- Okay, on the face of it,
training for an Ironman is quite daunting.
I mean, you're required to devote at least 15 hours
to your training per week.
And that, well, it quite simply
puts most people off the whole idea altogether.
- Yeah, but fear not because,
even if you are juggling busy family, work, time pressures,
commitments, you actually needn't be deterred
from signing up for an Ironman.
No, not at all, because what if we were to tell you
that actually a great deal
of the Ironman fitness required can be accomplished
with a 10-hour training template per week?
- Yeah, so actually,
by having a well-structured training plan
across the three disciplines,
you can stand on that start line
of an Ironman with confidence.
So today we're gonna be running you through
and exploring that 10-hour Ironman training plan.
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Well, first of all, there's no skirting around the fact
that the swim takes up the least portion of any triathlon.
And as we start to extend that out over an Ironman distance,
that becomes as little as 10%
of the entire time we're racing.
- Yeah, it does, Mark.
But we're not gonna sit here and suggest
that you actually start spending as little as an hour
of your time in the water.
Although, granted, we do appreciate that an awful lot of you
would quite like to be only swimming for an hour.
Which does kind of pain us to acknowledge,
because we really like swimming here at GTN.
- Yeah, I mean, speak for yourself, Fraser,
but nonetheless, less can actually be more with swimming
provided you have a good structure in place
and you're turning up to each session
with a real idea of what you're trying to achieve
from that session, and that can actually make your swims
really time efficient.
- Yeah, so we're gonna keep this really super simple here
and have a max of an hour and a half swim time
in the water per week.
Schedule is two times 45-minute sessions.
And firstly, you could do this
as a strength and endurance type session
to build your aerobic base,
and that's a session that I always quite like to do
first off in the week, say Monday mornings.
Now, there are countless ways to achieve
a strength and endurance type of outcome session,
but here are two slightly differing session types
for you to try.
45 minutes of almost continuous swimming
with minimal rest between blocks.
For example, five minutes of easy swimming
leading into four times eight minutes of swim
with two minutes of recovery at the end of the pool,
which itself can progress over time
to three times 12 minutes of swimming
with one minute of recovery,
and then up to something like two times 18 minutes
of swimming with two minutes of recovery.
And this can be done over the course of five to six weeks.
And of course, during a session like that,
you can happily use pool buoys
or even throw in some paddles, too.
Right? - Yeah, absolutely.
Now secondly, we're going to move on to later in the week,
focusing on improving our speed.
And this can be achieved
through more of a threshold type session
where we're working fairly hard, but with limited recovery.
Now this threshold workout not only helps us
to improve our speed,
but also to dial into a specific race pace, too.
So you want to start with a short warmup of 400 meters
as 75 swim, 25 drill leading into blocks of one hundreds
starting with 12 to 15 reps
with 15 seconds recovery between.
This can progress to longer reps through the block of weeks,
and a suggested trend would be moving up
to 10 to 12 lots of 150 meters with 25 seconds rest.
And then on to eight to 10 lots of 200 meters
with 35 seconds recovery.
Now those are two really good sessions
that actually compliment each other really well
for your Ironman training.
But if you're quite a keen swimmer,
or perhaps you just happen to have a little bit extra time
in one of your weeks,
then it is not out of the question
to add in a third technical swim to your week.
- Yeah, and this doesn't have to be long at all.
It can just be a simple half an hour swim
that can help with that all-important feel for the water.
Right?
And I really would suggest keeping the reps really short,
25, 50 meters, concentrate on drill work or some skulling.
And equally, this time of session, well,
it can double up as a recovery after your long ride
or run of the weekend.
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All too easy to be intimidated by the volume of training
that an Ironman can appear to require.
Believe me.
I felt this pressure of the presumed training load
that was apparently needed.
And there's no better example of this
than trying to endlessly cram in bike mileage.
Now let's make no mistake, 112 miles is a long, old way,
and there's no escaping the fact
that the training required is going to be demanding.
But your readiness for an Ironman needn't be measured
simply by how many hours you're logging
whilst out on the bike.
And believe me, it really isn't necessary
to do bucket loads of hundred plus mile bike rides simply
to be capable of completing your Ironman event.
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♪ I am what I am today ♪
♪ 'Cause I did it my way ♪
♪ Nothin' y'all can say ♪
♪ In this life or the next one ♪
- Right, then.
What approach can we adopt for our bike sessions
that means we are confident of still being able
to achieve our target Ironman race,
but without devoting hours and hours of time
to our bike training?
Well, much like the swim template that we already discussed,
we can focus on two key bike workouts
that we can implement during our week.
Now the first of those could be indoor centered
and focus largely on threshold type interval work,
or this could be swapped out for an outdoor session
that would focus on hill reps
but still target a certain type of session.
The second ride would be something that I would aim
to do at the weekends and would be a longer effort,
more time on the bike,
but would allow us to put in more long, race-specific reps
and simulate what we're gonna get come race day.
Now, threshold training is something
that many athletes are guilty of shying away from,
and I will not be the first to put my hand up
and say I did that, too.
And the simple reason for this is, well, they hurt.
They are tough sessions to do,
but that is because they can dramatically increase
our power and endurance, which is really useful
for an Ironman event.
And they really, if done well,
can bring loads of bang for our buck to training,
and that's something that we actually like
to talk a lot about here on the channel.
So always begin with a 15 minute gradual build warmup
that has four to five 30 second pickups
towards the end of this.
And that'll lead into a mean set
that could look something like six times
five minutes, zone four to five effort
with two and a half minutes easy recovery in between.
This itself can progress to three times ten minutes
remaining at that zone four to five effort with,
again, half of the recovery which wold be five minutes.
Or we could swap these types of mean sets out
for something that's more hill reps orientated,
and these types of sessions could be
four to five times two minutes
with a two minute recovery back down the hill
leading into something
like five to seven times three minutes
with an equal recovery back down the hill
of approximately three minutes.
Now, the aim of these hill reps would be,
just as if we were on the indoor trainer,
to hit a effort level of about zones four to five,
and, to be able to do this, we'd be looking to try
and find a gradient of, say, five to eight percent.
That would be ideal, and then, hopefully,
these sessions won't actually take us any longer
than about an hour.
But, at the max, an hour 15
if we've got a good long warm-down added on at the end.
So this type of session allows for some race simulation.
Now, ideally, you'll be able to choose a route
that can mimic in some way the course profile
of the race that you're targeting,
but also what it's gonna be able to do is allow you
to start thinking about the nutrition strategy
that you're hoping to employ come race day.
Ideally done on the weekend,
this long ride needn't be incredibly long.
Now let's not forget that the whole concept
of this 10-hour training week is that we're not chasing
an unsustainable volume of training.
So bearing that in mind and aligned
with the threshold and/or hill reps
that I've already talked about,
these longs rides shouldn't be any more
than three and a half to four hours at the most,
and sample sets to include would be four times 30 minutes
at zone three with an easy 15 minutes recovery
building up to four times 45 minutes
with a similar recovery period in between.
Now, by adding a 30 minute steady run off the bike
to that session is not only gonna help
by creeping our overall volume of the workout up,
which is great for the endurance factor
that we are needing for the Ironman we're training for.
But it's also gonna help with the race day simulation
that I was just talking about because, let's not forget,
the jelly leg feeling that we get as we run at a T2
is definitely worth training for.
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- Well now for the running, and, by it's very nature,
this is actually the most impactful
of the three disciplines because you are now weight bearing.
You are loading up through the joints
on each and every foot strike,
so it's really important that you're mindful of that
and you're respectful of your body so that you don't arrive
at that Ironman event you've been training so hard for
injured and actually unable to complete the event.
So to help you out, I've got three key workouts
that you should try to fit
into your weekly workout schedule.
Now, the idea behind all of this is actually
to give the consistency because, in triathlon training,
consistency is key, particularly when we're training
for an Ironman.
So, first workout is actually an alternation
of three different workouts.
That is very confusing, I know, but the idea of this
is that you do one of these workouts one week.
The next week you do a different workout,
and then the third week another one again.
So, we've got a threshold type workout.
We've got a hill workout,
and then we've got a fartlek tempo workout.
Now, the idea of this is actually just to give you
that variety, keep the body guessing, and also make it fun.
So, good example of a threshold interval session
would be to start with an easy 15 minute warmup
with some 80 meter strides to finish
leading into four by five minutes at threshold,
an RPE of six to seven out of 10,
with two to three minutes very easy jog recovery between.
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Then on to a hill session.
Again, make sure you have a good warmup jog to the hill
that you plan to use
that should not be too steep and not too shallow,
somewhere nicely between the two,
and aim for 12 to 15 lots of 45 second reps
with an RPE of seven to eight out of 10
with your recovery simply being jogging back down
to the bottom of the hill or to where your start point is.
And as you get stronger,
these can become 60 second intervals,
but I don't believe they need to be any longer
in duration than that or else we start to lose form
and the benefits of the session.
Then, finally, a fartlek.
Okay, and we're gonna do a building pyramid
of 30, 45, 60, and 90 seconds and an RPE of eight out of 10
with an equal one to one ratio of recovery
before coming back down the pyramid in the same fashion.
And this can actually be repeated one and a half
or even twice through, too.
Well now for that second weekly workout,
and this is the long run.
This is all about time on the feet
which is particularly important when you're trying
to complete a marathon at the end of an Ironman.
So, with this, be really mindful
of where you're starting off at.
Don't try to do too much too soon,
and just increase by about 15 minutes
per four to five weeks.
So nice and gradually,
and just increase it to a maximum of two and a half hours.
That's gonna be enough to really improve
that endurance that you're gonna need for the event,
but also it's gonna hone in
that mental toughness you'll need for race day.
And, finally, if time allows, a brick workout
or a run off the bike.
Now, this is particularly useful for a triathlon
and an Ironman triathlon.
And this needn't be any longer than 30 minutes.
In fact, it can be as short as 20 minutes
and provide a very good and adequate stimulus
for a triathlon.
Now, you can add this in after that shorter, mid-week ride,
or, if you like, you can add it in
after that longer ride that you do on the weekend
that we've already discussed.
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- Okay, then.
Let us wrap this up and recap the training
that we've been discussing so far.
So we've got two swim workouts
that gives us an hour and a half of time each week
in the water.
We've got two bike rides, both indoors and outdoors that,
at a peak, will give us five hours of riding,
and two, but if time allows three, key runs in the week
that gives us three and a half hours on our feet.
- Yeah, which means we can confidently say that,
on no more than ten hours of your time,
you can put together a really solid Ironman training program
a number of weeks out from your planned event.
But it is worth us pointing out that this does require
some prior fitness and training behind you,
so we'd suggest that you can competently swim
up to or in excess of two thousand meters
before taking on this plan.
You've ridden two or three times in excess
of three and a half hours on the bike,
and you've done up to and in excess of 90 minutes
for your run a couple of times.
And this just ensures that you have that base
and endurance behind you to be able to feasibly take on
a 10-hour training plan and do it successfully.
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- Good luck with that and do let us know how it goes
in the comments section below.
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And if you want to see a video about how to train
for an Ironman on minimalist training,
you can get that here.
- And if you'd like to see our how to train
when you're limited for time video, just click down here.