Strength Training For Triathletes: How Year-Round Strength Benefits Your Training
Strength training is one of the most powerful tools available to amplify your performance in triathlon. Without question, it’s critical for making progress year after year - yet it’s frequently treated as an afterthought (if it’s a thought at all), and is the first thing to fall off the training calendar when race season begins. So what can structured, progressive, year-round strength training do for triathletes’ training and racing performance?
Let’s dive in and get some answers:
Why year-round strength should be in triathlon training programs (…but often isn’t)
Strength training builds critical physical resilience
Your body has to withstand the stresses of endurance training - and effectively respond to them. Building stronger muscles, bones, tendons, and ligaments allows you to absorb and adapt to that training stress over time, so you can continue progressing instead of plateauing or developing issues from injury or overuse. Through an intelligent, progressive strength program, you develop tissue resilience, setting you up for longevity and success in your sport.
Strength training supports all phases of training, from race week to postseason
Many triathlon training programs do include “strength day” slots - but they often leave athletes and coaches to find their own strength solution, which means turning to generic programs like TRX or Peloton. While the individual workouts can be excellent, the programs ultimately lack critical sport-specific structure and flexibility. They’re inflexible and ill-fitting: they can’t ebb and flow with the changing demands of a full training season. Ill-fitting things chafe - and when something chafes, it eventually ends up in the trash. However, a well-designed triathlon strength training program can fit and flow with your training - from your most intense week of race prep to your most relaxing week of the off-season. Like a good pair of shoes, it will support you, help your body absorb stress, and boost your performance.
Strength training is cross-training
Daily life - and, to be honest, endurance training - forces us into a narrow set of very repetitive motions. This puts you at risk of overuse and injury. A properly designed year-round strength program helps counteract that risk, and ensures joints have adequate stability and range of motion to function smoothly. It takes on a supporting, almost recovery-oriented role during periods of intense, repetitive load (say, the final weeks of your IRONMAN build), while stepping more to the forefront during postseason when you can focus on building a platform of overall strength and resilience to support the coming season. This dynamic use of strength training is critical to maintaining season-long health and performance.
How strength training helps triathletes go faster and further on race day
Strength Training Supports Race-Day Intensity
Your race day is the most physically demanding day of your training cycle - however, it takes smart preparation to show up healthy and to perform at peak potential. If you haven’t developed the resilience you need to fully support the stress of training, then you risk setting yourself up for injury and underperformance when you hit maximum effort on race day.
Strength Training Makes You Go Faster
Speed doesn’t just require muscular power - you need stability, mobility, coordination and strong neuromuscular (brain-body) connections. When we talk about strength training for triathletes, we mean strengthening your body so that your triathlon-specific movement patterns are as powerful and efficient as possible. You can do harder, longer, and faster workouts season over season, maximizing your body’s ability to grow as a result of that hard work. The result? You’ll squeeze every last drop of power out of those sport-specific movements, allowing you to cover more ground with less effort.
What Makes a Great Triathlon Strength Training Program
Structure and progression
When you prepare for a race, you use a structured training plan that builds and progresses. Triathlon strength training should feel the same way. Sessions should be consistently placed in appropriate places within their endurance training program, and athletes should be able to see a progression - not just in their own strength, but in the tone and focus of the sessions themselves (for example, from slower, higher-load movements that build pure muscle strength to more explosive movements that build neuromuscular connection). The sessions should progress through an entire year, ebbing and flowing with the intensity of your endurance work.
Specificity
If you’re a triathlete, you should be doing strength training for triathletes. It’s that simple! Generic strength programs may not detract from your endurance training - but they’re unlikely to improve it much either. Focus on finding a program designed specifically for endurance athletes, that targets the movements and muscle patterns you need for multisport power, stability, and coordination.
Flexibility - on multiple levels
As we’ve discussed above, your strength program should respond dynamically to your triathlon training. There should be a purposeful shift through the year in terms of the strength exercises you do, the way you do them, and the total volume of work/intensity prescribed. The program itself should also incorporate flexibility, too: if you are not able to move a joint through its full range of motion, then you’re automatically limiting the power that joint can put out. Functional mobility and stability are critical components of any good strength program.
Want to amplify your existing triathlon training with a full-season, endurance-specific strength program?
(…and check out our recent podcast episode, too)
For more information on Purple Patch multisport and strength training programs, contact us.