Off Season Training,

While this should be a welcome time of year for everyone, it can be confusing to excessive obsessive, compulsive athletes. The concept is simple for most of the year you push your body and your family relationships to the max, now is the time to let both of them recover!

Training for specific sports makes you more efficient in those sports, it also stresses the muscles, tendons and ligaments that support those movements. The off season is the time to focus on building supports for those groups so you can become stronger + faster = more efficient next year.

What I hear a lot from clients I coach and other athletes is, now that my triathlon season is over I am going to work on my limiter running and do several marathons over the winter. Fortunately none of my current clients are saying this. The problem with this line if thinking is that training for marathons takes a lot of specific training, which limits the amount of time to train as I said above and to spend time with the family. Not to mention that marathon running has little benefit to triathlon running.

What I recommend to my clients is for the first few weeks just do unstructured exercise, whatever you feel like doing go do it. Have fun, enjoy the fitness you built! Then gravitate to off axis work to build the muscle groups I mention above. Then find ways to have fun running and riding off road, this helps to build strength and agility for both. If you are looking to increase speed in any of your disciplines then I recommend doing form work, it will make you more efficient and does not require all the miles and time commitments that running marathons do, thus pounding on the body.

The main thing is to have fun, enjoy your healthy lifestyle and prepare your body and mind for next season of training.

I suppose I should put in here that if marathons are your thing and you want to do them for fun, go for it. Just be honest with yourself, it is not recovery!

Train smart, enjoy the holidays and spend some time with your family!

Rest and Recovery

About this time every year I get emails from athletes complaining about the heat and being tired all the time. So I thought I would blog about how I coach my clients to fresh while training for long course events in the heat.

Athletes that are training for late summer and fall long races are just now starting to add more duration to their training, and with it getting hot now, they can never start early enough to avoid the heat. As with anything everyone needs to experiment with what is going to work for them, and during training is the time to do it. The important thing to think about when training for triathlons is you have three events to prepare for so typically triathletes are more fatigued than cyclist or runners.

The two best ways I have found to recover from long workouts and get ready for the next one are proper rest and good eating. These athletes do not have the luxury of thinking of one workout at a time, they need to be thinking of the next day, week, month and season. This is why they have recovery days, and weeks built into their plans. The good eating is just as important, without the proper fuels the body will not be able to perform for very long.

I encourage my athletes to eat good most of the time, leaving room for mouth entertainment. The key times for good eating are the night before, morning of and right after long workouts or races. I suggest they try cool foods for the mornings, and the fuel that works for them during the workouts. Early in the season I suggest they carry more fuel than they need until they dial in what works for them. In most cases athletes scramble in the last weeks before a race to find how to carry enough calories with them, because they bought stuff at long stops on training rides.

Perhaps the most important part is the recovery, this can last from 1 hour to 2 days depending on the duration of the training. Right after a workout or race is the time to get some good recovery products in the body. There are many on the market now, and good old fashion fruit will go a long way. Then getting off your feet is important, sitting on the beach in the heat will only server to dehydrate a already dry body. Cooling in the water is a much better way to enjoy the summer fun. After you recover it is time to start fueling for your next workout, hopefully thinking in this way will help you to choose the right foods to eat, most of the time.

One last thought, just because some people are eating potato chips and cookies at a rest stop does not mean that you should. Yes they provide the calories needed and will get you through a tight spot. The key is, what are those other people training for? Can they be sore and tired for the next few days? Can you afford to?

Something to think about.

Edible Science

Many of you that read my posts know that in my youth I did little to maintain my health and my eating habits were far less that healthy. Because of this I am faced with the constant issue of eating properly or face health consequences. I choose the option of proper physical exercise and a combination of eating the right foods with good supplements.

By proper physical exercise I mean not going to extremes and pushing so hard the body is in stress mode all the time, I will discuss this more in the future. Eating the right foods, is pretty much the Paleo Diet for Athletes, most of the time. Particularly staying away from high fat, sugar and salt mouth entertainment foods. Not always, especially after a hard training day, yet most of the time.

I think the most difficult of the three for athletes to get is the right supplements. I like all endurance athletes see the great ads in the magazines and at the races. It is difficult to find the right combination for you vs the masses. For the most part I have found that the products are more of a shot gun approach and try to cover all bases for everyone. While I agree this is much better than the potato chip and pizza approach, I think there are better options.

Personally I like, when possible, to make my own smoothies and recovery drinks, or use some whole foods for these purposes. I find the pre made recovery meals or packaged drinks typically have way too many things in them that we may never need. The same goes with the supplements I choose to take.

For years I have been relying on Steve Ellis at Edible Science and my primary health care provider to help me determine which supplements would work best for me. We test these with bi-annual blood work to make sure they are working and I am not taking too much of any of them. Steve is constantly searching for the highest quality products he can find, and shares the reasons he chooses them on his web pages.

If you want to have a more precise approach to your supplemental program I encourage you to visit http://www.ediblescience.com/ and see their products for yourself. You can use the online help programs or contact them directly to help design your program. If you enter Coachbryan as the wellness referral they will reduce the price for you.

Train smart, recover smart, eat smarter!

Feel free to contact me directly if you want more information on any of my exercise, eating or supplemental programs.

St Anthony’s Triathlon

Yesterday while cheering on some of my clients, who all “PR’d” by the way, I was reminded what a fantastic sport triathlon is. Sometimes when I stand outside the lines I feel regret for not being inside and racing. Then you look around and see all the people cheering and sharing with their families you quickly realize it is just as good here than in there. Especially when you see someone who is for sure digging deep respond positively to something you say.

While it is fundamentally an individual sport at events like ST Anthony’s it is a family event. It is rewarding to see all the families at the race and the day before, taking in the sites and cheering for their families. It strikes me how healthy almost everyone in attendance is. Certainly far greater than the general population, or other sporting events for that matter.

There is as much going on outside the race lines as there is inside them. I had great pleasure interacting with clients families before, during and after the race. They are so happy to finally be part of what all the training was for, I think it gives them a sense of being apart of their athletes accomplishments. Something for athletes to remember when they are doing long hours of training and the family does not get a real sense of what it is all about.

Try to bring them to an event like St Anthony’s which provides many opportunities for following athletes and plenty to do when waiting for them to finish.

All and all a great weekend!

Group Training

Today I want to talk about the benefits of group training.

First everyone should agree that it is easier to push hard when training with others. It is just plain fun to measure yourself against your training buddies and those who think they are faster than you. There are other benefits as well.

In group swims, especially open water ones, it is a great time to practice sighting, swimming in a straight line and around other swimmers. It is rare in a race that you are not going to have one or more people that are going to want to swim in your way. They may be zig zagging, or just a whole bunch of swimmers heading in the same direction. I encourage you to practice pausing to let swimmers move out of your way, a few seconds can let them pass and take a lot of frustration out of your race.

Another option is to speed up so they are behind you and you can swim your pace, caution here as it can wind you and the cost in energy may not be worth the pace. In large races you may find that you have no choice other than to swim across another swimmers path, this is typical in IM races. If you can get a group to train with you, you can learn to do this with out the other swimmer even knowing you did it and it will not effect their race one bit. Again this takes practice and if you don’t do it properly you may catch an elbow or foot for your efforts.

Have fun practicing this with your swim buddies and train smart it will pay off in the long run.

Early races and group training.

Welcome to spring, and if you are here in Florida, it is close to summer out there!

If you are like most triathletes you are enjoying the weather, taking advantage of early season races and working out with friends. This is a large part of the endurance sport life style. There are many benefits in doing races now, and training with groups, the both help you to stay focused and finish workouts and push harder than you would on your own.

One of the things I work with my clients on is how to balance these hard training days, weeks, months with enough recovery to be able to absorb the work and get stronger from it. Too many times athletes get caught up in the mentality that they have to do every group workout that they come across and prove that they are the strongest at every one of them. When in fact there are diminishing returns to this practice. Each hard workout builds on the last one if you let it, if you just keep going with the hard workouts at some point your body will not be able to perform like you want it to.

The wiser athletes are the ones that know when push hard and when to recover. Many times they will avoid group workouts on recovery days, or train with trusted friends who have similar goals for training that day. If you think about it you can still do the group workouts on easy days, just don’t be attached to being the strongest or fastest. In fact, if you are really competitive going easy every other workout will give you an advantage on the hard days.

Training like this should allow you to have fun and enjoy the group training and be able to improve your fitness through the season. This way your late season races will be your best, instead of a suffer fest because you are burned out and cannot wait for the off season.

In a future post I will talk about how to get the most from group training to prepare you for swimming with groups in races, riding without drafting, and efficient running. Of course, nutrition!

Train smart and exceed your expectations!

Day Light Savings Time

If you are anything like me you are very happy that there is more light at the end of the day!

It allows us more time to get out and enjoy the wonderful weather here in Florida and for many the urge to train more.

Tonight starts the week group riding season, translated as group races. No matter what everyone says before the rides, they always turn into a hammer fest.

The thing to remember is that some people are in the middle of their race season right now and you may be at the beginning of yours. So if you try to keep up with them it will be a painful experience. I suggest creating your training plan and start slower than you think you should, we always over estimate the time it take to get back into shape.

Soon enough you will be in the condition to keep up with your faster buddies.

Enjoy the group rides and allow them to help you improve your fitness, not take it all away.

Also remember, others may not have been ridding all winter and may have rusty bike handling skills so keep an eye out for them.

All the Best

B