Posted: September 21, 2005

Multisport: Winter Training - The Base Phase

During the winter months, if I was your coach and I oversaw your training, I would rather see you swim 500 meters of near perfect freestyle than 3,000 meters of inefficient freestyle. I would rather see you bike for an hour at a cadence that is efficient for you, than see you ride four hours with inefficient pedal and power output. I would rather see your running form efficient and proud, than seeing it breaking down in several areas.

We are triathletes. We are self-motivated and self-disciplined. No one forces us out of bed every morning to drive to swim practice in the dark or to go for the morning run when there is a chill in the air. This is a great attribute you have, but it can also contribute later in the year for not improving your performance. The winter months is a time to improve your form in all three disciplines so that later, when it is time to train your body at a higher intensity, you will be more efficient with your energy usage and perform better. I often see athletes training too hard early in the year, only to burn out both physically and mentally weeks before their big race. It is important to set your goals and to have constructive workouts during the base phase.

Goal Setting – The Mental Foundation

To begin your training season, you first need to use your brain synapses. Determine what your goals are going to be for the season. Goals are to be measurable. You need to know you are getting closer to your goal. For instance, your goal may be to finish your “A” priority Olympic distance triathlon in a time of 2:17. Dissect your goal further and determine that you plan on doing a 24 minute swim, a 1:14 bike and a 39 minute run. In addition, you can have short-term goals to maintain your motivation such as running a 10K race in March under 37:45. A goal should be under your control. Saying you are going to place top eight in your age group is not a goal because you don't know who will be showing up at the race. A goal should be in the positive, such as I am going to finish in under twelve hours and eight minutes. Don't say my goal is to not finish in over fourteen hours. Finally, a goal must be a challenge, yet realistic. You can't have a goal that you are going to do an Ironman race under nine hours if the last one you did took fourteen hours. A challenging, yet realistic goal will help maintain your motivation.

Now that you have determined your goals and you have them on your computer, bedroom post, in your car, office desk and bathroom mirror, start the process of achieving these goals. As I stated earlier, you must strive for efficiency in all three disciplines. If the swim is more inefficient than your cycling, you will want to spend more time on your swim in the winter months. Work on your weaknesses, while still maintaining your strengths as much as possible. Training, especially the winter months, is about trying to improve your limiters in the sport. Now that you have your goals set, it is time to set your agenda for training during the base phase.

Base – The Physical Foundation

Base building, which is often termed the general preparation phase, creates the foundation for which the rest of the season will be either a failure or a success. It is when the most basic elements of fitness are developed. Think of a triangle and the bottom of the triangle is the base, where all other aspects of training stem. The three main components of base building are endurance, speed and force.

Endurance

Triathlon is an endurance sport. Even a sprint triathlon takes a great amount of time to complete when compared to other sports. If you don’t build endurance, your racing season will be poor. Endurance is simply the ability to maintain a sustained effort for a long period of time. Some athletes may consider endurance training, an effort at a low heart rate or a rate of perceived effort (RPE) of 4-5, to be “junk miles.” I believe every workout has a purpose. What some may call “junk miles,” I call laying the bricks for a successful season. Endurance is more time intensive for an athlete, but with it being less intensity, the body is able to recover quickly for future workouts. Endurance doesn’t come instantly; you must build your endurance up over a period of time.

Force

Force could also be called strength training. It is the ability to apply force to the water, the pedal and the ground. Force is developed in many ways. During this base phase, lifting weights is a great way to build force. Weights prepare the body for the more intensive workouts in the later phases of training. Although weights builds force, no matter how specific your lifting regiment, weights still aren’t as specific as doing force workouts in the discipline itself. Most triathletes have a difficult enough time trying to fit the three disciplines into their bustling life, let alone weight training. One option I give triathletes who are and aren’t on a time crunch is to perform plyometrics. Routines would include jumping rope, hopping, skipping, two-legged bounding and one-legged bounding. You can do plyometrics almost anywhere and it helps build strength as well as enhance the fast twitch muscles to aid the speed skills aspect of training.

Specific workouts for force on the swim are to use paddles, wear drag suits or t-shirts. Force workouts on the bike are hill climbing workouts on both short and long climbs, pedaling in big gears on the flats and increasing resistance on indoor trainers. Force workouts for the run would again be hill climbing, step running such as stadium bleachers or taking advantage of running into a 30-MPH head wind.

Speed Skills

Of the three elements of the base phase, speed skills are the workouts often neglected. When I began with my coach Joe Friel, one of the workouts he had me do throughout the entire year was a 40 minute run with 8 X 20 seconds running downhill on a soft surface such as gravel or grass. After doing the interval, I would walk back to where I started. This process took about 15 minutes. I asked Joe if I was to include this in my 40 minute run because I felt like I hardly ran. He said yes. It didn’t make sense to me because I always had the mentality of the more time I trained, the better I would become. That way of thinking got me into a fatigue state for which I searched out a coach after training and racing for thirteen years previously on my own.

Speed skills carry immense potential to improving an athlete’s performance. A speed skill is the ability to make the movements of the sport to work efficiently at race pace or faster. The length of intervals at race pace or faster is not long so as to not stress training systems that deal with higher heart rate over an extended period of time such as the lactate threshold (LT). Speed skills may be 25 all out sprints in the pool, spin-ups on the bike or the 20 second downhill sprints running. Drills are also used to aid the speed skills. These may be drills to minimize drag in the water such as working on rotating the body. A cyclist may do isolated leg training or high cadence repetitions. A runner will also work on cadence and do a variety of drills to improve form.

Reaping the Rewards

During the base phase, let’s say you were able to increase your run stride length one inch per foot strike from 5 feet to 5’1” while maintaining the same cadence and running efficiency. This is because you worked on force and speed skills. In addition, you did endurance training so you can maintain this stride performance for a 10K run. With the improved stride length, you would run approximately 218 yards more than the10K. This translates to a great amount of time savings when all things are the same with the exception of that one inch improvement. This can be said in the same terms of getting an extra inch reach in swimming or being able to maintain the same cadence as the previous year on the bike, but being able to pedal in a gear one size bigger. Improving your performance by say 5% through this type of training is a lot easier than trying to raise your lactate threshold (LT) or VO2 Max by 5%.

In summary, this winter, hold back on the workouts where you go out and train at your LT or an RPE of 7-9. In the short term, high intensity training will raise your fitness quickly, but you will not be able to sustain it for an extended period of time. After time, your body will become more susceptible to injury and fatigue. When near the end of your base phase, you will be surprised at how fast you can race even though you have yet to train the higher intensity energy systems. Set your goals and enjoy your winter base training.

© Wes Hobson Performance Inc. Posted with permission.

Swim Bike Run Gain a competitive edge with the new triathlon training manual from top professional triathlete Wes Hobson. Swim, Bike, Run contains all you need to know to be successful in triathlons of any length, from Sprint to Olympic to Ironman. With years of professional experience to guide you, you’ll be racing smarter—and faster. Click on the graphic to order the book or for more information

Check out the Training Peaks Interactive Trainer for a training plan tailored for you. Comment on this story.