Swimming for Ironman

I think this is good advice. Consistent swimming. Building to a long set.

http://www.ironguides.net/swim-technique-part-2/

Filliol's philosophy

I often get asked about how best to prepare for a race. I’ve learned that the key for me is to focus on being as physically fit as I can be on the day. And so I focus on swimming, cycling and running almost exclusively. I add in some yoga and in the offseason some strength training.

So it was good to read that one of Canada’s top triathlon coaches, Joel Filliol, has a similar philiosophy. [Let me be clear that he had his philosophy first. I've read of his approach and other coaches in developing my own, combined with more than a decade in the sport.]

You can read Filliol’s response to several questions here:

http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com/2013/02/26/coach-talks-triathlon-

joel-filliol

Among the key things he says:

- athletes need ‘sustainable’ and ‘consistent’ training to improve – and it takes time

- the key to athletic success: conditioning, conditioning, conditioning

“… it’s about getting our athletes as fit as they can be and ready to race and express that.”

“If I give people advice, frequency is important in such that even short workouts are still really useful. If you only have time to swim 20 minutes, that’s better than nothing. And doing that more often. Even short runs-20 or 30 minutes-are much better than not doing those, and spread those throughout the week and you can achieve a good level of frequency.”

He also says be wary of coaches with whom many athletes become injured. He also says keep it simple, avoid making training complicated, avoid trying to be too sophisticated.

The importance of training on your own

Training on your own is very important – Coach Luis Vargas

The majority of the world champion triathletes train on their own quite a bit. However, your average local triathlete is usually not interested in training alone. They want to join a team, meet people, go out and use the sport as a social outlet. This is a good thing in many ways.

However, what I dislike is that it makes every session into a race. It becomes extremely difficult to let people go ahead. Every single workout is a session to exhaustion.

If these athletes do not also train by themselves and slow down it will be very difficult to develop the endurance required for our sport. As with speed, injury or illness is the only thing that will slow these athletes down. It would be best if days off were voluntary rather than forced upon these athletes.

*Vargas works with Mark Allen

Mark Allen's take on training

The reality is that many athletes don’t have coaches. Fortunately, there are a lot of books, websites and other resources to tap for advice. In his latest monthly newsletter, Mark Allen looks at how you should plan your training season.

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Divide your training into three basic parts: base, speed and taper.

BASE

Base training is neither high intensity nor is it low intensity. It’s working out at speeds and weekly training volumes that challenge you but that you know you can sustain, continue with for at least six weeks, and continue to build on after that. This phase can last 6-12 weeks or more. It’s a time when you gradually increase your training volume and/or training speeds as your body adapts to the training stress with improvements in fitness. The main goal here is patience. Don’t burn out. Avoid injury. Feel good, not exhausted. Look forward to your workouts. Pat yourself on the back for a job well done after each and every training session. Stay healthy. Train, recover, and train some more. It’s money in the bank for later. No big withdrawals yet. Save that for racing. These are all the mantras for your base phase.

SPEED

Speed is your testing for racing. It is higher intensity, even higher intensity than any speed you will go in a race, just for a much shorter period of time. A little goes a long way. Daily high intensity training will burn you out in about three weeks or less. Even weekly speedwork can take a toll if sustained for months on end. Four to eight weeks total in one stretch is usually the limit before fitness starts to go in the opposite direction and breakdown exceeds rebuilding.

TAPER

Tapering is the last phase leading up to big races. Here training is dropped down about 25% per week for 3-4 weeks leading up to your “A” races. It puts you in super-recovery mode and is required to bring out the true fitness that you have built. Most triathletes never see their real fitness because it is masked by residual fatigue left over from lots of great training but not fully utilized because their taper was too short. At MarkAllenOnline you start to decrease your training volume four weeks out from the biggest race on your schedule. And it works!

CoachesBC

It's time to rethink your approach to training.