Your First Triathlon, 2nd Ed. by Joe Friel

Author:Joe Friel
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937716134
Publisher: VeloPress

Time Commitment

The biggest factor in determining whether you should lift weights is how much time you have available to do it. If you just can’t find a way to fit even a few more minutes of strength-building exercises into your week once you’ve done your swim, bike, and run workouts, then strength training must be left out. Triathlon-specific training comes before strength training—you never have to lift weights in a triathlon. That’s why in the schedules suggested in Chapter 9 the strength workouts are listed as “optional.” Do them if you have time, but otherwise focus on the three sports of triathlon: swimming, biking, and running. But I suspect that it is possible to do some strength building with a little creative thinking about how you use your time.

The most important aspect of this program is consistency. Frequently missing strength workouts negates the reason for doing them. If you know now that you can’t get into the gym at least once each week, then don’t even start. If this is the case, you probably already have more to do in your life than you can fit in and need to devote your available time to swimming, biking, and running. Getting stronger will make you a better triathlete, but this is not as important as becoming more fit in the three main sports.

Consistency

In setting up a routine, the first issue is how often and on what days you will go to the gym. The schedule in Chapter 9 suggests that you fit in two strength workouts per week for the first seven weeks. If you can only go once, that is still effective. You’ll see some improvement over time if you’re consistent, although not as much as if you worked on strength twice every week. The two days are best separated by 72–96 hours. So, for example, one gym session on Monday and another on Thursday or Friday is just right. If you do the workouts within a three-day time frame, there will be a big gap until the next gym workout the following week. That gap will make the workouts slightly less effective.

Where to Work Out

Another thing to consider is where you will do the strength-building workouts. I have been referring to the gym, but that may not be an option for you. If you have some strength equipment at home, you can do it there. That may even save you time. Almost every exercise in this chapter can be done with stretch bands also. These are basically large rubber bands and can be purchased at sporting goods stores, online, or from catalogs.

Doubling Up

A lot of triathletes swim at their gym’s pool, so they do swim and weight workouts on the same day, one right after the other. This saves time spent driving back and forth. If you do that, make the swim workout the first session each time. It’s not a good idea to swim with muscles fatigued from weight lifting; that will cause you to build bad swim habits.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.