Posted: January 16, 2006

Multisport by Lance Watson: Early Season Technique

By Lance Watson.

When building back from a break into a new year, one way to prevent injury is let your main focus be technique. Your body has just been at rest for a while and although it may seem ready to get back into training it's important to remember not to over do it. Your body and mind need a break every year and the best time is usually after race season is over. It is replenishing to take a break and because of that many athletes are raring to get started once the New Year begins. Strangely enough injuries often begin early in the season and before the hard training has even begun. This occurs because some athletes start hitting each workout full throttle too soon. Unfortunately our heart and lungs may allow us to push really hard early on in the season however all the body’s little muscles, ligaments and tendons have to be eased back into that type of training. Having a training log that you can look back on from previous years can be very valuable at the beginning of the New Year. Checking to see what sort of progressions worked or didn't work in previous years can help you head down the right path and get off to a healthy start.

After you and your coach, come up with a smart progression you should focus on allowing the fitness to come through good form and consistency. Think about creating workouts that are successful based on technical goals and maintaining the appropriate HR zone or speed that you should be at early in the season. It is encouraging to feel fast, or light on your toes earlier on in the year. It may feel like a bonus and that this may be "the year" that you're really going to get faster because you feel so good so early. It is paramount that you and your training partners are careful about getting too focused on these feelings. It's not really important that you're feeling fast in January so re-direct your focus. Challenge yourself to be focused on technique. There will be plenty of weeks later on in the year where you will have no choice but to be focused on your speed and your times. Think of the beginning of each New Year as an opportunity to get excited about the little things and once the season starts to unfold you will be further ahead because of it. You don't want to be trying to fix technical things when being fast should be your main focus.

With a good plan your tendons, ligaments and smaller stabilizing and rotational muscles have time to adapt to the workload and re-learn their proper uses, as they don't come around as quickly as your heart and lungs. Be aware of how quickly you increase your workload. It is better to build back slowly than rush into long hard sets that can lead to injuries and time away from training. Little twinges here and there can turn into long lasting injuries so make sure you listen to your body. Make sure that you acknowledge you are coming back from some time off and enjoy a gradual build. Having a coach to provide some parameters and "pull back on the reigns" can prove very useful at the beginning of a new year.

Focusing on technique early on in the year will pay off with big dividends when you do increase the workload, as it will help you perform the activity more efficiently, enabling you to go faster with less effort. Technique is an important aspect in any sport or physical activity because it reduces the required workload. If you can use less energy to do the same thing then theoretically you should be able to get better/faster if you decided to increase you effort. Keep your mind involved and active. Get excited about your technical advances and take note of changes that begin to feel more natural.

Technical Adaptation Ideas:

• Hire, or ask a friend to video tape you while running around the track on the treadmill. Then have the expert analyze your technique and give you a few things to work on. Or, if you are doing this yourself try and find some running footage on-line and do a comparison. Pick a few things that you see a top runner doing that you don't see yourself doing and work some cues into your run workouts.

• Treat yourself to a couple sessions with a swim coach. Ask the person to take a look at your technique and help you come up with three or four things that he or she thinks you could improve on. Most people don't have work schedules that allow them to swim with a coach all the time so just spend a couple of sessions getting feedback and then commit to working on those key components of the stroke while you train on your own.

• Go and watch any sort of race can be of technical assistance to you. Take note of what you see the fast and efficient athletes doing and then visualize that during your workouts. You don't have to be running, swimming, or biking as fast as those people to try and mimic or copy their technique, just try and do as they do technically.

Thanks to Suzanne Weckend for her contribution to this piece.

Over the past 20 years, Lance Watson has coached a number of Ironman and Olympic Games Champions .
Beginner and experienced triathletes can contact him at LifeSport Coaching (coach@LifeSport.ca) or visit LifeSport.ca.
Thanks to Jessica Kirkwood for her contribution to this piece.

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Posted with permission from LifeSport.ca.

© Copyright 2005 Lance Watson Professional Coaching Inc.