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STRENGTH TRAINING FOR TRIATHLON: THE SECRETS TO YOUR BEST SEASON EVER


can get your athletes to focus on consistent strength training now and continue that through the season, they’ll have much improved results with less injury down time, and your business will benefit from their success. i have three secrets to strength training


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that will get your athletes stronger, more powerful and keep them motivated at the same time:


1. Functional training 2. Power training 3. Using multiple modalities and protocols


FUNCTIONAL TRAINING in short, athletes should train in a manner that mimics or resembles the activity they will perform. “Functional” is essentially the principle of specificity, or the SAiD principle (specific adaptations to imposed demands). This means results from training are limited to the physiological systems used and overloaded during training. To understand functional strength training for triathlon, you need to understand what movements are involved in the sport. here are some key points:


1. All three disciplines require different movements for locomotion, but all use rotational forces to facilitate those movements. it makes sense then to incorporate exercises in your program that strengthen your core with particular attention focused on rotation.


2. All three sports require multi-joint movements working together in an integrated/coordinated fashion. Therefore, it’s important to train with movements that require more than one joint at a time.


3. Two of the three involve ground reaction forces, so it makes sense to train in a standing position with your feet in contact with the ground. These are also referred to as “closed chain” exercises.


page 8 | PERFORMANCECOACHING


hen i say “your best season ever,” i’m talking about you, the coach, as well as your athletes. if you


4. They all require power in order to move faster, so incorporating power training such as plyometrics is essential to improve performance.


5. They all require movements in multiple planes of motion (sagittal-forward, frontal- side to side, transverse- rotational), and require multiple planes of stabilization (balance), so training must mimic those movements such as working on a single leg or using reciprocal and unilateral movements.


it’s important to understand that not all exercises will fit into these descriptions, but that does not mean that they are ineffective for triathletes. however, just going to the gym and doing a few rounds of exercises on traditional machines is not going to cut it if you want strength that will translate to performance on race day.


POWER TRAINING in physics, power = work/time. power can also be expressed as force x velocity or strength x speed for our purposes here. in other words, power is the rate at which


By Jeff Boyer,


USA Triathlon Level II Certified Coach


work is done. The faster something is done, the more power is exhibited to do it. Last i checked, the goal of any endurance event is to finish first or be the fastest or at least be faster than your previous time. in order to do that, you need to generate more power than the competition or than you did in your last race. plyometric exercises enable a muscle


to reach maximum strength as fast as possible. in other words, they help generate speed-strength, also known as power. There are three different types of muscle contractions. eccentric contractions occur when the muscle is lengthened under tension. They are used by the body to decelerate. isometric contractions are static contractions where there is no perceivable movement in the muscle. The muscle length stays constant. Concentric contractions involve a shortening of the muscle fibers and are used to accelerate the body. if we use running as an example, when the


foot hits the ground, the muscle lengthens, but eccentrically contracts and controls to prevent a collapse. When the muscle lengthens to its maximum ability, there is a


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