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- Welcome to the Triathlon Training Explained show
powered by TrainingPeaks
and this week we're gonna be looking at
how to split up your weekly training load.
- While training for three different disciplines
is always gonna be a challenge
and one that even the pros have to learn how to manage
and as an age grouper
you're probably continually trying
to find that balance between
your work, your family life and training.
Let's be honest,
there are never gonna be enough hours in the day
so you've got to learn how to plan and prioritize.
- Along with our own experiences
and help from some top level coaches,
we're gonna be giving you a guide
on how to break up your weekly training load
to best suit your needs.
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- Before we go into the actual breakdown
it's important to set long and short term goals
and then work out which is your weaker
of the three sports
and start to focus on what area it is within that
that you want to improve.
And if you're not quite sure
which is the weakest discipline
then you can have a look at some of your past results
and compare those to other competitors
and that'll give you a fairly good idea.
- Next, be realistic with how many hours
you can dedicate to training per week.
With that, take into account
the amount of travel time, changing time
and what not,
and don't be over ambitious with this
'cause you're more likely to achieve your targets
if you are realistic.
And take a step back, look at the bigger picture,
perhaps write a planner so you can work
out the available time in your weekly schedule.
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- Well we can't cover everyone's individual scenarios
so let's start by saying that this is an overall guide
that you can then base your plan from
and as an age group athlete,
you'll be juggling work and family life.
So we'd recommend trying to train
between eight and 12 hours,
which should be adequate amount of training
for most distances of triathlon.
I know that can seem quite a lot
and you might not always be able to manage
that many hours in a week,
but as long as you do make sure
all the training you do
is very much based on quality.
- Well if we keep things simple
and we work on something like a 10 hour training week,
we should be looking at around
eight to nine sessions per week,
and that means around three per discipline,
but obviously varies in duration.
Firstly, let's look at a balanced athlete,
and by that I mean an athlete
that's fairly evenly matched across all three disciplines.
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For the swimming,
I'd recommend three hours of swimming per week
broken across three swims, so an hour each.
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Cycling, five hours of cycling per week,
again breaking across three rides,
perhaps two shorter rides during the week
and then one longer ride on the weekend
or when you have more time.
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And then for the running,
two hours per week across two or three sessions.
- Okay that's the ideal,
but how about if an athlete has a weakness
in one of the disciplines?
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Let's start with a swim weak athlete,
which probably the majority of people
can relate to.
For that, you want to try
and increase your swimming a little bit,
so up to four hours
and you could do this as four lots of one hour sessions
or keep it to your three sessions
and them make them an hour and 20 long.
Then, reduce the bike to four hours
but still with three sessions,
so split it up how you feel it works for you,
and then keep your run at two hours
over three sessions.
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- Then for the bike weak athletes,
we should be looking at
around two hours of swimming per week
and you can do this across two or three swim sessions
per week,
around 45 to 60 minutes each.
Then we're gonna up the cycling a bit now,
so we're doing around six hours per week
across three rides.
Then keeping to two hours of running
across two or three runs.
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- Finally the run weak athlete.
So stick to roughly three hours of swimming,
five hours of biking,
and two hours of running,
which admittedly isn't actually an increase in duration,
but that's because of the impact from running
so you do need to build it up gradually.
And the best way to do this, to improve your running,
is to stick with the two hours,
but maybe make it more sessions
so aim to do four or five in your week.
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- Of course this is just an example
and every athlete's needs will be different.
Then of course there's the variables
that will determine an athlete's training schedule
and even the sessions they're doing day in and day out.
And that comes down to things like
your current fitness level and your skill level.
- It does, well a lot of us
dream of being able to train full time
and we look at the pros with envy,
but they still have to plan and manage their time
for optimum performance.
And I mean, it is their livelihood after all.
- Well it is the coach that actually
plays a big part in that,
so we've gone and chatted to
a couple of experts in this area
that coach some of the most successful pros out there.
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First up we've got Rhys Davey,
British triathlon coach
and coach to Vicky Holland,
bronze at the Rio Olympic games.
Rhys, how would you split your training
throughout the week, day by day?
- For us, with an ITU elite athlete,
like all triathletes,
consistency is really important.
To do that, it's making sure you get that balance right
of your intense training days,
your long aerobic days,
and your recovery days.
The way that we would split it is
a Monday would be what I would call
kind of an aerobic recovery day,
so it's not a full recovery day,
there's still four, maybe five hours
of training in there,
but it'll be more low level,
your four, your five out of 10 worth of effort.
And it's an opportunity to kind of maintain that
aerobic work,
but actually you're probably recovering a bit
from the previous weekend's worth of work.
From there we go into a Tuesday day,
which is what I would term our intensity day,
so we might have a real specific swim session,
it'll be race specific,
it would be short, sharp,
quite intense on the guys
and then we'll go into an intense track session.
So that would be three to five k's worth of work for us
at maybe faster than 3k pace.
It would depend on where we are in the year,
but there will be times when they'll be getting faster
than 3k pace.
It really kind of hurts the guys quite a lot,
so there's not too much volume in there
but it's what I term a real intensity day.
From there, on a Wednesday,
we'd go into what I term more of a long aerobic day
so we'd have a long swim,
that might be over 5k maybe up to 6k's worth of swimming
into 40 minutes, up to 60 minutes worth of running
followed by, again, a three to four hour ride.
Maybe up to six hours worth of training in there
and real long aerobic work,
not necessarily too intense,
but long aerobic work.
Then from there we go to Thursday,
which would be, again, what I'd term
more of an intensity day,
it would be key bike session, very specific.
A bit of a speed swim,
and then a bit more of a relaxed aerobic run.
So then Thursday to Friday,
Friday would be more like our recovery day,
the guys would do a swim,
it might be an intense swim,
but it's only a swim in it,
and it's also at 10:30 in the morning
so they have a good lie in,
they'll go and do the swim in late morning
and then have the rest of the day off,
so just a bit of an opportunity for them to recover
before going into Saturday,
which is one of our key run session Saturday morning.
We're just looking to protect that
with the Friday afternoon off,
then Saturday ends up being an aerobic ride,
it might be up to three, three and a half hours.
So Saturday is a bit of a mixture of intensity
with aerobic,
but our key focus is just making sure
that Saturday morning's protected.
And then Sunday is another one of
our long aerobic days.
It tends to be a longer aerobic ride in the morning
followed by a longer run in the evening.
- So it is a really well planned and calculated.
Are you actually swim, biking and running every day?
- No, absolutely not.
The way it would tend to work is
they'd probably swim five times a week,
run six or seven times a week,
but that might be with two runs in a day,
so often people will have a day off,
like I said Friday they won't necessarily run,
but there might be an extra run in there
one of the other days.
Then cycling, again, will be about five times a week,
the only difference there might be
if we're doing a focused bike block,
maybe we've taken some intensity out of the running
so we're doing a bit of a focused bike block
where they might ride an extra day,
so they're riding six times,
but on the whole it would be five.
- So we focus a lot on swim, biking and running,
obviously strength training is a big aspect
of triathlon and our training,
and how do you guys go about
fitting that into your schedule?
- Again, I think the simplest way
that we go about that
is just how we manage the load of the strength sessions
and mainly focused around those key run sessions
so what we make sure is that
they aren't on the same day.
It tends to be on a Monday and a Thursday
with the key runs on the Tuesday and the Saturday.
That's basically how we'd do it
so that they're not on the same day.
They're almost like the high risk sessions,
those key run sessions,
if you go in too fatigued off your strength session
or if you do them and then go into a strength session
it might just mean that you end up
putting yourself at risk a bit more for the both of them.
- That was really interesting from Rhys,
but to get a perspective of how long distance pros train,
we've now got Susie Cheetham's coach and husband,
Rob Cheetham, in to chat with us.
Rob, how do you go about splitting
Susie's training throughout the week?
- What we do Mark is a little bit more traditional
than to what the typical age grouper would be used to.
We don't assign any particular training
to a particular day of the week.
But we do a pretty routine
five-five-five type structure,
generally the girls are gonna be knocking out
five of each a week.
Sometimes if we're in a little bit
of a focus block,
we might do six bikes or six runs a week,
sometimes at the detriment of one of the other disciplines,
but pretty straightforward and pretty traditional
five-five-five type session.
- Yeah so you don't follow a Monday this,
a Tuesday that,
it changes each week?
- Yeah, with full time athletes,
luckily you're not beholden on having to
fit your long stuff into weekends
like an age grouper might have to do.
But it does just so happen that
generally Susie's long rides end up
falling on the weekends still,
part of this is because of how we
try to fit it into her actual race plan
leading into a race and the taper.
We like to get one last key run and bike session
probably something like three weeks before a race.
So it just ties in that we tend to
follow that pattern through the year.
- Great and do you have focus sessions
throughout the week?
Or is it just the matter of accumulating fatigue,
how does it work?
- I think with the long distance guys,
which is what I'm involved with,
the big difference between what Rhys does
with his Olympic distances and shorter distance athletes
is that we are just trying to very often
just accumulate fatigue.
It is literally just about getting the girls
as smashed as you can for as long as you can,
and then timing their fitness and their taper
for their big races.
What Rhys will notice with Susie who swims in his squad
is that very often she'll tip up for a swim session
and she'll just be zombie-ing through a lot
because the fatigue has been building for so long.
What we do try and do is we, me and Susie's bike coach,
Matt Bottrill,
we'll try to pull back on the biking,
so that she can have
at least one good quality run session a week,
a little bit of a confidence booster.
And similarly normally for a Friday swim
we'll try and give her a little bit of a pull back
on a Thursday before
so she can at least get into the pool once a week.
And actually knock out some confidence
and decent times.
- So it's really interesting to hear from Rhys
about fitting in strength training,
how's it work for Susie with the long distance training?
- Again, I think that strength
is probably the one element which is
receiving a lot more focus in the long distance game
than it used to, and rightly so.
I think probably some of the top girls at the moment
on the circuit
are those who are paying the best attention
to quality strength program,
but like the short distance girls
that is gonna impede in the quality of your other sessions
so you have to time it properly.
Routinely Susie's gonna do three
quality strength sessions a week throughout the year,
but I do like to pull back that strength gym work
in the lead up to a race.
For us, we pull back quite heavily on the strength
four to five weeks before.
She's doing almost no strength four to five weeks
before an A race.
- How do you go about fitting that in the week?
Obviously you've got so much other training going on.
Do you weight the strength training
over certain bike or run sessions,
or do you just try and fit it all in.
- Again, and people are doing it differently,
I know there are top girls out there
who are absolutely smashing the Olympic style weightlifting
and it's paying dividends.
We know that serious strength and weights for Susie
impedes her training for up to two or three days after.
For us, it's normally just range of movement stuff.
I've always said anything that gives you doms the next day
we try to avoid.
Anything doms inducing we avoid.
It's really range of motion stuff
and trying to get a half an hour
of good range of motion,
a lot of core and stuff like that.
- Brilliant, thanks very much Rob.
- Well I think we're gonna have to continue
to dream of being able to train full time,
but still that was really interesting insight
into how the pros actually split up their weekly training
and quite a lot of that we can relate as age groupers
directly to our triathlon training.
- Yeah of course, if you are part of a triathlon club,
that's great,
but you may find you're restricted
to certain sessions at certain times.
How you fit in the rest of your training around that
is entirely up to you.
And of course, the all important recovery.
- I think by now you have realized
and we've got it through
that everyone is different.
We've all got individual needs outside of our trainings.
You've got to just adapt to what works for you.
And if you're using a coach,
make sure that you're realistic with the hours
that you can put forth.
And when you really do require that flexibility,
just go and speak to them.
- That's it for the show this week.
But please do keep sending in your questions
and any suggestions that you'd like us to delve into.
You can send them in in the comment section below
or via Facebook.
If you haven't done so already,
you can subscribe to GTN by clicking on the globe.
If you'd like to see one of our previous
Triathlon Training Explained shows,
on a relatively topical over training recovery,
you can see that by clicking down here.
- And if you're wondering
how to fit all of this training into your week,
we have made a video on how to train
when you're limited for time,
and that's just here.