- Morning, trainiacs, we are gonna try something today
that I think is going to go really well.
I asked all of you in the YouTube Community tab,
if you wanted to submit your plans for feedback
and overwhelmingly, 2,000 of you said yes.
So we've got some submissions.
Thorsten Gratzer is a young athlete with a swim background
who has really big goals to do his first Ironman next year.
He wants to go sub 12 hours
and he's submitted his training plan for feedback
and we're gonna take a look
and there's definitely some things
that we can help him with, that we can help you with,
whether you've got a swim background,
whether you've got an Ironman goal in mind,
whether you wanna go sub 12 hours or not,
there's definitely a lot that we can learn
from Thorsten's plan and help him out with.
(upbeat music)
All right, and so let's get into Thorsten's submission here.
His name is Thorsten Gratzer.
He has a full Ironman distance in mind
on the date of April 7th, 2021,
so we're talking about eight months away.
This is really good timing 'cause about six months out
is when you wanna start doing your real specific training.
He's been doing endurance events for three to four years.
His run is his weakest discipline.
He says that running form as a big guy
is his biggest challenge.
He's 1.97 meters, and that is six foot, 5 1/2 inches.
I've asked everyone who submitted
if they have basic proficiency in swim bike run.
He can run continuously for 60 minutes
at a zone two heart rate without having to walk,
so that's good.
He can ride for 90 minutes without any difficulty at all.
And he can swim 400 meters or yards continuously
without a break or without feeling out of breath whatsoever.
And I'll get to why I know that that's the case
and how that relates to his training plan in a second.
So he's basically check.
He can start training. No problem.
Then here, I wanna make sure that he has the basic things
that are going to help him out.
He's got a pull buoy,
but he doesn't have snorkel or fins.
Those are things that I recommend everyone has
because that's what's going to allow you
to do really structured, proper drill builds
that are gonna help you get to your race.
But I wanna make a special note here.
I looked up Thorsten on Instagram,
and if you go back here, we've got some metals,
we've got a lot of open water swimming photos.
My impression is that he has a swim background
and that's gonna be really relevant
when we get into his plan.
He's got a bike with aero bars,
and our testing, having aero bars on your bike
is roughly about 4% improvement.
And even if it's just a road bike with aero bars,
it's that 4% improvement for as little as 30 or 40 bucks.
So everyone needs to be in aero bars
regardless what bike they're on,
whether it's a tri-bike or road bike.
Aero helmet, same sort of thing.
We're looking at about a 2% to 3% improvement
for maybe a $200 helmet instead of an $80 helmet.
That's a really big improvement
on dollar per speed advantage.
Now, deep section race wheels,
I'm just interested in seeing if the athlete has that.
Tri-bike, now I'm not gonna say that that's a must.
You can do a race on whatever bike you've got,
but if Thorsten was coming to me and saying,
"Well, I have a really crappy run,
but I've got a road bike,"
then we start looking at,
well, maybe you're getting off the bike
and your muscles are burnt out unequally
because a road bike is gonna close up your hips
where tri-bike is gonna open them up.
So in his case, he's got a tri-bike
and he does have a running watch
with a chest strap heart rate monitor.
Especially if you're doing Ironman,
you've gotta be doing a lot of training at low heart rates,
so I wanna make sure that you've got
a chest strap heart rate monitor
because wrist-based heart rate monitors, not accurate.
Chest straps, no matter what chest strap you've got,
I use Garmin, they're gonna be much, much more accurate.
Then we'll go down to what he wants to do.
It's his first Ironman. He wants to go sub 12 hours.
That's very reasonable.
We ended up coaching Nick Bare
if you followed along last year.
He's a really well-known YouTuber,
big guy, no background in triathlon,
good background in athletics as a whole,
and he went 11:30 roughly in Ironman Florida
with only about five months of training,
but the training had to be really specific.
So going sub 12, very doable.
He's done 1/2 Ironman, and he's done a sub one hour swim.
Having a sub one hour swim goal,
that's showing that you got some swim pedigree to you.
He wants to do a 5 1/2 hour 180-kilometer ride
in the Half Ironman, but running is his weak spot.
So the fact that he's looking at a one-hour swim,
a 5:30-ride, he's looking at a 6 1/2-hour time
right after getting off the bike, and he wants to go sub 12.
So that means we have to get him into that run
under 5 1/2 hours, we can definitely do that.
We have to make sure that his run
is a lot more efficient than it sounds like it is.
Now, let's get into his training plan here.
He's got gym and an easy bike on Monday,
swim and an easy run on Tuesday, hard bike on Wednesday,
hard run on Thursday, gym on Friday,
and then the key day long bike
followed by a brick run on Saturday
and a long run on Sunday.
There's definitely some things that we can work on here
to help you absorb the training
and execute all of your workouts a lot better.
One thing that I wanna look at here is are there days
that are more intense?
Are there days that are longer?
Are there days that are specifically designed for rest
to give you that rest day to absorb the training
that you've done?
And right now, there really isn't.
A gym session, I don't really count as an off day.
More than anything, I actually think
that it should be a little bit intense
so that it's actually doing something.
So what I would actually start changing around here
is not necessarily what you're doing.
The four run breakdown in a week is good,
three bikes, good, having one swim,
that's a little bit worrisome,
but what I recommend for athletes
for the Ironman swim training portion
is train as much as you need to
to get out of the water fresh.
So that means that you are ending the swim completely fresh.
You do not want it to tax you whatsoever.
And if you have a swim background,
Thorsten, and one swim a week,
and still being able to reach that one hour goal
and not have a tax whatsoever is all you need to do,
just one swim a week, great.
Focus on the other aspects of an Ironman.
But if you are trying to get under that one hour
and it's going to tax you, you got one of two choices.
You can either swim a little bit more,
or you can dial your pace back,
and I guarantee you swimming 65 minutes or even 70 minutes
is going to be a much better decision for you
if that's what you need to do to get out of the water fresh,
than it is to try to get under 60 minutes
and then potentially give up an hour on the run.
So whatever it requires to end up getting out
of that swim completely fresh, that's what you do.
Now, let's move around some of these days here.
I wanna bookend the weekend with easier training
and I wanna put most of the intensity together,
how the week is gonna look for him
and how we build things on teamtrainiac.com
is very much along these lines.
Monday, to make sure you are absorbing what happened
on the weekend and prepare you for the next three key days
is just an easy bike, perfect.
And then on Tuesday, you're gonna have your intense run
and a gym session later in the day.
Wednesday, you're going to, again,
absorb that hard session and prepare
for the hard session the day after with just an easy run.
Then on Thursday, you're gonna have your hard bike
followed by a gym session,
so you're gonna have another key day.
Then you're going to absorb that day
and prepare for the weekend by having a swim on Friday,
then you're gonna have your key day
with your long bike and your brick run on Saturday
and your long run on Sunday.
We've got a example, threshold run that Thorsten uses,
saying, he's going 10 minutes hard, two minutes easy,
eight minutes, hard, two minutes, easy,
six minutes hard, two minutes, easy,
four minutes hard, two minutes, easy,
two minutes hard, two minutes, easy.
Good, okay, I like to focus more on 300-second
to six minute hard efforts.
That's your sweet spot for VO2 max building.
Around eight minutes, you're still building VO2 max,
but not a lot.
And at 10 minutes, you're not able to go hard enough
for that long to really focus on VO2 max.
I would still do those threshold runs,
but focus on the intervals being anywhere
in between 30 seconds and six minutes.
These 10 and eight minute efforts,
where I like to put those on Team Trainiac
is actually in the long bike,
and in the long bike during race season,
what I would end up doing,
definitely in the last three months before your race
is having intervals that are anywhere
from 10 minutes to two hours long but above race pace.
And what we're looking at is if you've got a power meter,
we're looking at anywhere between 5% to 15%
above your race pace, even 20% above your race pace,
because what a lot of people do
is they do race pace training, but then on race day,
they have to just race up
to the level that they've trained at,
which is kind of they're just barely hanging
on the whole way, but if you've trained more up here,
it's easier to come down here.
It's gonna make those training sessions
a little bit tough,
but it's really gonna prepare you
to have an easier time on that bike.
Now, addressing your run.
First thing I wanna do is I've taken a look
at your biomechanics.
I've gone through your Instagram photos
and it's looking like your run form is okay,
like there's nothing here that's really screaming
that you're struggling with anything biomechanically.
First thing that I would say is look at somebody
like Justin Metzler, another big guy,
six foot plus, really long limbs,
and he said that he really had to work
on quick foot turnover.
For big guys, for tall guys,
the natural thing for your body to do
is to spend more time on ground contact
because there's just so much more of your body to compress
to absorb that load.
What Justin Metzler ended up having to do
and what I would recommend for you are two things,
and let's come back to your training plan for that.
First thing is this long run,
I would do quite a number of these long runs
on trails or hills, and while you're doing that,
focus on fast foot turnover.
Whatever your cadence is now,
try to increase it a little bit.
Whatever your cadence is six weeks from now,
try to increase it a little bit.
That combination of a soft surface,
that's gonna wanna absorb your ground contact time
and slow it down combined with you working
to really keep up that ground contact time
is gonna help you get off the ground quicker.
Next thing that I would do is during the warmup
of the hard run and probably halfway through your easy run,
I would do a set of plyometrics.
Building that elastic energy like Erin Carson,
the strength trainer to the pros, who we work with a lot,
she uses this as the example.
Elastic energy is like that spring back
that requires no energy from you
and you build that with some plyometrics.
So I would build in some plyometrics into the hard run
and halfway through the easy run
to really get your body ready to fire quickly.
What happens with a lot of bigger athletes
is just because there's so much limb,
because there's so much mass to compress,
you end up losing the elastic energy
and you spend too much time lumbering on the ground.
Work on getting quick with those two things
in your long run and with your short and hard or easy run.
And then the final thing that I wanna point out
is what often happens with a lot of athletes
is let's say they fall apart in their run,
they'll say, "Well, I need to work on my run."
But often, the run is just where either improper training
or too much fatigue ends up showing itself,
and how that relates to your schedule
is looking at your schedule here bottom left.
I see that you've got a three weeks on,
one week rest kinda schedule.
So you've got hard week, rest, one, two, three hard weeks,
then rest one, two, three hard weeks, then rest,
one, two, three hard weeks, then rest,
that ends up becoming kind of on the borderline
of being able to tolerate or not.
So I would start now with three weeks, on one week off,
but the second your muscles start aching,
your sleep gets a little bit disturbed.
If you're using something like a WHOOP Strap
or an Oura Ring or HRV4Training monitoring your HRV
to make sure that you're absorbing that three weeks on,
one week off schedule.
Most people can easily absorb a two weeks on,
one week off schedule.
And that allows you to go harder on those two weeks on
and make sure that you're absorbing it while three weeks on,
you've got to almost dial back that training a little bit
to make sure that the three is going to be absorbed.
So don't think that three on one off
is what you have to do to do well.
Two on, one off, while the two on
being really, really well-designed can do wonders.
We had people qualify for world championships last year
with a two on, one off schedule,
because they said that they felt much fresher
throughout the entire year, they got into the run,
and they still had lots of energy because, like I say,
in a lot of cases, the fatigue often just kinda builds up,
and especially in an Ironman,
it ends up showing itself on the run.
And people think that,
"Oh, well I just need to work on my run."
But in a lot of cases, it's nutrition,
it's an improper training plan,
it's too much fatigue, not enough rest.
So Thorsten, I hope that that helps you out
and gets you to under 12 hours.
I wanna send you a little bit of Team Trainiac schwag
for taking part in this.
Now, if you wanna get your training plan looked at,
I think we'll probably do this a lot
because there's a really good response to it.
There will be a link in the description below.
And if you like this and you aren't already subscribed,
hit the Subscribe button below.
Thanks Thorsten. Go kill it.
Later, trainiacs.