Triathlon Work Outs 101

Are you an experienced triathlete, looking to get an edge on your competitions by working smarter and not harder? Or are you a person who is just looking to get in shape to complete their first triathlon? Well if you said yes to either of these questions… then I have some answers. Without any guidance or coaching, it can be very difficult to know how much, when, and where to train. Some people believe that if they just train for one particular part of the triathlon that this will improve every part of there triathlon. And to some extent this belief is true, but not fully true. One must work all of the muscles through the various exercise, and gain the technique for each.

Swimming can be one of the hardest areas to know how to train for. You will not benefit from just going to your local pool and swimming for an hour straight at a moderate pace. This method does not get your heart rate up, and causes one to loose focus on technique easily. Instead of these long, meaningless swims, it is better to break up your workout into different sets, that vary in distance, speed, and muscle focus. One can access these particular sets from pre made work outs, focused on their particular swim distance.

Bike training like swimming and running needs to have a focus for each work out, even if one day is an easy over distance ride. Bike work outs obviously need to be altered around the particular distance that one is training for. But some general work outs, include, hill repeats with active rest, speed intervals with active rest, recovery days, over distance rides, and time trials. All of these work outs can, also be done indoors on a trainer. A trainer can be very useful, because many times it could be an inconvenience for you to ride while its still light, or the weather could plague you. The trainers then allows you to still get your work out in for the day.

The run portion can be related strongly to bike training with its proportional distances, of its varying work out types. One tip for running, that varies from the other portions of the triathlon is, not to overdue your mileage and hard days. Its good to have frequent recovery days for running that come after a interval day.

For the best results, these work outs should increase in length, frequency, and difficulty very gradually.

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