Posted: November 20, 2004

Triathlon: Simple Steps to a Better Season

By: Jason Gootman, MS, CSCS & Will Kirousis, BS, CSCS
Tri-Hard Sports Conditioning Systems
USA Triathlon & USA Cycling Certified Coaches
Certified Strength & Conditioning Coaches
www.tri-hard.com

Your 2004 triathlon season is over. Hopefully it was a positive season, filled with good experiences and positive changes in your performance! We bet that at this point, you are still excited from the races you participated in during 2004 and starting to look at how you can build on that momentum during the 2005 season.

In this article, we will look at how the simple steps of resting well, reflecting on your strong and weak points, shoring up your health habits, and becoming stronger and more powerful will set you up for your best performances yet in 2005.

Resting Well
This sounds way too easy to work, doesn’t it? After all, if you start training harder sooner than the competition you will have a step up on everyone else next year, right? WRONG. Regardless of how well the year went for you, when the competitive season is over you need at least a month of resting. This time may include some general exercise like hikes, aerobics classes, or coaching your kids’ soccer team, but it shouldn’t include “triathlon training”. Resting with the same conscientiousness that you train with will help you perform better than ever in 2005. You should not think of rest as “doing nothing”. Rather, you should view rest as the act of resting, an important part of the overall process of growing stronger as an athlete.

Reflecting on Your Strong and Weak Points
Reviewing your season and looking at how your strong points helped you and weak points held you back is a good practice at this point in the year. This information can help you set up an effective training program for the winter and coming season that maximizes your strong points while bringing up your weak points. This can be hard to do this since doing the things you are not as good at can be emotionally challenging. However, sometimes it is important to go straight at the things that are hard for you, and facing them head on, as the long term positive changes are well worth it! It is very gratifying to turn a weak point into a strong point!

Shoring up Your Health Habits
The off-season is a time when folks often think they can just let everything slide. This is not a good idea. Peak performance requires superb health. If you lose health, you lose performance. Engraining positive health habits by sticking to them year round is a tremendous way to steadily improve. For example, continue to foster good sleep habits by getting 8-9 hours of sleep each night, and getting to bed at a regular time. This allows your body-mind (you) the full opportunity to rejuvenate during this time of reduced training. Similarly, focus on eating a sound diet of minimally processed foods with the emphasis on meats/fish/eggs, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and whole grains/whole grain foods throughout the year. This gives your body what it needs to grow and stay well. Keeping a steady habit of health will help you perform stronger this coming year.

Becoming Stronger and More Powerful
Strength and power are the fundamental aspects of performance. As an endurance athlete, you don’t want to spend tons of time in the gym and you want to get the most positive effect from your strength/power training workouts. To do this, focus on exercises that are done standing and utilize large movements. Great examples include all forms of squats, lunges, step-ups, and standing pushing and pulling exercises. Exercises like these elicit strength/power gains from head-to-toe and everywhere in between. Keep the repetition range of your sets in the 4-10 range and perform 2-3 sets of each exercise with enough rest between sets to perform each set well (with good form and high force production). Two or three workouts per week, on non-consecutive days are plenty, with two being ideal for many folks. Resting well, reflecting on your strong and weak points, shoring up your health habits, and becoming stronger and more powerful will propel you into a great 2005 season! Have fun with it!

Jason Gootman MS, CSCS and Will Kirousis BS, CSCS coach endurance athletes of all levels, write for conditioning related magazines/journals, and provide educational services for private and professional groups about optimizing endurance sports performance through their company Tri-Hard Sports Conditioning Systems. Jason and Will, USA Triathlon and USA Cycling Certified Coaches, can be reached with questions or comments through their website www.tri-hard.com or via email at jason@tri-hard.com and will@tri-hard.com. respectively.