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ironguides: Biggest mistakes made by triathletes, Part 1
By Vinnie Santana
1/7/2009 |
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As our sport grows bigger and bigger, the same mistakes are being made over and over by beginners. The reason is a mix of lack of information and I must say that common sense sometimes can be 100% wrong when we are talking about triathlon.
Mistake #1: Triathlon is SwimBikeRun and not Swim+Bike+Run:
This is by far the first thing that people should understand. If you are trying to be the best swimmer you can, the stronger cyclist of your group rides and the fastest runner in the local 10k, you are not aiming to improve your triathlon performance.
The main reason is that all the disciplines alone require a totally different training and technique than when combined in a triathlon race or training plan.
If you want to swim fast in the pool, you better have a perfect technique. For that you will need to spend half of your training time on drills, do kicking sets very often, and work on flexibility. That would be OK, as long as you have 10+ hours a week in the pool, like all the masters swimmers and competitive age-groupers. If we consider 6 sessions of 90min a day, like a typical serious master program, they spend most of their training time in the water. At most, they do some core strength and flexibility work.
But what about triathletes? Considering that you swim 2-3x a week, how much faster will you actually get by spending half of that time on technique, kicking sets, etc? I’m not saying that triathletes should ignore the technique, but when it comes to open water swimming, in a wetsuit, you need SPECIFIC technique, that means a stroke that combines a high stroke rate, little kick, and the most important of it all, strength in that pull. Think about that for your next swim session: should you spend half of your session on technique or strength work that will teach you an open water technique?
With Cycling it is not much different, we all live in the era of Lance Armstrong, the greatest rider of all time, who spins at 110rpm and looks effortless, how can he be wrong? Do you want to ride fast? Spin more! Then you head out to your group ride on the weekend and everyone rides at a high cadence and convince you to do so too. Even if you naturally think that a lower cadence feels more “comfortable”, you ride with a lower effort and still go pretty fast!
This is exactly what we are looking for in a triathlon race. The bike has the goal to get your heart rate lower from the swim, get you to T2 in a decent split so you can head out with a lower heart rate, using different motor patterns from the bike (fresher legs) and ready to post a quick run split.
Quick doesn’t mean fast at all! A good male age-grouper runs a 40min 10k, this is the warm up pace of real runners. With ironman racing, it is even worse - world class athletes struggle to break a 7 minute mile pace. This is the reason why your speed world should be very carefully planned on your training, done mostly to teach you how to run fast. That will increase efficiency in your race-pace, but be careful with those track sets that work on your speed for too long, that effort could be used more wisely.
Next time that you try a different technique or training plan, make sure it is not just one of triathlon’s disciplines. See how that will affect the big picture of your training and race, you are a triathlete after all and what really counts it is that time on the finish line picture!
Vinnie
Coach Vinnie Santana is ironguides’ Brazilian “Young Gun” and fastest coach! An 8’50” Ironman athlete at age 22 a few years ago, Vinnie is “ex-TBB” and came out of teamTBB’s Triathlon Kids program in Brazil. Vinnie’s great feel for Method training and enthusiastic, caring approach for every athlete shows through in his highly detailed, energized communications with his athletes. Based in Bangkok, Vinnie coaches online athletes from around the world and provides in-person coaching to a strong squad of local athletes. More about Coach Vinnie here.
Vinnie Santana, Coach - SE Asia
http://www.ironguides.net
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