Why you should strength train for Triathlon
Training for triathlon is a practice in time management. Finding the time to swim, bike and run as well as lift weights is an ongoing dilemma. Adhering to a well-designed strength program to ensure tissue health, maintain healthy bodyweight, optimize hormone health, decrease the chance for injury and improve athletic performance is a daily challenge.
Since most triathletes don’t have the luxury of training and recovering like the pros do it is imperative that you have the ability to dial in the most important exercises to ensure you are not robbing yourself of valuable energy that could be used to improve your triathlon skills or your social obligations as a husband, wife or friend.
ECFIT Strength exists to share strength training strategies that include both the art and science of strength training geared towards the specific needs of triathletes.
ECFIT Strength strategies have been used to deliver podium performances in Ironman World Championships, ITU World Championships, Age Group World Championships as well as providing strength strategies to enhance overall health for the rest of us who choose to toe the line.
Key Objectives of ECFIT Strength Programs
Tissue Care
By subjecting your muscles as well as your connective tissue to constant overload through sport specific training you are putting yourself at risk for muscle imbalances and movement dysfunction. Making the time to do the correct movement preparations via a well-designed warm up and recovery program you will set yourself up to maintain a healthier overall outlook towards training and racing.
Injury Prevention
The worst thing that can happen to us during our training and racing is to encounter an injury. Pain is never our friend and is usually an indication that something is wrong.
By maintaining an ongoing commitment to tissue care, movement preparation, specific strength work and recovery strategies ECFIT Strength strategies will help keep your body in balance and keep you training strong without missing days (or weeks) due to muscle and joint imbalances or alignment issues.
Performance Gains
LET’S GET FASTER and RACE STRONGER.
Hormone Health
It is well documented that lifting weights can help support an endurance athlete’s hormonal profile. ECFIT Strength strategies provide excellent tutorials and guidance to ensure that you learn excellent technique in our most challenging lifts. Maintaining and optimizing hormonal health is all about challenging your body near to maximal capacity so mastering the techniques and finding the best lifts for you is of the utmost importance.
Weight Management
We can probably all agree that training and racing takes less effort and creates better outcomes when we feel that we are at our most healthy body weight. Racing weight has been debated over the years that lighter is better but most recently we have found that when you are progressing in sport, maintaining a positive outlook and recovering well that that can form the best definition for optimal weight.
As we age it is well documented that we lose an average of 1-3% of our muscle mass after the age of 30. It is imperative that we focus on maintaining, or even building muscle, to ensure healthy longevity in triathlon.
Our personal podium exists for when we can put ourselves out there and race to find our very best performance or perhaps even a personal best. I call it our “personal podium” because not everyone will have the chance to compete for a spot in the top of their age group but that doesn’t mean we can’t pay attention to our overall improvement!
There is no better feeling than hitting the start line of a race knowing that you were well prepared and healthy. Racing is too unpredictable to be able to compare total time to each race. There are just too many variables involved, weather conditions, race course variability, travel delays, to name a few, but the one promise we have is how does that speed feel when you swim, bike and run?
One of my favorite hashtags is #easyspeed and this is what I hope we can help you find!