(atmospheric music)
- This is the first of our Triathlon Training Explained
show, powered by Training Peaks.
Whether you're a beginner attempting your first triathlon
or you're an old hand to triathlon,
we're going to be answering all those questions
you just wish you knew the answers to.
- Yes, everything from, such as what
you should wear in a triathlon,
through to more serious stuff like
watts per kilo, training zones and aerodynamics.
- And that's not all, we're going to be doing
some investigations, getting specialists in to help,
talking to pros, getting sciencey
and of course, talking from our own personal experience.
- Well, you can look forward to the Triathlon Training
Show Explained on a Tuesday every fortnight,
from a variety of different locations.
- Yep, some weeks we'll be sat here in the set,
and other weeks we'll be out and about field testing,
basically wherever your questions take us.
- Talking of questions, we've already had a
great variety sent into us, so
I think it's time we delve in, and this week we're going
to be focusing on structuring your training.
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- Right, structuring your training.
Now I've spent quite a lot of time playing with this in my
own training programme, but I've also coached quite a few
other triathletes, so I'm really excited to get
stuck into this.
- Yeah, we've got plenty to talk about,
and our first question is in, from Glenn Smith, who asks
how to structure your yearly routine, with training blocks?
- Right, well this is quite interesting actually,
so first thing's first, I would suggest
picking out your main races through the year.
Now, I used to prioritise them in terms of A, B and C.
So my A races would be highest priority, and then C races
lowest priority.
And that will allow you to like, tailor your training
through the year, and break it into blocks.
And then this kind of, overview of the year is what we call
the Macrocycle, so we can look down on those individual
races, and how we build up to them through the year,
without getting too bogged down in the specifics and all the
details.
Then the details come in the Meso and Micro cycles,
so the Mesocycles tend to be, sort of around three weeks to
five weeks, in length.
And then, there they're made up by the Microcycles,
which can be anything from a few days to a week, but can be
really focused on something specific, like
trying to overload on the bike for a few days,
and that sort of thing.
So, have you had any experience in this?
- Yeah, I mean a lot.
And one thing that we use a lot in Pentathlon tended to be,
I guess you would call it a three week Mesocycle,
because it was a four week plan, but the fourth week was
the easy week.
So, and I personally liked that as well, because I think
three weeks is quite manageable, mentally, as well as
physically, and you know then you've got that easy week,
and then that would kind of go into a Macrocycle of about
three months normally, and then the easy week then would be
very easy at the end.
- Okay, that's interesting.
Yeah, so we used to do it as,
I mean personally my preference was to do four weeks,
and then a week, really quite easy,
and the idea of that is that you kind of, you absorb that
four weeks, or however long it is, you absorb that training,
and the idea is then you improve, and then you can,
sort of climb the ladder, so you're continually sort of
progressing.
And the last week of each of those blocks is, higher again.
So, idea being, you get to the race in the best shape
possible.
- Yep.
- Okay, next question in about training is from
ValentinVale24, sent in over Instagram.
They've asked, how do I combine my triathlon training with
strength training?
On one hand they want to improve their endurance,
and then on the other hand, they want to build up muscle.
Is it possible to achieve both aims?
- Well, it is a very common question, and endurance is often
thought of as the enemy to strength.
But is it really?
I think it's time we went and got some help on this one,
and earlier, Mark popped down to meet
strength and conditioning coach, Kriss Hendy.
- Right, this is Kriss Hendy of Strength for Endurance,
thanks for joining us, Kriss.
- No worries mate, thank you.
- Well, as the name suggests, you're used to focusing on
working with strength, alongside endurance sports.
In fact you brought the likes of Tim Van Berkel, who's an
Ironman and 70.3 winner, and the Ironman 70.3
World Champion, Tim Reed.
So firstly, I wanted to pick your brains on,
what would you suggest in terms of combining strength
training, alongside endurance sports?
- I'd have to say it's essential, you know
we have lots of athletes who are out there doing a lot of
work, and we always bring it back to three main principles.
We talk about, just maintenance, so obviously just having
a good strength programme just allows someone to be able to
just keep the body ticking over.
So we're just sort of tightening the screws, making sure
that we are able to just keep doing, repeating that work,
week in week out.
Then we also talk about efficiency of movement,
so we wanna, you know we're all looking to seek more
efficiency, in how run, bike and swim.
So with the strength training, we're able to sort of
bring up, you know, again, tighten the screws, and really
work on form and technique.
- [Mark] I guess activating muscles and that sort of thing?
- [Kriss] Yeah, exactly right.
So we look at that, we really look at that in the terms of
improving the range of motion like, joints, activating
kind of dormant muscle groups like the glutes, and
upper back.
And then we talk about resilience, so that third thing.
And resilience is obviously that durability to be able to
go long, go hard, but go longer and longer, and actually
finish the race.
So, you know, having a good strength, foundation of strength
is just gonna allow you to do that.
- My next one, we hear athletes often worrying that
they're gonna build up too much muscle mass for
endurance sport.
Is there much evidence behind this?
- [Kriss] Well, it's a common misconception when it
comes to, sort of, you know, implementing a strength programme
into your week.
And it's, it really is a real misconception, because
as an endurance athlete, someone that's doing probably
10, 15, 20 hours of endurance based aerobic training,
you're doing everything wrong to build muscle mass.
Muscle mass is a completely separate obsession, it takes,
you've got to eat a lot, you've got to eat a hell of a
lot more.
You've got to train a lot, lot harder.
And when you're looking at like, an ideal amount of strength
training, so two to three sessions a week,
you just simply aren't doing enough strength training to
build that muscle mass.
So what we are looking to do in that time though, is
simply just develop the structure of your joints.
So we're looking at, technique, we're looking at,
when we do load the joint and add weight,
we really are just looking to build up the structure and
stability of the joint, and you really won't be building
any muscle tissue in the sense.
- Well thanks for that Kriss, some really interesting
points there.
And now it's time for our final question, and this one
comes in from David Fowler.
He asks, are the long, slow winter miles dead, and is
reverse periodisation with early season HIIT the new norm?
- Ooh, this is a really interesting one, and I think
firstly, we should just talk about periodisation generally,
before we get stuck into reverse periodisation.
And we have spoken about this a little bit in our
first question.
Periodisation is about breaking your training into blocks,
throughout the year, or throughout your season and
off season.
So you're altering the frequency, the intensity and the
volume of your training, and essentially, coming to your
race in peak performance.
- Yeah well typically you can fit in sort of,
three Macrocycles into a season as a triathlete fairly
comfortably.
And then within those that we spoke about earlier,
you've got your Mesocycles, so sort of three, four weeks,
depending on what works with you.
And then that is where you do your overloading, so
you're working your body harder than it's used to,
and then you have the recovery period, where it has that
chance to adapt, get stronger and regenerate.
And then hopefully at the end of each of those periods,
you're gonna be fitter and stronger than you were before.
But it's worth pointing out that it's not purely about
results, it's also about being able to stay injury free,
and importantly, making sure you don't over train.
Well reverse periodisation is basically the opposite, so
the other way around, when you're focusing on those
shorter, more intense sessions during the Winter months,
or the pre season training, especially for the
bike and the run.
And then as you get closer to your goal, to your race,
you start to layer on those longer miles.
And you know, they're completely opposite, and there's
pros and cons to both.
- [Mark] Yeah, so firstly let's look at the pros of
traditional periodisation.
I guess one of the arguments behind it is that you,
I guess you build your aerobic fitness, you're better
physically conditioned.
So it minimises the risk of injury, and then there is also
the argument that you build a great base.
So then later in the year you can sort of layer on that,
in terms of intensity and volume.
- Now, well a pro, one of the big pros in my point of view,
for doing the reverse periodisation, is in the Winter,
when it's like horrible outside, and it's dark,
that's when you can do shorter sessions.
You know, perfectly suited to training on the turbo,
really working to improve your FTP.
- [Mark] Which can be quite motivating, in the Winter
I guess, as well.
- [Heather] Yeah, exactly.
And then another pro which kind of goes hand in hand
with that, is as you've got to start doing your longer miles
it's more into the Summer, so you hope that that's when your
races are, and it's daylight outside, and maybe a bit
warmer, and it's nice to go out and do long bike rides,
and long runs then.
- Yeah, I've actually tried out reverse periodisation
myself, and I know quite a few pros that do the same.
And it is worth nothing it's not for everyone,
so I don't think we can sit here and say that
reverse periodisation is the way forward.
There, like we've just pointed out, there's pros and cons
for both.
One thing I would say is that, reverse periodisation
doesn't mean that you cut out all those longer aerobic miles
unfortunately, it's just switched around.
And another really important thing to note, is that
actually reverse periodisation means you go straight in on
quite intense training, so it does require quite a good,
like base level of fitness.
- [Heather] Well it is worth bearing in mind though, that
you can get carried away, because you start out early
feeling really good, and fresh, and then
if you're not careful, you could run the risk of
a bit of burnout, or just losing that freshness.
Well that brings us to the end of our first
Triathlon Training Explained show.
And don't forget, this is your show, so we want to know
your questions.
If there's something that's on your mind, something that's
been niggling you, or something you just want to get to the
bottom of, let us know.
You can leave it in the comment section below, or send in
your questions over Facebook, or on Twitter.
- Yeah, and if you haven't done so already, you can
subscribe to GTN to see lots more of the GTN videos.
You can do that by clicking on the globe, just here,
and we have spoken today a little bit about training when,
you know you're limited for time, and we actually have
done a video, on what to do when you're short of time.
- And we've also talked about the importance of fitting
strength training into your programme, so if you want some
ideas on some exercises that you can have a go at,
there's a video for that just here.