I am a newish multisport athlete who plans on doing quite a few races this year. My questions is this… I have been keeping up with my normal 4 days a week weight training regime on top of my swim, bike, and run training and feel like the weights are making me more tired in training for the aerobic aspects of my regime. Is this something that is normal and if so should I consider cutting back on the weight training and pour it into the swim, bike, run aspect? Or maybe just cut back on the heavy stuff and do higher reps and lower weights. I would like to find the balance of the two aspects as I really enjoy the weight training as well. Any thoughts would be appreciated…
Your story sounds very familiar to me. I’ve spent the past 15 years lifting, pretty heavy at times and then I discovered triathlon last year. Tried to keep my lifting routines mixed in with swim/bike/run training because I loved that pumped feeling. However, after a year of chasing guys who are thirty to forty pounds lighter than I am I decided to cut way back on the iron and focus more on the other three. I’ve cut my weight by 15 pounds through diet and exercise, and I lift only 1 to 2 days a week. I think for most people in this sport, some weight training is a good thing. For me, I have to cut back to get faster. My $.02.
Need to check out periodic training. If your over 35 keep up the weights. In off seaoson lift for strength. As the season gets closer lift for endurance,less weights more reps. (remember swimming is upperbody, so not knowing what your doing, you may have to do less position/machines. only one chest ect…) As you get closer to event, lift after aerobic nor before. When I am 6-8 weeks out I do eveything after my run bike or swim. Do not want to tire and hurt form,of course less weight though. Basically you want to build strength in the off -seaon and change that strength to explosiveness and endurance during the season. I am sure you will get more advice. This works well for me but I know others who do it different. I do Tri to challenge myself and my best times are just mortal. Some of these guys are incredible and may have much better advice for top compitition
Check out Joe Friels book, The Triathletes Training Bible. He has a good section on sport specific weight training and in this section he talks about how to periodize weight training with tri training. Also he discusses at what goal weights you would be better served by tri training rather than lifting. For example, if you can already squat 500 lbs, 3 sets of 8 then there is little you will gain in tri speed by increasing to 550 lbs.
Don’t bother weight training for upper body except a few shoulder routines for swimming are ok. It never stops to amaze me how I see guys doing nothing but upperbody, bench presses etc.
I only do leg workouts, up to 150 leg presses (3 x 50). Mostly following Joel Friel’s book on training for cyclists.
Also concentrate on abs (weights not necessary). When you do allot of biking the position has your abs compressed with no load. Its actually worse for your abs than just walking around and leads to poor posture due to forward pelvic tilt. I found this out the hard way and have been working on it ever since.
Here’s a link to my winter weight training…
During the winters I try to lift 4x a week for strength (2 days upper, 2 days lower, abs all 4 days). Come spring time I pretty much abandon my leg workout. For my upper body, I usually do super sets with opposing groups (bench/row, etc) doing at least 10 reps each. That makes the workout time pretty quick and I’m never blasted for the aerobic stuff. It’s OK not to do leg work since you will hopefully be able to do more sport specific stuff (hills, sprints).
This seems to work well for me.