Even though we’re lucky enough to escape the snow during winter, we still enjoy getting on the treadmills and trainers once in awhile. Here’s a couple of our favourite workouts that make time FLY!
Treadmill Workout: 55-60 minutes, but very easy to add or decrease the time. We always set the treadmill at at least 1% incline.
–9 x 5 minutes, increasing the speed by 0.5 MPH every 5 minutes. This ends up being a total increase of 4 MPH over 45 minutes. Start slow! For Trevor it looks like:
5 min @ 7.5MPH
5 min @ 8.0MPH
5 min @ 8.5MPH
5 min @ 9.0MPH
5 min @ 9.5MPH
5 min @ 10.0MPH
5 min @ 10.5MPH
5 min @ 11.0MPH
5 min @ 11.5MPH
Some days the last 5 minutes is extremely hard, so we’ll drop the incline to 0 for the last interval. Or, every minute, increase the speed by 0.1 instead of a full 0.5 for the entire interval.
After the last interval, go straight into:
10 x 1 min at slow pace and 0% incline (Trevor at 8.0 MPH), increasing gradient by 1% every minute. The last 3 minutes of this end up being uncomfortable: Example: 8.0MPH at 9% for last minute.
Cool down as desired.
Once in awhile you have to leave your devices at home. Forget the GPS, forget the heart rate monitor, forget the power, forget your interval timer and portable lactate measuring kit. Who cares how far you ride, who cares how long it takes you to run your normal route. Heck, don’t even count your laps in the pool.
All this stuff is great, and don’t get us wrong, we use them (maybe not the lactate thing). But, on more than one workout during a week we will forget all the numbers and just go workout. We look at the clock when we leave, and look at it when we come back. Sometimes not even that.
This gets you in tune with your body and allows you to really enjoy the training and realize the purpose of it -simply to make you feel good and improve yourself physically. Do you really need to know that your avg HR was only 140 for that 5 mile stretch? Yes, on some occasions you do, but once in awhile it does not matter. We would even be willing to say that MOST of the time it does not matter.
Try it some time. Go out and ride your bike like you’re a kid with a sucker in their mouth. Go run up to the top of that hill you see in the distance – how far is it?? What if I go anaerobic?? Who freaking cares!! Just do it, you’ll get fitter no doubt.
When you’ve got a long day of training on tap, one involving all three sports, consider basing yourself out of your car or gym locker for the day. It’s a great way to speed up the switch from one sport to the next, and it eliminates any temptation to [...]
Depending on how your winter training schedule is coming along, you may be getting close to some of your early season races and you might want to think about incorporating some speed work (or change up your current speed focus days). Treadmills are very handy for speed work, but there has to be a balance between indoor sessions and outdoor sessions if you truly want to see gains on the open road.
The limitation behind a treadmill is that you are really just trying to keep up instead of propelling your body mass forward. You do work very similar muscles, but it is harder to gain real-world speed. A treadmill is excellent for helping you work on quick leg turnover, and it can be a great tool when you are lacking motivation to push the pace outside, but if you really want to be able to maintain that leg speed during a race you need some outside time on a 400m track, long dirt trails, or smooth open road with no distractions. That said, getting inside for some speed workouts can limit risk of injury. In general, most treadmills offer more shock absorption than the open road (though we’ve been on a couple that feel worse) and you can easily fine tune your pace.
One thing, however, is that it almost always seems easier to hold that given pace OUTSIDE, than it does on the treadmill. You would think the opposite would be true, but we’ve always found that we have to work a lot harder to hit the machine’s pace readout, than to hold that same pace on the track. Again, we would bet that comes down your body mass being in motion, helping you maintain some speed.
An excellent way to loosen up the ol’ bod from the day’s previous activities is to swim in the evening for recovery. Even if you feel wasted from a hard workout, it is amazing how much better you feel after a dip in the pool to revel at the [...]
As triathletes we’re very devoted to freestyle swimming. That, combined with hours in the aero position can lead to some extremely tight pecs, lats, and triceps, at the same time leaving your back and upper shoulder muscles relatively unused. If you continue in this manor without strengthening the opposing muscles, and stretching the freestyle specific muscles, you will more than likely run in to some shoulder pains that will leave you out of the pool nursing an injury.
These 5 simple exercises are perfect for balancing your back and shoulder muscles, helping to prevent needless injury in the pool. Each exercise is done immediately following the previous, no rest, and about 10 reps per arm for each exercise. Twice through. Choose a very light weight, the first two exercises will feel extremely easy, by the time you finish the 3rd and 4th the burn will set in making the 5th very hard. You are not looking to bulk up with this exercise, it is more than enough to keep the weight light and focus on higher reps. Your shoulders and swim times will love you!!
If you’re reading this tip – you’re lucky. I would consider it one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned as triathletes.
As promised in the last tip about avoiding orthotics, here’s some great ideas to get you going on strengthening your feet. Having strong feet will help eliminate the need to throw corrective support into your shoes, and help you get rid of those lingering injuries. Essentially, what you’re doing with orthotics, is making up for something that’s missing (or wrongly thought to be missing) in your basic foot structure. Pronation or is not necessarily a bad thing, it is your body’s way of cushioning some of the blow from the impact of a run stride. You simply have to have strong feet and ankles to keep from getting injured. A great way to see this is to walk bare foot. If you’re pronating while walking bare foot – why try to correct it with supportive insoles? If anything, orthotics or supportive insoles are a band-aid. They’ll help the problem for a while, but then that part of your body will get even weaker and further problems will arise. We’ve personally had issues with this. We have high arches and assumed we needed some sort of support underneath. What this did was make them weak from under-use (an arch after all is a structure that gets stronger when pressed on from above), and we both developed some annoying pains in our heels and toes. Thankfully we caught it quickly and didn’t simply upgrade to the next most supportive insole.
If you look back into the 70′s when marathons were taking off and most of North America was running WAAAAAYYYY faster than they are now – then you look at the injury rate and the shoes they were wearing – you’ll bring up some puzzling questions. Plantar Fasciitis: quite possibly non-existent until the advent of the well supported, well cushioned running shoe. NOT TO SAY supportive and cushioned shoes are bad, they have their place. Stress fractures are bad. We’ve simply forgotten how to keep our feet strong in today’s ‘latest and greatest do-dad’ shoe market. The well supportive shoe also brings up issues of poor run stride. I.e. They allow you to run with poor form because you’re no longer concerned about how hard you hit the ground with each stride.
Anyway, people have written books on that topic and I think you hopefully get the point. So, how to strengthen you feet.
As triathletes we tend to forget the importance of keeping our core and lateral leg muscles strong. By doing the exercises in the video you engage a range of run- specific stabilizer muscles. This can help prevent injury – namely hip, knee, and ankle injury (provided you don’t over [...]
You’ve probably heard of the benefits to running uphill. No doubt they’re true and no doubt hill repeats will help make you faster, stronger, and more resiliant. If you don’t enjoy running up and down the same hill over and over again, simply try and make some of your [...]
Today’s tip is brought to you by the letters C and V. As in Coach Chuckie V.
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Here’s one of my favorite exercises to do in the gym or at home. They’re called side steps. I’ve always tried to describe these in the written form but always struggled to do so. No more of that nonsense!
A few things regarding these…
1) Resistance is determined by the weight in each hand or by the height of the platform., or by both. You might even work up to wearing ten-pound ankle weights while carrying a giraffe on your back, for more resistance. I suggest sparing us all from the bravado and starting with just the movement at first, with the platform at a mid-shin level. Your knees may not take to these straight away (i.e., you’re weak).
About this site:
These triathlon and endurance sport related tips have been compiled by Heather and Trevor Wurtele over the years of their progression from working age-groupers to full time professional triathletes. Heather is now a 4 time Ironman Champion and top 10 World Championship finisher. Trevor has an Ironman PR of 8:22 and a 2:51 Ironman marathon.
Even though we’re lucky enough to escape the snow during winter, we still enjoy getting on the treadmills and trainers once in awhile. Here’s a couple of our favourite workouts that make time FLY!
Once in awhile you have to leave your devices at home. Forget the GPS, forget the heart rate monitor, forget the power, forget your interval timer and portable lactate measuring kit. Who cares how far you ride, who cares how long it takes you to run your normal route. Heck, don’t even count your laps in the pool.
Depending on how your winter training schedule is coming along, you may be getting close to some of your early season races and you might want to think about incorporating some speed work (or change up your current speed focus days). Treadmills are very handy for speed work, but there has to be a balance between indoor sessions and outdoor sessions if you truly want to see gains on the open road.
