- Good morning Trainiacs,
as I'm walking around the Pain Cavern here
just looking at my dwindling strength setup.
I've been watching our pal, Lucy Charles,
pro-triathlete, just sweetheart of a gal
talk about strength training.
- The reason I pretty much do a daily core routine
every single day of the week.
- Now strength is a huge performance enhancer
to what we do as endurance athletes
but Lucy is a pro-triathlete.
She has nothing but time to train.
Now how can we take some of the lessons
that Lucy shares in that video
and apply it to our training in such a way
that doesn't mean we're doing strength
every single day?
There's one clip where Lucy summarizes
in just a couple of seconds,
what I think we need to know about strength training
as it relates to endurance sports.
Here it is.
- It's like a 10, 15 minute routine,
we've kinda kept it the same over
the last couple of years.
Really stripped it down to the key exercises
that we find that work,
so it's quite time efficient.
Really focusing on that core stability
that is so important for
mainly running, like I do find
I feel the biggest benefits of running
just because I feel stable when I'm running
and I feel strong.
So core stability between four to seven times a week
depending on how much time we have available in the week.
- So the key things that Lucy's talking about there
that I think we should take from it
is how clearly she feels more stable and strong.
Now a lot of people are expecting that
their strength training inclusion into their sport
might make them big and bulky
and they're like ugh, I don't know.
Strength training is less about that
when it comes to performance enhancement
and endurance sports, and it's much more
about just being able to withstand the pounding
of running, of biking, of swimming
and all of the side forces that are placed on us
as we're doing these sports,
and being able to feel stable, strong, centered,
not like we're floppy.
But she also says in there
is that her and her husband Reece
have stripped down their routine
to the key exercises that they think are going to work.
I think a lot of people come into this
thinking that it has to be really, really sophisticated
and very complex and super time consuming.
Well, she's talking about 10 to 15 minutes
four to seven times a week
and she's a pro-triathlete
so we're looking at anywhere from 40 to say, 75 minutes
of core strength and stability work
every single week.
That's not a huge amount when you think
that the average amount of training time
is probably nine to ten hours a week
for us age group athletes.
So I think what we take from this
that is really key is a, know that it helps
with strength and stability
and be less focused on putting on bulk
or putting on massive amounts of power
and really upping your weights.
Just look at functionally, what is the sensation
that you're going to improve.
Two, keep it simple
and do as little as possible
to get the effect that you want.
And three, don't think that it needs to take up
as much time as swimming, biking, running,
it doesn't have to be three to four hours,
you don't have to add on a fourth discipline
and all of a sudden be a crossfit athlete.
With that said, Lucy shares a lot
in this entire video, so we're gonna go through it
and I'm gonna pick out some of the points
that I think are really, really beneficial
that we can incorporate into our training.
- There's a lot of conflict in science
around strength training and cardio training
at the same time, so I do try and spread out
these sessions so my body kind of does the stimulus
from the strength training
and then recovers before it would do a cardio based session.
- I want to just talk about that.
A lot of the conflicting evidence that's out there
is showing that there's a detrimental effect
from strength training
into cardio and endurance performance.
Now, when I started digging into the science of that
the conflicting evidence might show either
it actually slows you down,
or it is a massive performance enhancer.
What I found, when you start sifting through the studies
is that those studies that show that
you actually can slow down
and it can be a detrimental effect
are when strength training is really intense
added on just to the top, let's say you're training
10 hours a week and then you just say
all right, well I've got to add on strength,
boom, I'm gonna go to 13 hours a week,
and it's designed in a way that is taking away
intensity points.
So what we actually do in our app
and our training program
is we load up on strength training
at a time where endurance training is lower,
this is during the baseline fitness building
portion of our plans, when there isn't a race
that is on the schedule
that you're specifically training for.
Now because at this point,
the endurance training is at a lower intensity level
but lower volume, there's really not
a lot of energy points spent
in endurance training.
We use that time to spend those energy points
in strength training.
Now when a training plan preparation period comes around
we dial the strength training back
from as much as three times a week
down to one time a week
so that we can put those energy points
into the endurance training,
to make sure that the strength training
isn't detrimental to the endurance training
and the studies show that when strength training
is designed in a way to support your endurance training,
that's when you actually get those studies
that show hands down, strength training
is a performance enhancer for your endurance training.
- It's usually on a Monday and a Friday
and all I do on those days is a swim around those sessions.
So I can spread the workouts out,
I can get the maximal training benefit from each session
and I don't feel like I'm having to cram in the day
'cause there's nothing worse
than having to rush through a strength session
and maybe rushing some of the movements
and ended up getting a niggle
'cause you did the exercise slightly wrong.
- So Lucy's talking about when she schedules
strength sessions.
She says that she does them on Mondays and Fridays
which are lighter training days for her otherwise.
Now, personally here's my take on it,
my approach on it,
because she is a pro-athlete
and her training loads are much, much higher than ours
and her life stress is actually designed
to be fairly low, so that she can train a lot
and then spend the rest of her non-training time
recovering really hard,
it's different than us amateur athletes.
Now us amateur athletes, I'm of the opinion
that you need to have probably two days a week
that are very low intensity,
and let those low intensity days
be low intensity.
So I consider strength training actually
to be fairly high intensity
so I actually recommend in our training plan
that we pair strength training with more intense days
so that the less intense days can stay low intensity.
What Lucy's getting at in this
that you have to understand with the level
of fitness that she has,
is that just doing a swim and just doing a strength session
is low intensity for her
so that she can execute it well.
It's a little bit different for us
so we have to understand the nuance
of how much they train, how much their body can handle
that is very different from what us age groupers can handle.
- Yes, in my gym program
I have been doing over the last couple of months,
I'm very lucky that with my swim background
I used to do Olympic lifting twice a week
every single week, so I have a good knowledge
of exercises that work for me.
The right techniques of how to do these exercises.
So over the years, we've developed our strength
and conditioning program.
At the moment, we are working with an expert
in that field, so I don't want to give way too much
because it's kind of his knowledge,
it's his kind of intellectual property as it would be.
So we do a program that covers all the muscle groups
needed for swim, bike, and run.
- Things that I want to pull out of those few sentences
that Lucy shared,
one is that she works with an expert
and two, is that it covers
all of the basic muscle groups needed
for swim, bike, and run.
I think where a lot of endurance athletes
end up going wrong with strength training
is that they just do strength training
in a way that they associate traditional strength training
in a gym with what you do.
So they go and they do traditional movements,
not necessarily movements
that are specifically designed to enhance
swim, bike, run training.
When we were designing the 25 hours
of guided strength training workouts
that we've incorporated into our app,
we ended up working with somebody
and instead of starting with all right,
what kind of movements do you want to do?
We started with what is the physiology
of most endurance athletes?
They have tight chests,
they have glute medius and stabilizer muscles
that aren't quite as activated as they need to be
and need to be turned on.
They need to be opened up a little bit more,
they need to stretch out the front of their body
and then strengthen their posterior chain.
Then we said all right, if that's their current situation
and that's what they need,
how do we design a plan around that?
As opposed to just starting with traditional
strength training movements and figuring out
if they did complement endurance training or not.
So I think that it's important to work with somebody
who knows the unique requirements
of endurance athletes.
- We also go through different phases
throughout the year in the program that we're doing
so the majority of our strength training
is really in that endurance range,
we're endurance athletes
but we do also spend some time throughout the year
doing like, a strength block
with the rep ranges are less
and the weights are heavier.
But generally, we're doing high rep range
and slightly lower weight.
- And the last thing that I want to mention
is exactly what Lucy talked about there,
that the majority of the year
they are spending most of their time
training in higher rep ranges
to work on muscular endurance.
This is really, really beneficial
when you have a race in mind,
and when your swim, bike, run,
your endurance training is at a very high level
because you don't want to really be working on
breaking down your muscles and building them back up
in a really big strength focus.
And Lucy is a high performance athlete
so her race season is really long.
Now when she's out of race season
I imagine that is when she is working
on traditional strength, like heavier, heavier weights
building strength.
What we do is very similar,
that when an athlete is out of race preparation training,
the weights are heavier, the weights are more intense,
it's more focused on building strength.
During a training preparation phase for a race,
that's when the intensity comes down a fair bit,
the weights are a little bit lighter,
it's more about muscle activation
and being stable, and strong, and muscular endurance
and not so much building up strength
because the body is so focused on building up
your endurance capabilities.
I want to go ahead and wrap it up there,
thanks to Lucy, Reece,
Lucy's sister Holly, Paz, everyone at Team Charles Barkley
for letting us analyze their video
and use their footage here.
Their video to that, if you want to see the full thing
is right over there,
and if you want a strength program
that's included with all of your endurance training
you can check us out at the link in the description below
where you can use our app for free for 14 days
and see if it's something that you find beneficial for you.
And if you found this video
and the advice that we and Team Charles Barkley gave
helpful for you with your strength training,
as a thank you, I would love
if you hit the like button below.
Later Trainiacs.