Triathlon Training Schedule

Video Transcript

"I'm Stephen Taylor, endurance coach and fitness trainer. When devising a triathlon training schedule a simple guideline is swim, bike and run as much as you can. Okay, that's meant to be a little bit humorous. But there's ways we can make this more sophisticated. The strategy here is called periodization. And that simply means that you don't train the same way all the time. You vary your training over time. I'm going to describe three different ways you can periodize your training schedule. The first is a microcycle. A microcycle is every two or three days part of the time you're doing more training or more intense training and other times during that microcycle you're taking recovery or rest. So this might be as simple as a hard day followed by an easy day. Or it might be a little more sophisticated. A long day, then a hard day, then a light day. Your light days can either be a very short, gentle exercise session or you can take that day off. That's the microcycle of periodization. A mesocycle of periodization is a strategy where you change your training every few weeks. So a good example here is three weeks of training diligently, one week of light training. Another way you can do this two and a half weeks of diligent training and three or four days real light. This is a mesocycle and it's approximately within a month time frame. The broadest approach to periodization is a macrocycle. And this is a strategy that is six months to one year in duration. And this is where you vary your training starting with your base training or building your endurance. Build training where you start to include more speed work or intensity, a racing season where you are doing your more frequent races and you probably do more intensity but not as much total training during that time. And then finally, and this sometimes gets left out, a recovery or an off season. And this is a few weeks to maybe two or three months where you train very light or eve take some time off to let your body rest up. So with a good training schedule you are training an appropriate amount for your experience. You're training as much as you can. Again, to an appropriate level. And you're using a good periodization strategy. You don't train the same way all the time, you vary your training."