- Okay, on the face of it, training for an Ironman is quite daunting. I mean, you're required to
devote at least 15 hours to your training per week. And that, well, it quite simply puts most people off the
whole idea altogether. - Yeah, but fear not because, even if you are juggling busy
family, work, time pressures, commitments, you actually
needn't be deterred from signing up for an Ironman. No, not at all, because
what if we were to tell you that actually a great deal of the Ironman fitness
required can be accomplished with a 10-hour training template per week? - Yeah, so actually, by having a well-structured training plan across the three disciplines, you can stand on that start line of an Ironman with confidence. So today we're gonna
be running you through and exploring that 10-hour
Ironman training plan. (electronic jazz music) (electronics waver) Well, first of all, there's
no skirting around the fact that the swim takes up the
least portion of any triathlon. And as we start to extend that
out over an Ironman distance, that becomes as little as 10% of the entire time we're racing. - Yeah, it does, Mark. But we're not gonna sit here and suggest that you actually start
spending as little as an hour of your time in the water. Although, granted, we do
appreciate that an awful lot of you would quite like to be
only swimming for an hour. Which does kind of pain us to acknowledge, because we really like
swimming here at GTN. - Yeah, I mean, speak
for yourself, Fraser, but nonetheless, less can
actually be more with swimming provided you have a
good structure in place and you're turning up to each session with a real idea of what
you're trying to achieve from that session, and that
can actually make your swims really time efficient. - Yeah, so we're gonna keep
this really super simple here and have a max of an
hour and a half swim time in the water per week. Schedule is two times 45-minute sessions. And firstly, you could do this as a strength and endurance type session to build your aerobic base, and that's a session that
I always quite like to do first off in the week,
say Monday mornings. Now, there are countless ways to achieve a strength and endurance
type of outcome session, but here are two slightly
differing session types for you to try. 45 minutes of almost continuous swimming with minimal rest between blocks. For example, five minutes of easy swimming leading into four times
eight minutes of swim with two minutes of recovery
at the end of the pool, which itself can progress over time to three times 12 minutes of swimming with one minute of recovery, and then up to something
like two times 18 minutes of swimming with two minutes of recovery. And this can be done over the
course of five to six weeks. And of course, during a session like that, you can happily use pool buoys or even throw in some paddles, too. Right?
- Yeah, absolutely. Now secondly, we're going to
move on to later in the week, focusing on improving our speed. And this can be achieved through more of a threshold type session where we're working fairly
hard, but with limited recovery. Now this threshold
workout not only helps us to improve our speed, but also to dial into a
specific race pace, too. So you want to start with a
short warmup of 400 meters as 75 swim, 25 drill leading
into blocks of one hundreds starting with 12 to 15 reps with 15 seconds recovery between. This can progress to longer
reps through the block of weeks, and a suggested trend would be moving up to 10 to 12 lots of 150
meters with 25 seconds rest. And then on to eight to
10 lots of 200 meters with 35 seconds recovery. Now those are two really good sessions that actually compliment
each other really well for your Ironman training. But if you're quite a keen swimmer, or perhaps you just happen to
have a little bit extra time in one of your weeks, then it is not out of the question to add in a third technical
swim to your week. - Yeah, and this doesn't
have to be long at all. It can just be a simple half an hour swim that can help with that
all-important feel for the water. Right? And I really would suggest
keeping the reps really short, 25, 50 meters, concentrate on
drill work or some skulling. And equally, this time of session, well, it can double up as a
recovery after your long ride or run of the weekend. (upbeat music) All too easy to be intimidated
by the volume of training that an Ironman can appear to require. Believe me. I felt this pressure of
the presumed training load that was apparently needed. And there's no better example of this than trying to endlessly
cram in bike mileage. Now let's make no mistake,
112 miles is a long, old way, and there's no escaping the fact that the training required
is going to be demanding. But your readiness for an
Ironman needn't be measured simply by how many hours you're logging whilst out on the bike. And believe me, it really isn't necessary to do bucket loads of hundred
plus mile bike rides simply to be capable of completing
your Ironman event. (upbeat music) ♪ I am what I am today ♪ ♪ 'Cause I did it my way ♪ ♪ Nothin' y'all can say ♪ ♪ In this life or the next one ♪ - Right, then. What approach can we adopt
for our bike sessions that means we are confident
of still being able to achieve our target Ironman race, but without devoting
hours and hours of time to our bike training? Well, much like the swim template
that we already discussed, we can focus on two key bike workouts that we can implement during our week. Now the first of those
could be indoor centered and focus largely on
threshold type interval work, or this could be swapped
out for an outdoor session that would focus on hill reps but still target a
certain type of session. The second ride would be
something that I would aim to do at the weekends and
would be a longer effort, more time on the bike, but would allow us to put in
more long, race-specific reps and simulate what we're
gonna get come race day. Now, threshold training is something that many athletes are
guilty of shying away from, and I will not be the
first to put my hand up and say I did that, too. And the simple reason for
this is, well, they hurt. They are tough sessions to do, but that is because they
can dramatically increase our power and endurance,
which is really useful for an Ironman event. And they really, if done well, can bring loads of bang
for our buck to training, and that's something that we actually like to talk a lot about here on the channel. So always begin with a 15
minute gradual build warmup that has four to five 30 second pickups towards the end of this. And that'll lead into a mean set that could look something like six times five minutes, zone four to five effort with two and a half minutes
easy recovery in between. This itself can progress
to three times ten minutes remaining at that zone
four to five effort with, again, half of the recovery
which wold be five minutes. Or we could swap these
types of mean sets out for something that's more
hill reps orientated, and these types of sessions could be four to five times two minutes with a two minute recovery
back down the hill leading into something like five to seven times three minutes with an equal recovery back down the hill of approximately three minutes. Now, the aim of these hill reps would be, just as if we were on the indoor trainer, to hit a effort level of
about zones four to five, and, to be able to do this,
we'd be looking to try and find a gradient of,
say, five to eight percent. That would be ideal, and then, hopefully, these sessions won't
actually take us any longer than about an hour. But, at the max, an hour 15 if we've got a good long
warm-down added on at the end. So this type of session allows
for some race simulation. Now, ideally, you'll be
able to choose a route that can mimic in some
way the course profile of the race that you're targeting, but also what it's gonna
be able to do is allow you to start thinking about
the nutrition strategy that you're hoping to
employ come race day. Ideally done on the weekend, this long ride needn't be incredibly long. Now let's not forget
that the whole concept of this 10-hour training week
is that we're not chasing an unsustainable volume of training. So bearing that in mind and aligned with the threshold and/or hill reps that I've already talked about, these longs rides shouldn't be any more than three and a half to
four hours at the most, and sample sets to include
would be four times 30 minutes at zone three with an
easy 15 minutes recovery building up to four times 45 minutes with a similar recovery period in between. Now, by adding a 30 minute
steady run off the bike to that session is not only gonna help by creeping our overall
volume of the workout up, which is great for the endurance factor that we are needing for the
Ironman we're training for. But it's also gonna help
with the race day simulation that I was just talking about
because, let's not forget, the jelly leg feeling that
we get as we run at a T2 is definitely worth training for. (upbeat electronic music) - Well now for the running,
and, by it's very nature, this is actually the most impactful of the three disciplines because
you are now weight bearing. You are loading up through the joints on each and every foot strike, so it's really important
that you're mindful of that and you're respectful of your
body so that you don't arrive at that Ironman event you've
been training so hard for injured and actually unable
to complete the event. So to help you out, I've
got three key workouts that you should try to fit into your weekly workout schedule. Now, the idea behind
all of this is actually to give the consistency
because, in triathlon training, consistency is key,
particularly when we're training for an Ironman. So, first workout is
actually an alternation of three different workouts. That is very confusing, I
know, but the idea of this is that you do one of
these workouts one week. The next week you do a different workout, and then the third week another one again. So, we've got a threshold type workout. We've got a hill workout, and then we've got a
fartlek tempo workout. Now, the idea of this is
actually just to give you that variety, keep the body
guessing, and also make it fun. So, good example of a
threshold interval session would be to start with
an easy 15 minute warmup with some 80 meter strides to finish leading into four by five
minutes at threshold, an RPE of six to seven out of 10, with two to three minutes very
easy jog recovery between. (camera snaps) Then on to a hill session. Again, make sure you have a
good warmup jog to the hill that you plan to use that should not be too
steep and not too shallow, somewhere nicely between the two, and aim for 12 to 15
lots of 45 second reps with an RPE of seven to eight out of 10 with your recovery simply
being jogging back down to the bottom of the hill or
to where your start point is. And as you get stronger, these can become 60 second intervals, but I don't believe they
need to be any longer in duration than that or
else we start to lose form and the benefits of the session. Then, finally, a fartlek. Okay, and we're gonna
do a building pyramid of 30, 45, 60, and 90 seconds
and an RPE of eight out of 10 with an equal one to one ratio of recovery before coming back down the
pyramid in the same fashion. And this can actually be
repeated one and a half or even twice through, too. Well now for that second weekly workout, and this is the long run. This is all about time on the feet which is particularly
important when you're trying to complete a marathon
at the end of an Ironman. So, with this, be really mindful of where you're starting off at. Don't try to do too much too soon, and just increase by about 15 minutes per four to five weeks. So nice and gradually, and just increase it to a
maximum of two and a half hours. That's gonna be enough to really improve that endurance that you're
gonna need for the event, but also it's gonna hone in that mental toughness
you'll need for race day. And, finally, if time
allows, a brick workout or a run off the bike. Now, this is particularly
useful for a triathlon and an Ironman triathlon. And this needn't be any
longer than 30 minutes. In fact, it can be as short as 20 minutes and provide a very good
and adequate stimulus for a triathlon. Now, you can add this in after
that shorter, mid-week ride, or, if you like, you can add it in after that longer ride
that you do on the weekend that we've already discussed. (upbeat funk music) - Okay, then. Let us wrap this up and recap the training that we've been discussing so far. So we've got two swim workouts that gives us an hour and
a half of time each week in the water. We've got two bike rides, both
indoors and outdoors that, at a peak, will give us
five hours of riding, and two, but if time allows
three, key runs in the week that gives us three and
a half hours on our feet. - Yeah, which means we
can confidently say that, on no more than ten hours of your time, you can put together a really
solid Ironman training program a number of weeks out
from your planned event. But it is worth us pointing
out that this does require some prior fitness and
training behind you, so we'd suggest that
you can competently swim up to or in excess of two thousand meters before taking on this plan. You've ridden two or three times in excess of three and a half hours on the bike, and you've done up to and
in excess of 90 minutes for your run a couple of times. And this just ensures
that you have that base and endurance behind you to
be able to feasibly take on a 10-hour training plan
and do it successfully. (screen swipes) - Good luck with that and
do let us know how it goes in the comments section below. Hopefully you've enjoyed this video, so hit that thumb up like
button, if that's the case, not forgetting to click
on the globe to subscribe. And if you want to see a
video about how to train for an Ironman on minimalist training, you can get that here. - And if you'd like to
see our how to train when you're limited for time
video, just click down here.
