Sure! Gain 2-3 minutes on the swim, lose 20 minutes on the bike and 15 minutes on the run.

I wouldn't do this, but if I did, it would be a bike focus.

Kind of did this with respect to running while training for a 100 miler. When I got back to biking and swimming, the bike had especially suffered as my FTP dropped from 340 to about 315. Not an easy amount of power to get back in a season. But at least my IM run was a breeze as I had been used to running back to back 30-35 miler training runs.

I kind of went through this due to work constraints a couple of years ago. I had typically been top 20% as swimmer and cyclist and top 5% runner. A temporary job forced me to completely abandon swimming and cycling for 10 months, so I focused on running, a lot. I dropped my standalone marathon from 3:15 to 2:50 and when I returned to triathlon I found myself in the top 1% as a runner, many times the fastest run split for my AG, but my swim and bike suffered greatly and took a full season to get back to where I left off.

If you're a FOP AG you likely got there through a balanced approach, staying there I've learned requires a balanced approach.

if you have a shorter period in which to focus on a race, as your example fall '14 - to - spring '15 then certainly focus on your weakest discipline, but not at the cost of abandoning your strengths.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

not sure if this helps, but here are some data points from me, taking a shorter course as example

.25m swim 10m bike 3.1m run

when i was racing triathlon with balanced training: 5:30 min swim, 25-26 min bike, 19 min run

when i stopped and raced bikes for 1 year, 0 swim or run milage: 7 min swim, 23-24 min bike, 21-22 min run

as you can see i picked up a bit but lost alot more time in a very similar condition based sprint. i was actually happy with a 22 min run, to not put on run sneakers for 13 months and run 22 is actually not too bad. at least this is what i tell myself.

btw 23:40 is what i rode and i was not pushing at 100%.

Back in early 90s was a pretty decent fOP triathlete. Decided to walk onto D1 cross country team to help improve my running. It was approximately a 3 month intense focus ( volume, intensity etc). Helped my running times tremendously from both a mental and physical perspective. Not sure how it impacted bike as I did not ride with PM. I will say that come tri season was able to go sub 2 hours in Oly.

You probably don't need the 6-12 months to see gains. I will say I think it depends also on which sport you're focusing. For example in my opinion only swimming for a year might work out worse for you than only biking or running in terms of triathlon performance. It can be very hard to get your running legs back while swimming skill never really goes away once you have it. I would recommend an approach with at least one or two sessions in the other two sports per week.

I'd say that you take a big risk in losing a lot of run ability by taking off completely from running/biking and focusing on swimming - so much so that it will offset your swimming gains. The impact training required to run fast is really critical, and can be lost pretty quickly, especially if you're not a lightweight.

On the bright side, I don't think you need to totally abandon the other sports - even 1-2 sessions of bike/run per week is far better for maintenance than zero if you're mainly swimming.

Does the same go for swimming? My neighborhood pool is closing this weekend, which means having to go to the municipal pool with more restrictive hours, plus heading into the winter without access to a indoor pool -- I'm not real enthused about swimming outside in Dec./Jan., even if it is California. What is the minimum I can do to not lose what swim fitness I have at the moment (which isn't much, only started swimming/triathlon this year)? Have my first half marathon this December so my main focus will be running this fall, but I want to maintain the other two disciplines as well.

^^^ THIS^^^

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

It's much less dramatic than with running. With running your body really has to stay used to it because of the impact as mentioned by lightheir. Swimming is 100% no-impact and from a triathlon perspective you're not going to lose too much by cutting down on swimming. You'll also be able to get back whatever you lose very quickly. Swimming is very technique-based and either you've got it or you don't. Your performance is much more tied to your general fitness than specific fitness.

Thanks for all the replies!

I really meant, would it be a long term benefit to REALLY develop a single sport and then spend another large black of time with a balanced training load to regain what you lost. For example, 6 month focus + 6 month balanced load = faster overall race times in a year. I used swimming for an example, but I didn't specifically mean swimming.

I don't plan on spending the entire off season without running and biking, but I've been swimming exclusively for the last 4 weeks due to an injury and was wondering how long it would take to get my run/bike fitness back of this injury drags on for several more weeks.

Alan Webb, spent his whole life developing running. He grabbed the American Record for the mile on the way.

He just did an elite olympic tri last week and had the SIXTEENTH fastest run of the day. Not sixteenth fastest TIME of the day, there were fifteen faster runners than him in that race alone.

Take from that what you'd like.

A whole year probably not. Several 4-6-8 weeks block crushing that one sport followed by 2-3 weeks more balanced training. Now that could be a good idea.

Search the threads there are a ton of good threads on here about focusing on a single sport for a bit. Threads by coaches, age groupers and pro's who have done this and results.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

I will just say a few things:

a) He obviously hasn't been in the same shape as when he got the record or else he wouldn't now be a triathlete
b) He's quite likely not training the run as much now or at least while focusing on bringing his swim and bike up to speed
c) Being in an elite field kind of skews things

Edit: Also FWIW it was his first ever OD race.

I definitely shift focus in the winter to run heavy because 1. i hate the trainer and 2. i hate the pool.

I like being outside, so I run and xc ski a lot over the winter, and just do maintenance on the bike and swim. Over the summer a good week is 40-50 miles running, 200+ biking, 4-5x2k open swims. In the winter it's more like 50-65 miles running, 80-100 miles biking (4x1 hour on trainer with intervals), 40-60 miles of skate skiing, and 1-2x4k masters practice.

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Twitter | Kancman | Blog

Swimming for non-ex swimmers deteriorates pretty quickly, but on the bright side, tends to come back up to your previously trained level pretty quickly once you get back in the pool regularly, because it's nonweightbearing and no-impact so you won't get as easily injured.

If you can afford it, a Vasa trainer ($2k) is what I've been using in the past year, and it's the real deal - it's literally as good as pool time for me, and I do most of my swim training on it even on my current swim/run focus block, with <90 minutes per week in the pool usually (6-7hrs on Vasa now). I'm convinced it can almost completely replace water swimming for a non-beginner swimmer who's already decently comfortable in water and with decent form.

I agree with this based on experience. I am a swimmer cyclist who needed work on my running. The past two seasons I have done basically the same thing which is 0 swimming after my last Tri in the fall, not picking up again until after the new year. Very limited cycling throughout the early part of fall, but after a month or two I normally want to get back on the bike because I love it and don't want to lose much. Other than that I just run a lot. It worked out really well for me, I gained a little on the swim this year (due to better consistency in frequency of training once I started back up), lost nothing on the bike despite dealing with a knee injury all season (I suspect I actually gained a little here but I don't have a power meter to confirm), and gained a decent but on the run. After a couple years of this I have become a fairly complete triathlete.

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Powertap / Cycleops / Saris

I'm also pretty much the same. During the winter I run almost every day. Until about November I bike a few times a week then stop until late January when I just go whenever it's nice enough (no trainer for me). I don't swim until like March or April, most of my races are in July and August. My training is supplemented by one one hour plyometrics/circuit training workout with high intensity running intervals per week along with ~30+ days of skiing. I like to think the skiing helps my biking as well. Although in my case the only reason I'm doing triathlon is because I can't ski all year round so I don't care so much, just want to have something to do, don't need to focus on triathlon nonstop.

I wouldn't want to take huge amounts of time off any the three sports all together.
But reduce training to "maintenance level" in your strong sports and focus on your "weakness" - that sounds like a good idea to me.
Both fun and helpful.

On the other hand if you are truly FOP your weakness might not be so bad in the first place.
Maybe still fun

While a lot of people never really put in the time needed in their off sport not doing anything in a sport for several weeks seems like a lot.

However, it depends on your competitive situation. Another thread someone is trying to take 5 minutes off of his olympic distance split. If for some reason you are in a competitive position that you are totally unfulfilled unless you get your swim to 20 minutes for example, then I guess you need to do what you need to do in order to get there. I don't think there are a lot of people like that, but they exist.

I assume you're talking about Ironman-distance. I suppose that at that distance, skipping the endurance work needed for the bike and run would have a big impact on bike and run. However - the gain in the swim time is also likely more than 2-3 minutes. Given the OP's registered handle, he's probably not a great swimmer. Wildly guessing, there might be 10-20 minutes on the table there.

For me at Olympic distance - I was forced by injury to do a swim-focus winter last season. My swim time dropped by 4 minutes as a result, from 31 at end of season 2014 to 27 at first event in May 2015. I can't address affect on run time as the injury still hangs on, but my bike times did not suffer as much as you might have thought. I lost about 1 to 1.5 minutes which might map forward to a 10 minute full distance loss. The flat-out intensity of the swim interval workouts was such that I don't think I lost any aerobic fitness at all, but the leg power felt a little off till I got more spring miles into them.

I do think that run would really take a beating though, especially at full distance, with no running worked into the mix.

There are benefits to moving from LastIntoT1 to more towards the front other than the strict time gain:

- less tired getting on the bike. My swim time continues to improve, but I get out of the water more relaxed. The swim was panic-inducing when I started doing tris, and I'd get out battered and fatigued. Now it's just a swim, at a controlled pace that's slower than what I train at in the pool.
- easier swim traffic. The FOP swimmers have better swim awareness: they won't freak out if you touch their feet, they'll accommodate a pass without freaking out, they'll hold their lines better, they'll miss a stroke rather than bash you in the head a second time, etc.
- faster company for the rest of the event. If you are FOP for the run and bike, you'll leave T1 with your competition, and hopefully (depending on the event & wave structure) with less slow bike traffic in front of you to deal with.

and finally, swim training is still less boring than indoor riding, regardless of how many Sufferfest videos you have.

I'm a big advocate of single sport focus blocks. However, a lot of this depends on the back ground of the athlete in question.

However, in general, if we are talking about someone new to endurance sports training and essentially starting from scratch, what often happens is they get a nice balanced 2 - 3 training sessions/week in each sport programs and they make some quick early gains, but then development stalls out after that. Why? - there really is not enough overload and stimulation in each sport, to take them up to higher levels. For this athlete, taking a round-robin set of single sport focus blocks of 1 - 4 months in each of the the three sports, over the course of a 1 - 2 year period will really elevate their performance in each of the individual sports.

Beyond that, and particularly with the triathlete who has been racing for a number of years, it will depend on their weaknesses and strengths and what needs to get worked on. One thing for sure - however you achieve it, making sure that you can run fast and strong, on the run, and do this consistently, will ALWAYS yield significant place performance improvements.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

How long were you unable to ride and run? And how long were you able to to train all 3 sports before your spring race?

Also, my handle is a bit of an exaggeration (just a bit lol). My last race (local sprint) splits were 40/200 on the swim, 5/200 on the bike and 8/200 on the run for 6th overall

Had a similar experience in college- just not quite as badass as D1. Learned to swim when I was 20, sophomore year walked onto my D3 college swim team, swam with them October-Febriary for the next 3 winters. Went from survival swimmer to FOP AGerthat first year, and instantly my races were way more fun because I was a top 3 contender at local races all of a sudden.

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Tim Russell, Pro Triathlete

Instagram- @timbikerun

"I'm a big advocate of single sport focus blocks. However, a lot of this depends on the back ground of the athlete in question."

I agree about the single sport focus, and I don't even think it matters all that much about their background. For the people who are saying "Well, you'll gain XX in one event but lose it in the other." I'd say you are being very short sighted. I've taken entire winters (~4 months) off from swimming/biking and just ran. Over a few years, my 5K time dropped from 23 to ~17. In all of those years, my swim/bike ability returned to it's previous level within 6 weeks of resuming a balanced schedule. It is pretty easy to get back to 90-95% of your previous ability level in most activities. To push past that level takes a lot of work.

The first time I decided to do the run focus, it was because I was curious what I was capable of if I just trained like a runner. At the time I was running 3X a week, for a total of maybe 18-20 miles/week. 5K time was around 23. At 5'10" and 180 lbs, I wasn't fat, but I wasn't skinny either. I also had tons of running related injuries. I gradually built up to 45 miles/week and running 6X/week. Lost some weight in the process, got down to the 20's for a 5K. 6 weeks after starting up tri training again, I was already way faster than I'd ever been on the bike (losing weight will do that), same as ever on the swim, and even though I'd cut back my running to ~30 mpw, kept all of my gains on the run. Triathlons are a lot more fun when you are looking forward to the run leg as opposed to dreading it.

The running only thing works great in the winter for me living in New England, as 8 hrs/week is pretty easy to find in my schedule when 5 of those hours were my lunch break at work, so I did the same the following winter but got up to 70mpw. Dropped my 5K time down to 18. Again, bike/swim came back within about 6 weeks.

The other thing about the single sport focus, is that when I returned to the balanced schedule, I was super psyched. After a winter of just running, was invigorating. I see a lot of triathletes just continue to plod along at the same balanced schedule year round and put up the same times year after year. No wonder most triathletes don't last for 5 years.

Once I got to the point where I was starting to see diminishing gains from the run focus, if I were truly interested in improving as a triathlete the move for me would have been to do a swim focus. I know that if I'd taken my meager 3X/week swimming up to 6-7X a week and started swimming consistently with other swimmers, I would have seen similar gains as I did with running. The one difference between a run focus and a focus on the bike/swim is that I would never stop running completely, as building up the run from scratch is a pain (literally) and has a high probability of resulting in injury. If you could do 4 easy miles 3X a week, you would find that getting your run back on would be a far easier endeavor.

If you are an endurance athlete, and in it for the long haul, give the SS focus a shot, especially if you ever find yourself lacking motivation. Join a running club/masters team/bike team and get out of your comfort zone. You'll meet new people, get a healthy perspective on what the really fast people in any given discipline are doing, and just might surprise yourself.