Come on now...don't go Dev Paul in all the threads. The question was asked on a Tri forum. Yes, strength training is useful for some. But we're on a tri forum.
Thanks for bringing up other sports just to make a point...Indeed, If I played rugby or football, I'd probably do some strength training too.

I guess you're going to start commenting on bike position threads and say 'no...your front end is too low, move it up 10in, it's not healthy to ride like that?'

That is such a typical 'Dev intervention thread'... ;-)

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Can someone please explain something to me....

If you have a weakness when you swim bike or run....like your "core" becomes fatigued while doing SBR....then wouldn't doing SBR be training that specific deficiency? Otherwise it would not become fatigued? So why would you need to strength train in order to address the weakness?

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Why is desert_dude using FYs handle??

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Francois...a couple of points. Please debate the topic, please don't attack the person writing. You are welcome to attack what is presented. Let's be grown up and not call each other names (or refer to a behaviour using a person's name in a negative tone).

I think we're allowed to have different perspectives. Just because this is a tri forum, it does not preclude having a discussion about why something may be good for general health (or not).

Seriously man, I've been respectful towards you and this is exactly why others don't want to post, on certain discussion/topics. My skin is thick enough. You've been around long enough that you don't need to resort to that type line of discussion. It's OK if you don't like me, or my line of thinking. Just attack what I am presenting and we're all good.

Start attacking the people and this is exactly why people don't want to post on slowtwitch.

PS. At least running sprints do have some value in triathlon....just ask Ms. Norden :-). The rest of the stuff....sure, I'm not saying that it is a waste of time from a tri perspective.

He channels through me.

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I'm faster in Kilometers!
Wattie Ink Triathlon Team
Powered by Accelerate 3

Someone peepeed your cornflakes this morning or what? You're the one not debating the topic and switching to debating whether or
not strength training is useful in general health. Sure it is. We're on a tri forum though. You've been changing the target throughout...first
it's age related in tri, then it's general health. That's something you often do. I don't attack your comments. I answer them. And each time
you go on a tangent. So, I answer it again. After a while it gets a bit tiring though.
Thus my comment. And there is a little ;-) at the end of my post...So your tone perception is a bit off.

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Man I've been to the sales, brought next years meat, come back, and you're still going on this.

I think it's great that you're back regardless. What'd really make it would be if The Authority chimed in now to put us all straight....

What happened to The Authority actually?

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Too busy to post - making thousands off Crossfit I heard.

Ironically, I tried crossfit a bit and enjoyed it. It changes stuff a bit. I don't like the nearly cult approach to it, but other Han that, it's fun to do occasionally.

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So holistically you're saying it benefited you?

Doesn't that fall into the category of 'it depends'

;)

Fair enough.

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Hi Francois,

Probably good to take a step away for a few hours. I think as slowman said, if we were face to face, we'd be able to have a good discussion on this. Sometimes the medium gets in the way. Perhaps from your perspective it came across like I was changing the topic, because we really didn't have the opportunity for real time interaction for you to suck things out of my head in an instant in time. Rather it was delivered in a sequence rather than one post, giving you the feeling that I changed the topic. Asychronous interaction sometimes just does not work for this reason.

So let me summarize my thoughts overall (before this thread even came up):

• General health is important for the aging athlete. If we can keep our general health up, there is a better chance of not losing speed. As masters athletes, we're generally not trying to gain speed, we're just trying to keep the aging process at bay and not slow down.
• When general health deteriorates, it impacts many aspects of life, not just triathlon
• Having good aerobic and anaerobic systems are both important for general health
• Older athletes (and humans in general) lose a lot of their anaerobic abilities before they lose aerobic
• The only way to keep up anaerobic capacity is to train it
• A side benefit is we can keep doing activities that involve anaerobic action. But the action of keeping doing them helps us to "keep doing it" (use it or lose it)

So in the end, the biggest benefit of anaerobic activity is hopefully slowing down the aging process. That is the big picture goal. The side benefit in aging less than the other guys in the same age group is having the better function of organs and everything else that comes with an effectively younger body. Obviously there is nothing that says this will result in faster triathlons. I'm just saying that the guys who are 48-49 are generally going slower than the guys 45-46. So the goal would be to have the overal health of a 45 year old (or even a 41 year old) at 49.

In closing, yes, I was being honest asking you to just debate the points. Attacking the poster or in the last case, using my name (or anyone elses) in a derogatory way is not helpful in fostering an environment where we can just share ideas. If every time we disagree with a poster we take a shot at the person, then the environment in the forum deteriorates quickly. Guys like us who have been around here, for this long don't need to be part of that.

Dev,there is little point arguing this point again and again as people take vastly different lines on what is their perception of "the benefits" of doing resistance work for triathletes and this medium,as you correctly pointed out,does not allow for an actual discussion on the topic.All that ends up happening is a bunch of people getting all wound up as they try to argue their particular line of thinking without really considering where the others are coming from.

The scientists among us take one distinct view and that seems only to related to "performance" on the race course,where others expand the benefits of resistance training to meaning the ability to be strong enough to deal with everyday physicality,the ageing process,dealing with injury AND performance on the race course.For me that is the distinction.

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Francois,

Ok, so maybe not a "fan" of traditional strength training. Nor am I necessarily, having said that every workout between 1 second an X hours has a certain "strength" component to it, because muscles are required to fire.

So if you or some of your athletes are weak power developers (like me) what do you do to improve power on the bike? I guess my intent was two-fold when starting this thread (maybe I didn't convey this well enough):

Define strength


Then define what makes you stronger


For me and a lot of the athletes I coach, holding or increasing power on the bike is pretty critical, CDA Power to weight etc are important (another thread, perhaps tomorrow;) but once this is looked at the majority of our time is spent is focused on increasing power at a given race pace.

And as the IM Bike is about 50-60% of the race, I think power development on the bike is one variable which should (maybe) be looked at more than the others.

There fore "strength" training- or anything that helps you develop more power on the bike or anything that helps us prevent injury on the run is pretty important.

outside of the obvious stuff of course, (race day nutrition, how to change a flat, power/CDA, power/weight etc....)

So what are your thoughts? How (in a general sense) or what (in a general sense) do you do to make athletes stronger? As with any one else on this forum, just looking for your opinion.

Cheers,
Maurice

There are many variations that fall under the umbrella strength training. Strength training can surely be done in the disciplines of the sport but I am going to assume most of the focus here is should I lift weights or not.

The interesting thing is a PubMed or SportsDiscus query for strength training and triathlon yields very few scholary journal articles yet their is some pretty good controversy around this topic.

Where are some proven benefits of strength training: Muscular imbalance improvement, protein sparing on calorie restricted diet.

A study I would like to see done is FTP measurement and its coorelation to Watts/KG on a calorie restricted diet in an attempt to lose body weight in conjunction with changes in LBM, BF% etc... with and and without a strength program over a duration of something like 8-12 weeks in trained athletes.

I would like to guess that we would see a more favorable body composition profile in the weight training group and would be curious to see what happens to FTP as the other group loses weight as well (thinking the non weight training group is going to lose more weight... with more loss from protein which is heavier will FTP decrease?? and how much in relationship to the weight training group) then the biggie we all know it comes down to Watts/kg. I really want to go with the weight training group on this one but havent seen a study like this. It would have a pretty good coorelation to a majority of Age groupers with less than ideal Body composition and weight and may be more beneficial to their performance vs an elite that stays realitively close to the ideal composition throughout more of the year and is working in a tight window of specificity improvement.

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Vo2max sessions / Lactate threshold sessions work rather well to increase your power :-)
Although I know several of the scientific coaches here will disagree or be on the fence, I also like big gear work.
At least, it remains specific, and you're still biking. The studies by Ronnestad at al. show an increase in power
with strength work. The issue I have with it is that it requires max reps. If I were able to see my athletes do them,
I may try, but given I coach most of them online, I think it's too much of a risk, and the injury risks are just not worth
it.

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If I was being totally objective and I didn't know anything about triathlon or strength training and happen to stumble across this thread I would probably conclude the following...

Specificity is best for developing a "specific skill set"...do as much as you can with sustainabliltiy being the key (everyone has different tolerance levels for various activity)

Strength training properly is benificial so do it to the extent it doesn't negatively effect the above ( this would vary by athlete's health with respect to biomechanical fitness, goals, and time of year)...

I started tri training on 1/2/12 and I came into it with a shoulder tear. I wouldn't use that side for anything.... opening doors, carrying my purse. It hurt to close the car door, to turn the wheel of the car. I took BodyPump at the gym and that hurt also. Shoulder surgeon said not to do the surgery until I can't stand the pain anymore.

A couple of months after I started with my coach in April I started strength training with her. She does strength training for triathletes, and includes a lot of core. Four months later, I carry grocery bags with my left side, open doors, carry stuff slung on it. I don't even think about it. Once in a blue moon I find an exercise that hurts it too much and I don't do it.

Strength training has tremendously benefited my quality of life. I wouldn't drop it for the word. During tri season I do 2 X a week and off-season 3 X a week. I give up training time and recovery, but gain so much more with it.

So it would appear that you were doing a fair amount of aerobic exercise at intensities pretty specific to IM effort. I'm curious as to whether the skate sking has a much larger impact than the strength training as, anecdotoally, I've seen several athletes who ski through the winter with little or no riding and transition very quickly back to bike.


180lbs soulds really low for a weight that would lead to failure after only 20-25 reps. Before you started this, did you have trouble walking up more than two flights of stairs?

Shane

Hi Maurice,

When you identify an imbalance between legs, how do you go about building up the weakened leg without causing it injury or other problems? Do you isolate that leg during exercises? Which exercises do you do? I keep picking up hamstring injuries in my weaker leg.

I'm interested in this since I've a visible difference in size between the quads on both legs even though they measure up the same length so thats not the cause, though did play soccer for 15years with my right leg benign the dominant leg.

Thanks,
-C

It's an good topic to bring back as most of us go into the offseason. Last year I focused on TRX, core, but did some short high-intensity workouts on the bike, swim, and run...like 5x1.5min hill repeats (which really hurt) or 5x1-3 min on the computrainer at a high intensity. This helped me lose weight, keep the number of hours down, and put me in a good place to face the season.

I emailed that super AGer Sami Inkinen about this and he mentioned: "... rather focus on squat, deadlift and some sport specific movements with heavier weights. Finally, bodyMASS is counterproductive, but muscle strength is a good thing. Ski jumpers face this dilemma as they want to be as light as possible but jump super strong. What they do (at least in Finland) is heavy weights with super fast movements, but only 70% of the max rep count in each set e.g. 5-7 reps when they could do 10. That might apply to cycling and running too.."

Thus, I looked up a link on ski jumper and cross country skiing strength programs: http://www.ausport.gov.au/...sports/nordic_skiing


"...Ski jumping on the other hand is more of a technical sport where power to weight ratio plays a major role. Explosive strength is a major focus of ski jumpers training. This is opposed to gains in muscle size that is detrimental to the ability to fly through the air. Mostly training for ski jumping is highly specific focusing on explosive power and the technical nature of jumping. Ski jumpers have relatively low energy requirements due to the short nature of the activity and the fact that a lot of jumps these days have chair lifts attached. This removes the energy expended hiking to the top of the jump. Coupled with the fact that most ski jumpers are trying to keep weight as low as possible means that a ski jumpers actually intake is relatively normal.
Nordic combined skiers have to combine the endurance capacity of cross country skiing and the explosive power and low body mass of ski jumpers...."

Either way, there is short, explosive movements involved. Like, Hill Running repeats, that HURT, but pretty short.

For me personally...

Pros: Keeps my middle age ass in shape for other things besides triathlon and running.

Cons: Having to spend time in the middle of a goofy crowd of high calf black sock wearing grunting crossfit / tough mudder dweebs. Crowds up the gym as they strut around holding their arms and elbows out wide with their lats all puffed up. Then you have to hear them talk all about it in the locker room....

Hi,

Have you explored any local bike fitters? My advice would be to get a really good fit first, analyze where and when power is dropping off then find a really good physio second.

I was lucky enough to coach 2 physio's this year, they both worked at the hospital and one of their husbands was a physio in private practice. To be honest a lot of the solutions we came up with for certain issues stemmed from their advice. Imbalances are often a result of injury or "pre injury condition" so without knowing you or testing you it is a bit above my pay grade to specifically advise you.

Having said that, in a general sense one leg squats (body weight only) on an unstable platform, one leg big gear (careful with these), knee lifts (for hip flexors) etc are things we came up with that seamed to work well. Although in your case if it is a hamstring issue I'm not sure if these would work.

I have some hamstring issues, and for me its because my glutes are pulling on them, so in this regard the problem is the glutes but is exhibited in the hamstring.

One simple piece of advice, that I have been told is that when you have a problem in a certain area look on either side, ie hamstring take a look at the glutes, med quad pain- take a look at IT issues etc.

Probably not what you were looking for but stuff like this is best left to the local sports med physio types, do you have any good local experts?

Hey,

Come on that sleds gotta be worth a few pounds!

Having said that because of your post I am now quitting triathlon and my sole purpose in life is to beat you in a leg press dual. As you live in NS and I am in BC maybe we could meet in Winnipeg in January, heard its awesome that time of year, if you win I'll pay for a Jets game ;)

Regarding the skate skiing, I am a huge fan. I did IM Aus (early april) in 01,02, and 04 each time most of my work was done on the skis with only about 300-400km of cycling under my legs, never seamed to be an issue.

Catherine Pendral (world champ MTB) lives here and she spends a lot of time on the trails, as does Olav Stana- a pretty good Ager (World AG champ on skis and bike)

I just ski because I prefer to be outside, not because I think its better or worse than cycling, although as a cross over sport to cycling it's pretty damn close. Like you say because its weight bearing and involves similar muscle groups perhaps there is an additional strength component over cycling.

In terms of intensity most of it was not at but below IM HR (160 or so)