It's officially the off-season, and now is the perfect time to focus on improving your weaknesses as an athlete, especially refining your form/technique and doing the type of training you are not so good at. If you lack top-end speed/power, then do some sprints! If you're not good at hills, then ride/run some hills! Get a variety in of the areas/intensities you are not good at and become better at them! If you live in an area where running and especially cycling becomes limited during the winter months, increase the intensity of your workouts to get more "bang" for your training "buck." Additionally, if you lack strength in any of the three disciplines, now might be the perfect opportunity to increase sport-specific functional strength by doing some very specific strength exercises and drills. Finally, the proper execution of "block-training" can allow you to make new jumps in fitness by focusing more on just one or two disciplines while putting the other(s) into maintenance mode. If you are currently a client of ours, then you already know what I'm talking about!
Here's the point: Don't waste your off-season logging long, slow, "base-building" miles and doing the same things you have been doing every other off-season! While aerobic (base) training is important, there are several more benefits to reap from doing a variety of intensities that include aerobic intensity. Let us help you insert the right kinds and quantities of intensity and sport-specific strength to help you get faster and get the most out of your precious, often limited, training time.
Myth Buster: Cross-Training
Contrary to what you may have read or what your training partners may have told you, Cross-training (use of non-triathlon activities to improve overall fitness) is probably not doing what you hope it will. Cross-Training (P90X, Cross-Country Skiing, yoga, kick-boxing, etc.) will help improve your overall health and may even improve/maintain your aerobic (cardiovascular) conditioning. The problem lies in the fact that fitness has two components: fitness of the muscles, and fitness of the heart and lungs. Muscle "fitness" can only be trained (improved) by doing sport specific activities, which are limited to 1. the sport itself, and 2. sport specific strength/resistance movements that mimic the sport in question or provide stabilization to the muscles involved. Fitness of the heart and lungs is trained by doing anything that gets your heart rate up for a prolonged period of time. For non-couch potatoes (most triathletes), our heart-and-lung-fitness (cardiovascular conditioning) is fairly good, meaning that cross-training isn't very helpful in terms of making you a faster triathlete. Assuming your goal is to become a better triathlete, cross-training is not going to magically make us faster at swimming, biking, or running.
Cross-Training has its place:
-- Staying active during vacation or the winter months when swimming, biking, running are either not available or difficult.
-- overcoming an injury (for example, doing stair-stepper or elliptical when getting over a running injury)
-- getting the family involved in endurance activities
-- variety during the off-season to avoid burnout and take a break from triathlon training
-- limited training options due to weather, travel, or location
-- your goals with triathlon are more health and recreational-oriented, rather than being competitive, time, or results-based
Here's the point: Specificity Rules! To improve at X, you have to practice X! Don't do Y or Z if your goal is to improve at X. To get REALLY, REALLY, REALLY good at X, you have to practice X consistently, frequently, intelligently, and for a long time (~10,000 hours to become world class)!!
Helping you get faster,
TriKirk Coaches,
0 comments:
Post a Comment