Triathlon Training Archives - Mike's Triathlon

December 9, 2016

The Need to Monitor Fitness Levels to Improve.

Being fit and healthy is a great way to spend free time – not just because it’s what the media is pushing on us, but it strengths you from the inside out and gives you a much better shot at a longer life compared to those who aren’t active and don’t do much moving around or pushing their bodies.

There’s also a reason fitness trackers have become such a big hit with things like Jawbone, FitBit and MyZone storming the markets at the moment. It’s not just because people want to see how much they’ve been running, or pushing themselves. For the ones who wear them, it’s because they need to monitor and keep track.

The Benefits

Monitoring your fitness has a range of benefits:

Motivational

Seeing what you’ve managed to do can push you to do more, or do better, and have you continuously working to surpass yourself. This isn’t a bad thing, as long as you listen to your body’s limits and know when it’s had enough and that you’re not pushing it too hard, which can end up with you doing more damage than by just exercising and can even put a stop to your activities if you need to have time to heal.

Improvement

A sure fire way to see that you’re strengthening up and that you’re getting fitter is when you can see that you’ve pushed yourself further than you’ve managed before. If you keep working out at the same intensity, you’re only ever going to get so fit, you’re never going to get past that stage. Being able to see that you’ve run further, faster, or lifted stronger and hiked your BPM means that you can track these changes.

Competitive

Some people do very well if they’re faced with a challenge. Monitoring yourself, with friends, means that you can all work together to try and get past one another. This stops it from just being about getting fit but also makes it more about winning and gives you a whole new reason to push yourself.
Humans tend to be very results driven – we like to see that it’s making a difference, and see the tangible evidence before we’re happy. Even if we don’t see a change in our body, we can see it on the tracker that we’re doing something, we’re making a difference and we can see where we’re improving

The reason the market has done so well in a short number of years is because there was a space for it to create its own niche, because it’s something that people – while they can live without it – didn’t know they needed it until it was available to them and there. They’re only going to improve, too, and get better as the years go on with more and more features becoming available to the individual to make sure that they’re getting the most out of each and every one of their workouts and can see exactly where they’ve improved.

October 30, 2010

Triathlon Training – Swim Fast to Get Fast Part 2

By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com

Triathlon Training - Swim Fast In an earlier column, I encouraged you to try some fast 25s to boost your swimming speed. People have been trying the workouts and, lo and behold, they are swimming faster. Excellent!

Now that you’ve mastered some of the shorter workouts, let’s bump the distance up some. Below are new workouts for you to try:

Workout No. 1

Complete a mixed warm-up totaling 500 to 1,000 yards/meters.

After the warm-up, go through the following set two or three times:

2 x 25 — Build speed throughout each 25
2 x 25 — Swim half the distance as fast as you can, it doesn’t matter if it is first half or last half. Swim the “other half” easy.
1 x 50 — All-out fast
1 x 50 — Easy

Make your swim interval something that gives you 5 to 10 seconds rest on the 25s, about 20 seconds of rest on the 50-all-out-fast and about 90 seconds on the 50 easy.

After the speedy set, head into your main set. The main set can include swims in the 100 to 300 range.

Workout No. 2

Complete a mixed warm-up totaling 500 to 1,000.

After the warm-up, go through the following set two to four times:

4 x 25 — Build speed throughout each 25 (Make the swim interval something that gives you about 10 seconds of rest.)
1 x 50 — All-out fast (Make the swim interval something that gives you about 20 seconds of rest.)
1 x 25 — Easy (Make the swim interval something that gives you 15 to 20 seconds of rest.)
1 x 25 — All-out fast (Make the swim interval something that gives you about 10 seconds of rest.)

After the speedy set, head into your main set. The main set can include swims in the 100 to 300 range.

Optional Main Set

An optional main set to include after Workout No. 1 or 2 follows:

3 x 100 on a swim interval that gives you 10 to 15 seconds of rest. Swim all of these at a steady pace.
3 x 100 on a swim interval that gives you 15 to 20 seconds rest. Negative-split each 100.
3 x 100 on a swim interval that gives you 20 to 30 seconds rest. Swim these so that each 100 is faster than the previous one. The last one is a fast one.

If you have the time and fitness, go through the set of 100s twice.

Workout No. 3

Complete a mixed warm-up totaling 500 to 1,000.

After the warm-up, do 4 x 25 building speed throughout each 25 (Make the swim interval something that gives you about 10 seconds of rest.)

Take one minute of rest, then do:

6 x 50 — All-out fast. No holding back. Expect the fastest one to be the second or third one. It’s okay if speed fades some, just swim fast. Make the swim interval something that gives you 80 to 100 seconds of rest between each 50 swim.

After the speedy set, head into your main set. Keep it primarily aerobic. If you swim really, really fast (like the instructions tell you to do) you won’t have much high-end speed for the rest of the workout.

The biggest mistake you can make in the workouts above is to try to be a Sammie Save-up. Of course there are times when you should be holding some speed in reserve so you can negative-split a swim; but not in these workouts. Cut loose and see how fast you can go.

How much did you improve? If you’ve tried these workouts, head to USAT’s Facebook page and tell us about it!

Gale Bernhardt was the 2003 USA Triathlon Pan American Games and 2004 USA Triathlon Olympic coach for both the men’s and women’s teams. Her first Olympic experience was as a personal cycling coach at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games. Thousands of athletes have had successful training and racing experiences using Gale’s pre-built, easy-to-follow training plans. For more information, click here. Let Gale and Active Trainer help you succeed.

This article originally appeared on Active.com—your source for event information, training plans, expert advice, and everything you need to connect with the sport you love.

October 26, 2010October 26, 2010

Triathlon Training – Swim Fast to Get Fast

By Gale Bernhardt
For Active.com

Triathlon Training - Swim Fast I completely agree that doing form drills to practice good swimming technique is critical to the process of becoming a faster swimmer. That written, you cannot expect that slow and purposeful drills will increase your sustained swimming speed if you never swim fast.

Certainly, a beginning swimmer can make significant gains in speed because they are starting with a baseline limited to no fitness and skills; but after a few weeks, they will reach a speed plateau. They cannot improve their average speed for long swims. Even intermediate and advanced distance swimmers can hit a speed ceiling.

These more advanced swimmers can often be found churning out set after set of repeat 100s to 500s with very short rest intervals. These swimmers also like long and steady open water swims. Managing a certain level of discomfort for a long period makes them feel like they accomplished something in the workout.

But, what if you are stuck at your current speed and can’t seem to get faster?

One answer seems obvious: You need to swim faster in order to get faster. Swimming fast and experiencing a load of lactate is not a feeling long-distance swimmers or triathletes enjoy. They would rather swim 1,000 or 2,000 steady than swim six all-out, fast 50s—even if there is generous rest between each 50.

Speed It Up

Let’s save the fast 50 workouts for another column. For this column, I’ll have you sneak up on some speed with shorter efforts. These workouts come from Masters swim coach Scott Allen. He is a former USA Swimming staff member and helped Susan Von der Lippe qualify for the Olympic trials this year. As well as Olympians, he has coached many triathletes and age-group swimmers of all ages.

He believes, and I agree with him, that you need to swim fast early in the workout, before you have any accumulated fatigue. You need to begin with short distances and then build the distance of fast swimming over time, in a progression.

To get you started on the path to faster swimming, try to do one of the sets outlined in this column after your warm-up swim, but prior to the main set.

For all the sets, the 25s are on a swim interval that gives you around 15 seconds rest. The 50s and 100s are done on an interval that gives you 20 to 30 seconds rest. If you swim in a long course pool, get creative about modifying the workout to achieve the goals in the set.

Option 1
Repeat the following set two to three times:
2 x 25 Build speed throughout the 25
2 x 25 Swim half the distance as fast as you can, it doesn’t matter if it is first half or last half. Swim the other half easy.
1 x 25 All-out fast
1 x 50 Very relaxed and easy

Option 2
Repeat the following set two or three times:
1 x 25 Steady swimming
1 x 25 Build speed throughout the 25
1 x 25 Swim half the distance fast
1 x 25 Easy

Option 3
Repeat the following set two times. Wear fins for the entire set:
2 x 100 Do 25 kick, 25 swim, 25 kick, 25 swim
2 x 25 Kick fast
2 x 25 Swim fast—really fast
1 x 50 easy

Include one of these fast swimming segments between your warm-up and main set at least once, and preferably twice, per week for the next six to eight weeks. On your other swim days you can include form drills between the warm-up and the main set.

At the end of your experiment, answer this: did it gradually get easier to swim fast on the short sets? Were you able to swim faster in some of your longer sets too? Did you bump your overall speed? Think about your experience, and how it can impact your swim in future events.

This article originally appeared on Active.com—your source for event information, training plans, expert advice, and everything you need to connect with the sport you love.

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