- The biggest wastes of time for
beginner triathlete.
These are things that could potentially kick you out
of the sport before you're even in it.
(upbeat instrumental music)
You'll be better for it down the road, trust me.
Morning, trainiacs.
Just had a solid, there he goes, there he goes,
there he goes, there he goes,
chat with Coach Pat, little debrief.
It's been a good few weeks since we've actually talked
about triathlon.
Mostly just sent him hate mail, he deserves it.
Today, you know what we're getting into?
The biggest wastes of time for beginner triathletes.
Like in your first year of triathlon,
what are the things that you want to absolutely avoid
because they ain't going to help you that much.
They may help you later,
but you need bang for your buck right now.
That's what we're going to give you.
Okay, so the first thing is that swimming,
obviously the Achilles heel for most new triathletes,
and in that first year of swimming,
let's assume that you did some swimming as a kid,
or even like you can barely swim,
and you're not somebody who grew up swimming
or was a college swimmer, you're just getting into this.
The last thing you want to do is get into that pool
and be thrashing around and just go swimming,
because you haven't even developed the technique to swim,
and what's going to happen is you're going to go in there,
you're going to have a bad experience,
you're going to associate that bad experience with stress,
you're going to get stressed out,
and you're going to condition yourself and your brain
to go in there, thrash, and be in a stressful situation,
then when you get into a race, stressful situation.
So what you want to do is start doing learn to swim drills.
We have learn to swim drills,
we have a learn to swim program,
go to a learn to swim program, hire a coach.
Get the foundation to be able to swim comfortably.
Basically, if you can't yet swim 400 meters
without being out of breath
or having to take a huge break after it,
you need to back off and learn to swim.
You'll be better for it down the road, trust me.
Now second thing you don't want to do
if you're new to the sport is if you have no background
in fitness whatsoever, your body is not going
to be very strong, so just going into triathlon,
where you're doing repetitive movements,
tens of thousands of repetitions of swimming,
cycling, running, turning things over
in a really linear fashion,
your body's going to break down
because it doesn't have the strength
to keep you upright and to keep you very stable,
so in that first year of triathlon,
I would recommend not just doing the individual sports,
but backing off of the individual sports enough
that you've got time to do things like the core routine
that I just did, a little bit of strength work,
building your body's foundation
to be able to do the sport for years to come,
not just get through the race and limp through the training.
You might get injured and then you're out.
Woo, it's warming up out there, I love it.
Now the next thing that will end up being
a catastrophic mistake involves running.
Now running, when you first get into running or triathlon,
it is the cracker jack box of injuries.
If you're going to get injured
in the first year of triathlon training, or really any year,
odds are it's going to have something to do with running.
So just starting running without figuring out how to run
in a way that doesn't beat up your body is really important,
and the key to that is learning how to lean forward
and have your center of gravity pull you,
while as you're running, you're landing under
your center of gravity, not out front here,
where when you land out front here,
that shock comes up through your hip,
through your entire body.
Now it's okay to heel strike and it's okay
to forefoot strike.
Either one is just fine, but the key
is learning how to lean forward
and landing with your foot under your center of gravity,
and that's going to stop a lot of the impact
and a lot of the injuries that you might go through.
Now the next potentially really big error
that you might be making
in your first year of triathlon training that's very common
is avoiding brick workouts, going from the bike
to the run as quickly as possible.
I recommend that you do, at least, bare minimum,
six brick workouts going from the bike to the run
before your first event.
In our case, we do, even during off season,
four to six months out from a race, like right now,
I'm still doing one, if not two brick workouts a week.
Now related to that, but kind of not,
is understanding in your first year
how important the bike is.
Being strong on the bike,
having the ability to complete the distance
of the bike leg of whatever race you're going into,
without any problems, like if you're doing
a sprint distance race, doing 20K is like nothing, got it.
Being able to do 30K rides, 35, 40K rides, no problem.
That's not just going to help your bike fitness in a race,
it's also going to help you get off of the bike
and still be fresh for the run,
so it's going to also help your run.
Brick workouts, spend a lot of time in the saddle.
You're going to be happy that you did.
Whoa, I promise you that I haven't lit my crotch.
It's actually coming from,
it really looks like.
Oh, it's coming from a reflection down there.
And then the last mistake that you might make
as you start getting into triathlon
is not having a regular schedule.
I was guilty of this for years
because I was coaching myself.
I ended up, basically every single day,
thinking to myself and battling with what should I do today.
Should I work out hard, should I not work out hard?
As you even have that little bit of space
to doubt how hard you should be training,
it's going to demotivate you,
it's going to make it harder to even get training,
so whether you hire a coach,
whether you get a training plan,
whether you get a training partner
that just lays out what the schedule is going to be for you.
If you don't have to think every single day
what your workout is going to be,
you just have to wake up and say okay, this is swim day,
this is what it says for me to do on the plan,
this is what coach is telling me to do.
Bam, it's a matter of just showing up and doing the work,
and I know that if you're getting into the sport
and you want to do it, the motivation is already there.
That's not an issue.
What you want to avoid is having that space
to doubt that motivation.
So there you go, trainiacs.
Those are probably the five most common things
that you need to make sure that you're avoiding
if you're getting into the sport for the first year.
These are things that could potentially kick you out
of the sport before you're even in it, or demotivate you,
both of which we don't want to do.
We want you to be a trainiac and hang out with us
for decades to come.
I'll be here.
Hopefully you will be too.
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