Currently getting back into Ironman training. Been mainly lifting. Going to lift twice a week. Is it better to do full body split or better to have an upper day and a lower day? And do any of you add plyo?
IMO, full body is always best. If you are body building for show, than focused exercises are cool. For functional strength, full body is where it is at. I’m going to add two days of full body lifting a week starting mid October.
It depends. What kind of muscle imbalances do you have that need to be addressed? It’s easy enough to say you can do fully body 2x/week but once you get into the thick of it, that may become exhausting. Finding some kind of happy balance between upper/lower, or even push/pull days that coincide with an undulating training week is optimal.
The three main points of “failure” in triathletes are the shoulders, hips and achilles. Doing something on both of those lifting days to keep them in best form is pretty much a requirement, if not adding in mobility and activation work on another 3-4 days. Also, core core core- 5-10 minutes a day helps tremendously.
try to keep full body but if your legs are trashed from a run workout or something lower the weights or volume on leg exercises
You need to answer yourself a question: what’s your objective? alternatively, what’re your priorities?
If you want to nail the IM training and an IM race (I assume you will do an IM if you’re getting back into IM training) - give up the gym for the time being completely. First, you’d gain free time to do other sports and you’ll lose weight there where it slows you down in running.
If you want to have a healthy long-term training mix and only finish an IM race, I’d do 1x full body split and 1x upper day, both with significantly reduced weights. More than that and you’ll be toying with muscle strains.
In the end, IM is all about efficiency and slow twitch fibres. Gym is generally all about fast twitch muscles. You can’t optimise for both.
The only thing you’ll find by asking here is that there’s an infinite amount of personal opinions.
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