's what I have to do to do triathlon,
or you're watching the pros
put out 25, 30 hour weeks and thinking how in the world
will I ever be able to do a triathlon?
Well, newsflash here, and you're gonna like hearing this.
To do your first triathlon,
I think that you really only need
to do four workouts a week,
and if you do the right workouts
and you set this up properly,
you can do quite well with just four workouts a week.
Get to your first race really well prepared,
really confident and have a very enjoyable experience
that'll set you up for
a lifetime of badassery in triathlon.
So here are the four workouts and how to approach them,
very big, broad picture ideas.
So number one, you need to do a swim,
and when you first take up triathlon,
you don't need to worry about doing huge, huge yardage.
The biggest thing that you need to build is comfort
in the water, the ability to breathe and not freak out
and a little bit of open water skill.
You can do that very easily
by going to triathlontaren.com/swimdrillprogram.
It's a free series of 18 swim drills
that take you from absolutely terrified of the water
to, literally in my case,
being able to do a 27 and 37 kilometer open water swim.
It's about building comfort in the water
and setting you up with a really good foundation
to get you to that race and perform well.
Beyond that, you wanna make sure
that you get into open water
at least five times before the race.
When you're training in a pool,
you got a black line, you got these big, juicy lane ropes
that are taking all the waves away.
It's a very controlled situation,
but it's a very different situation
when you get into open water.
Somewhere around five or six times in open water,
all of those fears that happen the first time you get
into open water start going away.
You can develop some of that comfort
that you've developed in the pool in open water.
Also, if you're going to be racing in a wetsuit,
make sure that at least one or two
of those open water swims are in that wetsuit.
Wetsuits, whether they are older or if they're brand new,
they need to get wet before you get into the wetsuit
so that they can stretch out, loosen up a little bit
and you don't get that (panting)
kinda feeling when you get into that wetsuit.
That's it.
Do those series of drills
and a little bit of swimming with one swim a week.
Get into open water about five or six times,
and combine that with getting familiar with a wetsuit,
you'll be good.
Next, you need to do a long bike.
This is fairly straightforward
because most people are a lot more comfortable on the bike
than they are in the pool.
What I recommend for the bike is that one bike ride a week,
you gradually build up, and the biggest thing
that is going to hold you back
from doing well in that first race
is just being able to complete the distance,
building the endurance.
So what we wanna do on that bike
is get you to over-distance.
We want you to be able to bike confidently at a distance
longer than what you're going to do in a race.
So write this down.
For a sprint, you want to build up to somewhere around
about 35K or longer.
In an Olympic, you wanna build your way up
to about 55 or 60K or longer.
On a half Ironman, you wanna build your way up
to about 100K or longer,
and with a full Ironman distance race,
if that's your first one
and you're that kinda sicky like that,
you wanna build up to about a five to five and 1/2 hour
training day or longer,
not necessarily longer 'cause that's a long day.
How you do this is with one bike ride a week
that every single week you make longer
by about seven to 10% until that point
that you are at that distance that I've prescribed,
and then what you do is if you still have time leading
into your race, you start just increasing the intensity
and increasing more of the time
that you're doing that distance at race effort.
You don't need to really keep going longer.
You just kinda stay at that same distance
and gradually increase the amount of time
that is spent at or above race effort.
The run, fairly similar,
one run a week that gradually builds up about seven to 10%
each week until the point that for a sprint,
you're running about eight-K.
For an Olympic, you're running 13K or longer.
For a half Ironman, you're running 20K or longer,
and for a full Ironman, if you really wanna push it,
three hours, not really longer at any one time.
What you can actually do is if you find
in a full Ironman training day
that around like two hours, your body starts breaking down,
break that three hours into two separate runs
of say two hours and one hour,
and you break those two runs into about a 24 hour period,
and you increase the amount of time
that you're spending at or above race pace,
and this way, what you're doing is you're getting a lot
of running in in a short amount of time
but paced slightly faster than race pace,
so by the time you get to the race,
you have run consistently well over and over and over
with good form instead of slogging through long miles
with bad form, potentially leading
to injury and over-training.
And the only other thing that I would add
with run training is that one of the biggest things
that you are going to experience
if you haven't prepared for it in your first triathlon
is that you need to develop the ability
to go from the bike to the run,
and you can do this by including at least five brick runs.
This is a run where you're going immediately from a bike
to a run as soon as possible,
running anywhere from about 10 to 30 minutes.
You do this at least five times before a race,
your body's gonna know how to go from that bike to the run.
The fourth workout of the week is strength and mobility,
and I would certainly lean more towards mobility.
When you first start taking up triathlon,
if you are, let's assume that you are like most people,
you have some limitations 'cause you've been sitting
and kind of not active in swim, bike and run
for years and years,
so you're going to start developing a lot of tightness
in your body.
So I would recommend going to a sports massage therapist
or a physiotherapist and leaning a lot more
towards mobility so that as you keep progressing
and building up these tightnesses,
you're focusing more on working those out,
which will then allow you
to absorb and progress in the swim, bike, run training
without all of that tightness holding you back,
so you can actually absorb and perform much better
than if you did have that tightness
because you weren't paying attention
to the strength and mobility.
So that's the four workouts, but the final thing
that you should think about is the nutrition aspect of it,
especially if you're going
for an Olympic distance race or longer.
Nutrition is going to be a big thing
that's gonna hold you back, and for that,
I would just recommend going
to triathlontaren.com/triathlonnutritionguide,
and that's another free download that you can get
that is going to walk you through
right from start to finish,
depending on how much you weigh,
how long you intend to race,
what distance you're race is,
exactly how may calories and fueling
you need to replenish during that race.
Do all of that and you'll be great!
Now, if you start doing that
and you're like still I don't really know what to do,
go and check out teamtrainiac.com.
That's our training platform
where you can for 14 days for free
try out the guided team training that we have.
It's one of the biggest triathlon communities online
with hundreds of people training there,
helping you motivate each other.
All the workouts are done for you,
and you can do as few as those four workouts a week
or as many as 15 if you are super advanced.
But if you're not,
because odds are if you tuned into this video,
you're just a beginner,
good luck to ya.
Enjoy coffees (slurping),
and kill it, Trainiacs.