Complete Beginners Guide to Triathlon

what's up motivators taren here if you're thinking about doing your very first triathlon stick around because in this video podcast we are going to give you the complete beginner's guide to triathlon we are going to go through the basics how to get started from absolutely doing nothing to being able to do your first race what gear you need we're going to give you a training plan we're going to go through race nutrition a race strategy plan we're going to go through motivation and we're going to talk about all of the basic questions that you might have as you're wondering can you actually do a triathlon spoiler alert the answer is yes and we're going to help you here today my name is taryn gazelle in my late 20s i was overweight unfulfilled and couldn't even run to the end of the block over the following 10 years i lost 65 pounds racing triathlons running races cycling events and world championships but eventually the suffer culture of endurance sports training caught up to me causing health issues and injuries now my company motive and i are on a mission to help people live more fulfilling lives by reaching endurance sports goals using healthy methods we can all kill it on race day without killing our bodies let's do it thank you for tuning in today if you are listening to this in a podcast format and you want some of the visuals to accompany this go over to the taren's motive method youtube channel if you're watching this and you just want to listen to this and you're probably not going to miss out on a whole lot because we try to explain things well enough that you can listen along and do this as a secondary task save a little bit of time listen to it as a podcast go over to the terence motive method podcast but let's get into this i remember the very first time that i thought about possibly doing a triathlon i couldn't run i didn't own a bike and i couldn't swim so all of these sports all of the gear that i might need all of the questions that were popping up into my head were really really intimidating it probably took me about three years to actually get comfortable in the sport but what we try to do with this youtube channel our podcast the books that we've published the app that we have it is to speed up everyone's learning curve and take away that intimidation because i know physically all of you do have the capabilities of doing a triathlon but mentally it's very intimidating to do so so we want to take some of that intimidation away by helping you get started and today we're going to give you the first steps that you need to take to get started training for that triathlon so let's start off with the basics of what a triathlon is triathlon is always swim bike run in that order so that you don't end up swimming at the end after you are tired and we have a whole bunch of people that we have to pull out of the water there are four main distances of triathlon there's a sprint an olympic a half ironman and an ironman with the ironman being the longest the sprint being the shortest the distances of a sprint are a 750 meter swim a 20 kilometer bike and a 5k run on average it takes people 20 minutes to do the swim takes people 45 minutes to do the bike 26 minutes to do the run resulting in an average finish time of about an hour and 32 minutes of course there are some faster like professionals who take about 52 minutes and there are some longer it doesn't matter how long it takes as long as you're out there challenging yourself and being the best version of you doesn't matter if you're doing a sprint super fast or an iron man super slow as long as you're trying to challenge yourself and become a better version of yourself that's the point of triathlon moving on to an olympic distance triathlon we're looking at a 1500 meter swim a 40 kilometer bike and a 10k run on average takes people 32 minutes to do the swim an hour and 15 minutes to do the bike and 52 minutes to do the run resulting in an average finish time of around 2 hours and 45 minutes professionals are going to do an olympic distance triathlon in around an hour and 52 minutes we aren't going to be there and that's okay getting into the half ironman 70.3 distance triathlon it is a 1900 meter swim being 1.2 miles a 90 kilometer bike 56 miles followed by a complete half marathon of 21.1 kilometers 13.1 miles on average it takes people 45 minutes to do the swim three hours and 15 minutes to do the bike two hours and 26 minutes to do the run resulting in an average finish time of 6 hours and 30 minutes for a half iron mat for the pros they're probably going to do this in a little bit under 4 hours but again we don't worry about that because as long as we are challenging ourselves it doesn't matter how long it takes just get out there and do it finally the iron man this is what you would see on tv that happens every single year in hawaii this is the ironman world championship held in kailua kona usually it's in october and this is what people are quite often searching for or trying to get to this is very very hard for most people to actually qualify for i've never qualified for it i think that maybe if i had kept racing really competitively after a few years of iron man racing i could have got there but even myself being a top two three percent in the world kind of athlete it was very very hard the people that qualify for this are quite often athletes who have a very elite endurance sports background in swimming cycling or running otherwise this doesn't mean that you shouldn't shoot for it i think that shooting for iron man world championships is a phenomenal goal to have and set for yourself but i do find a lot of people put their self-worth and their success or failure as an endurance athlete on did they or did they not actually qualify for kona and understanding that it is so incredibly difficult because so many talented athletes are trying to do it will hopefully change the mindset from saying well did i qualify for kona or not more to what races are really exciting for me to do and just how do i be a better version of myself there are lots of exciting races out there lots of bucket list races to do out there and one race does not determine your worth as an athlete shirts cool race but you know what it's actually really fun to go and watch it and not actually race it i would highly recommend that but let's get into the distances of an iron man it is a 3 800 meter swim 2.4 miles a 180 kilometer bike 112 miles a full marathon at the end of 42.2 kilometers 26.2 miles this takes most people an hour and 18 minutes to do the swim six and a half hours to do the bike and 5 hours and 10 minutes to do the run resulting in a total finish time of 13 hours on average to do an ironman triathlon so if you want to see what your average swim bike run and overall finish times are for your age category for your gender for the race distance that you're thinking of we've put together this calculator with our friends over at sportstats.ca who do all of the timing for the ironman races in i think all of north america and they do a bunch of other distance races as well you can just put in what your age category is what your gender is and what distance you are thinking about doing and you'll get the results of what the swim bike run average finish times are and what the overall average finish time are so you can compare to your age category what averages and do you think that you can get there take a look now the next thing that you might be wondering is how much do you actually need to train for a triathlon we've put together this calculator link is in the description below for this where actually for all endurance races being triathlon running cycling duathlon swim run and all of the different distances of each of those races and what your endurance sports background is if you have no background or if you have a modest background being that you are maybe really exceptional in another sport but it was completely unrelated to endurance racing or you have an elite background be it a competitive swimmer a competitive cyclist a competitive runner and what your race goal is if you just want to finish or if you want to finish feeling strong and in control of the race or if you want to compete you can put in all of those parameters and let's just put in triathlon olympic distance no background and just finishing is an excellent goal for first timers you hit submit and it'll give you the approximate months of good training that it'll take to reach that goal and the average weekly training hours assuming that the training hours are good and it's a well-structured training plan so again link is in the description below to both of those calculators that you can go and play around with for free now that you know about what a triathlon is how long it'll approximately take roughly how much training it's going to take you let's get into how do you get started this is where a lot of people just get stepped up and go ah you know what i really i can't swim i don't have a bike i don't know how to run every time i run i get injured we're going to give you a guideline for how to get started in each of the disciplines of swim bike run before you even get into a triathlon training plan that's where i think a lot of people take a misstep maybe they sign up for a race and then download a template training plan or hire a coach and they go holy smokes this is really hard i think that there is training necessary before you get into a training plan it's training to be able to train now this doesn't mean that it's going to be years away before you can actually train for a triathlon i think that with about six to eight weeks of pre-training to get you ready to teach you how to swim to get you comfortable on the bike and to get you running injury-free and feeling good there's just a small little bit of work that we're going to do ahead of time and we're going to give you that work right now so let's get you started how do you actually get started with this pre-training before your actual training on the swim the biggest thing that we need to work on is just being comfortable and having some basic capabilities in the water we don't need to work on doing hundreds and 400 meters and getting you out into open water what we have to do is teach you how to breathe in just basic water which is a big process most people will come into triathlon and even coaches will just say all right let's get you in there and we're going to start doing drills but i think back to when i first started doing triathlon i joined a swim program thinking okay this swim program is going to teach me how to swim and the coach was on deck saying all right well you need a high elbow recovery and really dangle that arm when it's out of the water and i was standing there going i can't breathe in here what are you talking about so that i started going back to complete basics of how do i learn how to breathe and not freak out in the water how do i learn how to float across the surface of the water and not sink and drag my legs and this is what we created the entire program for in triathlon swimming foundations and we've had tons of videos about this but generally speaking what i would urge you to do with the swim portion of triathlon is to back it way way up and just take the stance of i need to learn how to breathe comfortably in the water and not freak out in the water the same way that i needed to take several months to learn how to walk when i was a baby that didn't happen boom overnight you didn't go from crawling to running around you built on little tiny improvements every single day so we're actually working with a project athlete right now who is a former olympian but she's never really swam before so we've got her in the pool with the aqua sizers just blowing bubbles and what you can do is go into the shallow end put your hands on the wall blow bubbles and then you graduate from putting your hands on the wall and blowing bubbles to getting your feet just kicked off the water very gently and continuing to blow bubbles and then you build in turning and taking a breath to the left side and then build on that turn and take a breath to the right side you can do sink downs to just get used to having your face in the water and the second that your face enters the water you calmly and controlled breathe out and you slowly breathe out and the best way that i can urge you to do this is just by staying calm humming singing a song in your head that you find calming saying things like goose frog [Applause] that calm controlled feeling is what you need to develop you need to develop the ability to put your face in the water and not be scared of oh okay okay i just gotta wait until i get that breath and then i'm okay because that tension that tightness that rushed breathing is how you build up a lot of co2 in your lungs and you end up resulting in feeling like you're constantly out of breath so then you tense up and then you sink a little bit and then you tense up more and it's this just downward cycle of drowning so start with that on the bike side of things in triathlon bike foundations that book we outline the two bike per week system that we created again don't worry about doing big vo2 max intervals or should you use peloton or should you use zwift or should you use something like ruby or should you use a spin class or should you go and join bike groups with two bikes per week one being really low intensity just talking and long and whatever long is for you is okay if it's 14k or 10 miles just do that distance and then the next distance do a little bit longer and the next time you do it do a little bit longer and a little bit longer being at that low intensity is going to allow your body to adapt to it and build endurance if you make the intensity too hard your body isn't going to really be able to adapt very well because it's so focused on dealing with the stress of that workout that it's not going to have an easy time just building that low intensity endurance that metabolic flexibility of being able to burn fat as fuel and just chug along for hours and hours on end so low intensity whatever long is for you to start just build on that a little bit each week and then the other workout rip it think about throwing up this is where you start doing 15 second intervals 30 second intervals 60 second intervals you do two minute intervals or six minute intervals if they're really short intervals have a big rest in between so you can go short and you can do a max effort during those intervals if it's a longer interval like four minutes make the rest interval actually shorter like four minutes of interval and then one minute of rest this is going to keep your heart rate really high and it's going to work on that vo2 max as you're just starting out don't fuss about what the exact intervals are just do intervals do those 15 second to six minute intervals with rest in between don't just go out and well ride kind of easy because you want to go so hard that your body goes wow that was intense i am going to adapt and improve my vo2 max and my neuromuscular power and my top end speed combine that with the ability to go long and all of a sudden you have a really good combination of endurance and speed with the run we've done entire videos on this and i'll link a video in the description below to a complete guide to getting started running generally what you need to focus on when you start running is a beginner running technique the beginner running technique is about landing underneath your center of gravity and as opposed to landing with your foot out front in front of your body and putting the brakes on which then creates injuries in your feet in your knees in your hips in your ankles because all of that force comes all the way up your body instead land underneath your center of gravity and lean forward from the ankles which is going to take a ton of the load off and you're going to run much much smoother those three things are the things that you need to focus on when you start taking up triathlon beyond that you can get into all of the science and the studies and i will mention a study about generally what your training intensity distribution should be but at the outset just focus on that if you do that for about four to eight weeks at the very start of your triathlon journey you're going to be set up for years of gains ahead of most people myself i struggled for three years because i was doing what most people do i worked with a coach i worked with a training group i bounced around with all of the training methods that i would read about in magazines and i didn't have any sort of understanding of the structure of how do i just get started on the right foot these methods will get you started on the right foot i want to take a minute to thank our first sponsor being you can now you can is a better way to start your day i've typically talked about it from a performance improvement benefit because you can is a carbohydrate that doesn't spike your blood glucose and then cause a crash later but i actually use it as you can tell by only being one bar in this box and an empty package of granola that i like to use this as the way to start my day because it's not that terrible bowl of cereal that spikes your blood glucose causing a crash later in the day it's also not the bulletproof coffee that yeah it gives you some calories but it really doesn't get you any energy to start your day or get to your workout you can bars and granola are something that i have just about every single morning because it's an excellent way to get something in your stomach while keeping your blood sugar nice and stable so maybe you've tried you can as a performance tool in the past but you can as a actual food to start your day with as a replacement for energy bars or oatmeal or cereal or granola and having that nice stable blood glucose with a good amount of energy is an excellent way to do this if you want to get a discount on you can you can go to ucan dot co forward slash taren where we've got a guide for how i like to use ucan in training but if you buy anything at that website through you can dot co forward slash taren you will get a discount applied at checkout i dig this stuff so now that you understand the pre-training before the training you do need a fair bit of gear now it's not tens of thousands of dollars sure you could spend upwards of 50 000 on bikes and swim spas and indoor training facilities and your own pain cave and all these sorts of things but for just getting started for the average triathlete that's just getting started with one to three thousand dollars or even if you're able to borrow some of the things maybe just a few hundred dollars you're going to be able to start doing that pre-training and do a training plan of course if money is no object go and buy all the things but for most people that isn't the case and even if money is no object i would encourage most of you to ease into buying all of your gear because you don't really know what gear you want what gear is really suitable for you don't know if you're going to even stay in triathlon or if you find that one of the disciplines is more exciting to you than the others maybe you just go off and start doing cycling events or running races or swim runs and if you save your money a little bit at the outset you're going to be able to more easily pivot into what you want or expand and spend more money down the road so let's give you the gear that you need to get started training for a triathlon so the gear that we are going to give you here is going to be the basic amount of gear that you are going to need to just get started is this the gear that is the final amount of gear that you are going to buy no you are going to grow well beyond this everyone does but this is what will get you started without breaking the bank first thing that you're going to need swimming is a swimsuit for women most women use a one-piece swimsuit something along the lines of this for men if you really want to step it up go with a speedo i recognize that most people don't start with a speedo so you can get something called jammers which are short's length that's really all you need you need something that doesn't have a ton of material that's loose creating a bunch of drag something that's nice and tight to the body second thing that you need are some mirrored swim goggles i like mirrored swim goggles that don't have a lot going on like they aren't huge you might think that you want really huge swim goggles but this tends to just have more surface area that leaks can appear so something that has a very small profile and i like mirrored because when you get out into open water it's going to take the glare off of that water you can use these in the pool and in open water next i do definitely recommend that you get a wetsuit i absolutely love roca i have been a roca fan since the very first month that they came out and i actually believe that this wetsuit that they've come out with the entry-level wetsuit that they've got down here the maverick wetsuit for 275 dollars i have this and this is actually what i do a lot of my training in at 275 dollars you are getting a huge amount of value you're getting a phenomenal wetsuit i think this is probably one of the best wetsuits that they've ever come out with because of all the features that you get at just 275 bucks typically 275 dollars gets you an entry level basic wetsuit with no features you get a ton with this if you want to go to roca.com forward slash taren they've almost always got either a giveaway or a discount that you can get at that so i recommend getting your own wetsuit because you don't want to rent a wetsuit that doesn't necessarily fit you and somebody else has peed in if you buy this for 275 dollars and even don't end up using it you can probably sell it for close to 250 dollars right after next for a lot of the swim drills that you are going to be doing i recommend that beginners get a snorkel don't expect this snorkel swimming to be easy this is going to take four weeks or so for it to feel comfortable you want to keep a little bit of pressure inside your nose so that water doesn't go up your nose and you want to blow out from your nose about twice every single length but this snorkel is going to allow you to focus on executing the drill really well similar to that a pull buoy which you put in between your legs is going to pair with that snorkel so that you can just focus on the stroke and pair that with an ankle strap so that you've got snorkel at the top of your head a pull buoy in between your legs and then a band around your ankles tying your entire body together so that you're swimming like a log you want to swim in a straight line and these three things paired together actually do that the final thing that i think you need is a pair of swim flippers the swim flippers that i like are called the tear cross blade you want something that's about four to six inches longer than your leg you don't want short stubby flippers because those are for elite swimmers for building leg speed you don't want long scuba fins because that slows down your kick these four to six inch longer than your toes and with a stiff blade on the side and a little bit of a pliable blade this gives you that nice fluid kick that you want moving on to the bike first off whatever bike you have access to is totally fine for your very first triathlon use a borrowed road bike you can use a mountain bike you can use a city bike if you were doing an iron man or a half iron man for your first race which i don't necessarily recommend you definitely want a road bike if you're buying a bike we've done other videos about what to look for in your first bike and generally you want a road bike not a tri bike until you know that you are 100 dedicated to triathlon you're going to do lots of races you don't buy a tri-bike a tri-bike is a very very specialized bike it's very specific yes i love canyon and i love your tri bikes but i spend most of my time on a road bike on a gravel bike or on a mountain bike it's not until i start doing really race-specific training for a triathlon that i get into the tri bike because it's not a very versatile bike so whatever bike you can get access to use that bike and don't be ashamed about it the things that you definitely need are a helmet a lot of people will go and buy an aero helmet for triathlon which is what you eventually want to get but these well if you go and join a group ride you're going to feel a little bit silly the helmets that i recommend you get as a first helmet are like an aero road helmet so this is actually the helmet that i use it's the laser bullet it's not available i think that they're coming out with a new one is my impression based on what i see on the website but an aero road helmet is nice enough because you can use it for road cycling you can use it for triathlons and it's still going to be really nice and narrow in a pinch you can even use it for mountain biking i have and yeah i get some silly looks but it's really versatile so you can do all of those things for the gear that you would wear get yourself a pair of tri shorts not cycling shorts because as you are just getting into the sport we want to save you some money and if you're getting cycling shorts the chamois in the butt is going to be huge it's enormous in cycling shorts and if you use those shorts in a triathlon you're going to have diaper bud it's going to be soggy you're going to chafe on the bike and then you're not going to be able to run with it with triathlon shorts you can use those triathlon shorts for all of your cycling workouts and it has a smaller chamois in it so you can still go and do the triathlon so a pair of tri shorts not cycling shorts if you're only getting one pair of shorts and then the flip side of that is if you're only getting one jersey get a cycling jersey so that you can cover up your shoulders on all of your training and then when you're doing your race this is still going to be nice and tight and arrow enough so that you still have some pockets and you can wear it in both things finally let's get into the running gear that you need when it comes to shoes you want to go with neutral running shoes unless you have a doctor's note from somebody that is a really really good sport specific running podiatrist or a physiotherapist but even in a lot of cases they will recommend neutral running shoes typically stick with neutral running shoes these are shoes that are not stability focused they're not pronation control focus they're not anything focused they just allow your body to function in its natural range of motion that's what you want to do when you start running you don't want to limit your body with a certain pair of shoes you want your body to learn how to run in its natural range of motion and neutral running shoes that are about 7 to 9 ounces with a two to six millimeter heel to toe drop that's your sweet spot beyond that you want to get a triathlon multi-sport watch garmin makes good ones sunto polar they all make really good ones and get yourself a chest based heart rate monitor strap so you can control your intensity levels the wrist based heart rate monitors they start falling apart as soon as you start doing really intense intervals on the bike or you start running any faster than a very slow jog so the chest based heart rate monitor strap is what you want alright so you know how long a triathlon is going to take roughly how much training it's going to do you've done the pre-training you've got the gear now it's time to get into a training plan that's where we're going to go with step four here and actually give you a guideline for what a triathlon training plan looks like week by week i want to share just this one study i'm not going to study you to death here today but this study summarizes a lot of what we need to get at with all of our endurance training whether it's running swimming cycling or triathlon focus just about every single study that you will look at will show the exact same outcome of this study so i want to share with you this one study that summarizes the vast majority of science around all of endurance training be it running cycling triathlon swim training everything generally comes to this conclusion and it is that polarized training can stimulate greater training effects than between threshold training in recreational runners so what i'm getting at here is polarized training is where you do the vast majority of your training anywhere from 80 to 95 of your training at a very low intensity what is a low intensity well that is a zone 2 or lower heart rate cap i'll put a link in the description below to where you can calculate your zones and you want to do the vast majority of your training under that top of zone 2 heart rate cap what this allows you to do is be metabolically efficient this builds up your endurance this means that you can burn carbs which is really easy for your body but also fat which in this day and age in western society where diets are very carb heavy actually becomes quite difficult for our bodies to do if we can train at this low intensity training zone where we're burning a lot of fat our body is going to have nearly limitless energy for endurance you're going to be able to build up your endurance immensely in addition to that training at that low intensity training zone doesn't build up a ton of lactic acid when you build up a lot of lactic acid your body has this big stress response where it goes holy spokes i need to really like i need to deal with this so there's all of these stress hormones that start going through your body when you start training over that zone 2 heart rate cap what this low intensity training also does is it builds up a lot of mitochondria mitochondria are the energy producers in your muscles if you have more mitochondria you can put out more energy so you can go at a faster rate at the same effort level or at the same effort level have a lower heart rate or a lower perceived exertion so then when you get into the high intensity training because you don't have a huge stress response in your body because you have more mitochondria in your body you can actually push harder and faster in those hard sessions giving you actually more of a training benefit so that's why studies like this are actually showing that polarized training even though most of the training is much easier actually gives a better benefit so now that you understand roughly the training distribution of how much intensity you should be doing in low intensity and how much you should be doing in high intensity let's talk about what we need to accomplish with a triathlon training plan if you're listening along i'm referencing a pie chart that is equally split into three parts one part being endurance one part being speed and the other part being strength what most people focus on when they take up triathlon is endurance how do i get to actually do the distance how am i capable of swimming those long distances biking those long distances running those long distances and then as soon as they do a race or two and realize hey you know it's actually easier to accomplish those distances than they thought they focus entirely on speed they work only on speed almost leaving endurance in the background and that creates much more difficulty in the long run because they're just focused on how do they go faster they forget about that training distribution of doing a huge amount of training at low intensity the endurance side of things is the low intensity the speed side is the high intensity you need both and then finally strength is almost ignored it's certainly becoming more of a common thing to see professional athletes and triathletes and all endurance athletes include strength training into their plan but it's almost an afterthought and i think that that's looking at things the wrong way i think that's doing a disservice to endurance athletes when the studies support almost 100 percent of the time that including strength training into an endurance sports training plan is going to result in better results on the race course and you're going to have a better quality of life because your musculature is going to be able to function a lot better so how do we balance all of these three things in a proper triathlon training plan that's where we're going to do away with everything that's written here and we're going to give you a weekly guideline for how a triathlon training plan should look so let's give you a guideline of a training plan and how i like to lay it out and this applies to whether you're doing a sprint race or an ironman race these general principles will apply what i like to do is i like to set up monday and friday as easy days so this book ends hard training on tuesday wednesday thursday allowing for really long and race specific training on saturday and sunday now if you are a shift worker and your weekend isn't saturday and sunday just whatever your weekend is if you have very irregular days off you're gonna have to move some things around but we'll try to give you some guidelines for how to do that so let's start with the weekend because that's the most straightforward what i like to set up is the long bike on saturday and the long run on sunday the long bike is going to be followed by a brick run afterwards so what is a long bike or a long run and a brick run well what long for you is whatever is long and challenging right now maybe that's 20 minutes if you're just getting started maybe it's 90 minutes if you are already a few years into doing triathlon and you are looking at doing a half ironman or an ironman distance race whatever is long and challenging is what your long and challenging is roughly year round what we do want to build up to is almost always an over distance so that means whatever you're long and challenging is right now you start at that and then you build up by about 10 each week taking a rest week every third week so that means let's say you're doing 20 kilometers then the next week you're going to do 22 kilometers then the third week you're going to back it down by about 40 percent to uh 13 14 kilometers and then the fourth week you're going to go up to 24 kilometers so it's up 10 up 10 down 40 percent up 10 up 10 percent down 40 over and over until you get to an over distance ride and run an over distance ride and run means that you're capable of doing 50 to 60 kilometers on the bike for a sprint triathlon 8 to 10 kilometers on the run for a sprint triathlon roughly about 60 to 70 kilometers on the bike for an olympic distance athlete a 15 kilometer run for an olympic distance athlete a 120 130k bike for a half ironman athlete a 25k run for a half ironman distance athlete and then for a ironman distance athlete building up to a six hour ride which is probably not an over distance but that's okay you really just need to be able to build your way up to six hours and then a long run of two runs comprised of two and a half hours in the morning an hour and a half in the evening we'll save why all of that is structured the way it is for other videos but that is going to get you the endurance that you need once you've built up to those long rides and long runs followed by a brick run of anywhere from five to 15 minutes for a sprint athlete all the way up to about 45 to 60 minutes for an ironman athlete you are going to start including effort levels at the end of the long bike and the start of the brick run and the end of the long run at or above your race effort and later in the video we're going to talk about what race effort should be by including effort levels at the end of the bike and the start of the brick run at and slightly above your race effort you're going to start dialing in what your race effort is actually achievable what is reasonable for you to actually do by doing the long run on sunday at the very end of a training week having done a long bike and a brick run afterwards the day before you are going to be teaching your legs to be durable and run at a nice high pace when you're getting tired so that combination of saturday sunday long bike long run and all of those race pace efforts and just above race pace efforts being in that is very very similar to what you're going to experience on race day every single weekend you're basically practicing a little mini race getting you ready for that actual race let's start filling in the rest of the week on friday i like to make this just simply easy and monday same sort of thing easy depending on what your schedule is you can mix and match what these workouts actually are but i like to do either an easy ride or an easy swim on these days you can build up years down the road when you've had lots of years of running in you to doing an easy run and it actually being still very recovery focused but for beginner triathletes running tends to beat us up a lot and considering that we need to run after the bike on saturday and we are going to run long on sunday running back to back to back days gets a little bit dicey for new triathletes so i would stick to friday and monday being an easy ride or an easy swim now when i say easy i mean easy easy easy end these feeling guilty for how short it was and how easy it was you're not looking to build up speed or endurance in these workouts you're just looking at turning over the muscles getting your body a little bit more acclimatized to actually doing swim bike run but just turning over the muscles and getting some blood flow so that you are able to stimulate all of the recovery leading into the weekend and coming out of the weekend or coming out of these three hard days keep it very very easy then tuesday wednesday thursday these should be more your key days what i like to do is make the middle day on wednesday the main swim so this is your big swim this is maybe about 40 to 50 minutes for a sprint athlete maybe about 80 to 90 minutes for an ironman athlete this is where you are ending the swim feeling spent you have worked really really hard on tuesday and thursday these are the intense bike and the intense run days remember that training distribution study that i told you about about polarized training these two days are the 20 of really high intensity this is where you're focusing on neuromuscular power vo2 max you're doing intervals that are leading into a race in the last several months about two to six minutes long you're focusing on that these workouts might be anywhere from about 30 to 60 minutes long they're going to be hard they're going to be intense you're gonna scream these are the things that are really challenging that you commonly associate with endurance training and the instagram influencers online going screaming like crazy that is what these two workouts are after the bike i would recommend doing another brick run even though your legs might be jelly from the intense ride but the more you can do bricks the more you're going to be comfortable running off the bike which is going to be a very very key skill set finally i would add in a strength day putting it on a swim or the intense run day i'm not fussed on which one it comes in but i would really really recommend having one strength session per week and doing it after your key swim or your key intense run we don't want to do that strength session during your easy ride or easy swim days because then all of a sudden those days aren't recovery focused do that strength session later in the day so you can execute the good endurance focused workout here on the swim and the run and then you get in some strength later so we have other videos and we have a training app that can help you with what the exact workout should be if i was to start filling in what every single workout is going to be every single day this video would be about eight hours long but this is a guideline that you should use you want to cluster your intense workouts together you don't want to run on back-to-back days you want to include brick runs as much as possible you want to have long sessions that are very very low intensity starting out and then as you get closer and closer to the race having bigger and bigger intervals and more intervals at and above that race pace i would also add in that during this swim here or the easy swim on the friday is actually a really good place to do it at least six to eight times before the race get into open water so that you are comfortable with swimming in open water this easy swim is a good place to do it because the first bunch of times that you get into open water it's not going to be comfortable you're probably not going to get in much of a workout like a hard workout but if you just go in you say i'm just going to be in open water take breaks as much as i need to that's a good place to have open water training and the more you get into open water the easier it's going to be make sure that you get into your wetsuit before the race because that wetsuit needs to get wet to actually loosen up and not be constrictive in your chest the last thing that i'll give you some guidance on is the taper process i like to use a one week taper process for sprint olympic half ironman races i like to use a two-week taper for ironman distance races the taper process is a reduction in training volume by about 40 to 50 percent while keeping some intensity in there you want to make sure that you are lowering the amount of intervals that you're doing the duration of the intervals is lower the total length of the workouts is lower but you're still keeping in good pops of intensity in that taper process so that your body isn't getting stale it's still reminded that it's going on a trajectory of getting faster but you're getting rest so that it has a bigger opportunity to recover our second sponsor for today is athletic greens and this is ag-1 ag-1 is a product that i use literally every single day and i started doing so because i wanted a replacement for a traditional multivitamin traditional multivitamins if you've used them you know that your pea turns lime green and essentially you are flushing money down the drain you're making very expensive pee because your body isn't able to absorb traditional multivitamins in its typical form ag-1 has 75 vitamins minerals nutrients all from whole food ingredients so it's very easy for your body to absorb it's in a greens powder and i can tell you from experience and i'll save you the nitty gritty gory details of why i know this but i know that my body is absorbing this so if you want to try this out athletic greens has made it easy for you you can get a free year's supply of vitamin d and five free travel packages with your first purchase of ag-one you can do so by going to athleticgreens.com forward slash taren again that's athleticgreens.com forward slash taren to take ownership of your total health with this all-in-one nutritional insurance i love it i'm seriously a big fan but you've got the gear you know how to get started you've got the training plan let's start refining your performance with step five here which is nutrition it's all fine to go through all of this training but if you show up on race day or you're trying to execute really good training and you're not fueling your body properly you're not going to be able to have a good race day or really absorb that hard work in the training that you're doing so what we're going to do is focus on primarily the main workouts and the races because they're very similar when i say main workouts i'm talking about the long bike followed by the long run these are the saturday and sunday workouts that we outlined in the training plan and these are the workouts that look very similar to how a triathlon actually looks because you're doing long bikes with race pace intervals followed by a run off the bike with some race pace intervals or it is your race day so the nutrition looks roughly the same to start that we're going to go back to the computer i'm going to show you a calculator with what you should use to get started dialing in your race nutrition so lots of links in the description for you below but this nutrition calculator that we've put together on our website allows you to whether it's just for training or for your racing calculate the amount of calories that you're going to burn and then the amount of calories that you need to take in so in the case of a triathlon you're going to select the distance of the triathlon that you're looking to do you're going to put in your weight in pounds you're going to put in your estimated swim time and if you don't know your estimated swim time use the averages that we gave you earlier in the video and podcast and just put that in and then estimate your total time and from that you are going to be able to hit submit and boom it is going to give you roughly your calories burned and your target calories to consume during the race take that calculation and then we're going to show you how to apply it in a race so now that you have the calories that you need for each of your main sessions and your race day we're going to go to this before the swim during the swim during the bike and during the run nutrition strategy graph and if you're listening in the podcast you're not going to miss out on a lot you'll understand what we're talking about before the race what i want you to do is have a carb based breakfast four hours from the start of the race so that means that if you are starting at eight a.m you're getting up at 4am having a carb-based breakfast and then from that point up until the race just sip a light electrolyte drink something with about 20 to 40 calories in it and a little bit of electrolytes it's really just something to do with your hands to make sure that you're staying hydrated then about 20 to 30 minutes before the start of the race take your first serving of nutrition which is part of the calories that we calculated with that calculator so 20 to 30 minutes before you're going to take your first serving of nutrition this can be from a solid a liquid or a gel it doesn't really matter personally i like to take you can you can is my exclusive nutrition provider why i like ucan is because it's a carbohydrate-based source and it allows you to actually keep your blood sugar from spiking really high and then crashing it instead just does a nice little gradual climb and then over the course of two three hours there's just a small drop off so it allows you to still burn a lot of fat as fuel and have stable blood sugar you can go to ucan dot co forward slash taren and get 20 off any you can product and you can dot co forward slash taran there is a blog post about how do we actually use ucan but anyway let's get into the race so you've got that 20 to 30 minute before the race serving during the swim you're taking nothing even for an ironman you're taking nothing during the swim then about 10 minutes into the start of the bike we are going to then take our first serving of nutrition why we wait 10 minutes into the start of the bike is because we want to let our heart rate just settle in we want our breathing to settle in so we're not gulping things down and taking in a lot of air creating indigestion so we wait that 10 minutes into the bike and then we're going to fast forward to the end of the bike and take another serving of nutrition 10 minutes before the end of the bike and 10 minutes into the start of the run don't worry there are nutrition stops in between that 10 minutes into the start of the bike and 10 minutes from the end of the bike but i just want to bookend with that so that we're not sitting with a bunch of food in our stomach like immediately before we get off the bike and go into transition one we're letting everything settle a little bit that time period in between 10 minutes after the start of the bike and 10 minutes from the end of the bike at even intervals from about 18 to 30 minutes whatever calculates out to be even for you you're taking your nutrition in those even intervals also the entire way along throughout the bike we are sipping our electrolyte drink at a rate of about one good sip every five minutes this should equate to roughly about one large bottle every hour if you find that you are burping maybe back it off or switch to water if you find that you get indigestion switch to water until you feel that indigestion go away and then get back onto the electrolytes if you feel like you are dry increase the rate at which you are actually drinking that water so that five minute mark is kind of just a guideline that you can titrate the amount of fluids that you take up and down final thing is that you can take these calories on the bike from a solid or a liquid i would prefer that you don't do an all-in-one nutrition source that tends to make it really hard to have two levers of calories and fluids you want to be able to separate those so if it's really hot and you need more fluids then you need calories you can always drink more fluids without giving yourself a bunch of extra calories causing indigestion or if you have an upset stomach and you want to switch to water you can do that still take in the calories and then you're taking fluid from the water when you have an all-in-one nutrition product you don't have that ability to customize how many calories you're getting and how much fluid you're getting if anything goes wrong a lot goes wrong i hear more blow-ups from people that take all-in-one nutritional sources than anyone else and then on the run we start taking the calories at 10 minutes into the run and then we go all the way to the end of the run in those even increments the thing about the run is that i recommend that you definitely take all of the nutrition from liquid sources it's been shown that because of the jostling on the run athletes are much more likely to get indigestion when they're on the run if they're taking their calorie source from a solid food source because there just isn't that much blood in your stomach it's all in your arms and legs helping you run so taking it from a liquid source personally i like coke helps a lot during the run one final thing about this nutrition strategy is test it out during your long bike followed by the brick run that we outlined in the training plan definitely in the six to eight weeks before your first race you want to be practicing that nutrition so that you get in the habit of hitting all of your intervals with the time checks you know roughly about how many calories feels about right you know if you're a heavy sweater and maybe you need a little bit more fluid than just that every five minute interval or how large a sip you need to take getting that nutrition strategy dialed in happens in those last six weeks in that big weekend workout all right so you got the training plan you got the nutrition now i want to talk about what happens on race day what should your race day strategy be that's where we are going to get into roughly what effort level you should be going out at in the swim the bike the run how do you figure out what the appropriate effort level is in the swim the bike the run and what should your strategy be in each of those disciplines so you can set yourself up to have the best race first thing i'm going to talk about is the swim strategy this is where people tend to freak out the most this is the most intimidating part of triathlon rightfully so it's a completely foreign environment it scares a lot of people it is a situation where you're unable to breathe instead of being upright like when we're running and riding and walking around all day we are all of a sudden horizontal we can't see where we're going there's people flapping and hitting us all around it is a very chaotic environment so of course it's understandable this is going to be the area that intimidates the most amount of people there's a strategy that we can use to make sure that we set ourselves up for a great race and have the lowest likelihood of having a bad situation occur for that i'm going to go down to this swim strategy diagram here again if you're listening you'll be able to understand what we're talking about but let's look at this swim strategy diagram as the start of the swim what most triathletes do is they think that they have to swim a shortest possible dead straight line to the first buoy that is out there in the course and if you are a really good swimmer or you're an elite athlete that is a hundred percent the case you want to swim as short a line as possible you want to be in the mix of as many people as possible so you don't lose the main group you need to swim really hard to make sure you get to the buoy with everyone else around you but what happens when you take that shortest possible straight line is you are surrounding yourself with a huge amount of other people it is completely chaotic and this is where panic responses happen so how do you avoid that well you can just go away from that main chaos and this is what i recommend most triathletes do even myself being a top 10 fastest swimmer in age group races i would still go off to the side of the swim start i would go quite a ways down from the start line where everyone might be on the very corner trying to get that shortest possible line i would go a ways away and i would take a direct line from that ways away from the chaos to the first buoy and because i was swimming away from the chaos i would be able to just do my own thing sight the buoy i wouldn't have all these hands and arms crashing down upon me i wouldn't have feet that were in front of me that were maybe swimming off course i wouldn't have to swim over people who had maybe seated themselves too far towards the front but couldn't actually hang on i wouldn't have to be in that absolute chaos i would be quite a ways away from it nice and controlled swimming my own race now you might say to yourself well isn't that going to make it longer isn't that going to make the race quite a bit longer the answer is yes but i'll give you an example of how much longer at the ironman world championships in kona it's a long way out to the first buoy and you might think holy smokes i am so far out to the side of the main swim start area this is going to be hundreds of meters longer well guess how much longer it actually is it's about two to three meters longer that's it in addition to that because you're not swimming in behind people's feet who well let's face it about 60 to 70 percent of the people swimming in triathlon don't sight as much as they should they should be citing once every five to six strokes but the average triathlete only sights every 20 to 30 strokes so the odds are that when you swim in that big chaotic pack in the middle you're probably going to swim offline a little bit by being able to go way out to the side just do your own sighting make sure that you are sighting and looking at the buoy or something in behind the buoy that is up on shore and easier to identify you are going to be able to swim a dead straight line and odds are that you're actually going to have a better more enjoyable race that is less panicked that is actually shorter than had you been in the chaos so in the swim that's what i would recommend next thing i want to talk about is the pacing effort for a beginner triathlete i don't recommend going off of a heart rate metric or even watts as the first thing that you start looking at with your pacing sure it might seem alluring to say oh well i'm just gonna have a heart rate metric or a watt target on the bike and that's all i'm going to actually use to pace myself on the race what that ends up doing is when you're a new triathlete you don't yet have the body awareness to know if on that day that that effort level is too hard or too easy if it's too hard it's going to result in a blow up if it's too easy it's going to result in an underperformance so instead what i like to give is a guideline for effort levels and then back out what those metrics are i'm going to explain what that means so on the sprint for the swim you're looking at an effort level of about seven to eight out of ten on the bike about eight to nine out of ten so you're not going absolutely all out and being thrashed for the run and then on the run about a nine out of ten a sprint triathlete is going right up to that red line very very close to blowing up but just one step shy of that an olympic distance athlete is looking at a swim effort level of about a seven out of ten a bike effort level of about a seven to eight out of ten and a run effort level of about an eight out of ten a half ironman distance athlete is going to have a swim effort level of about six to seven out of ten a bike effort level of about six to seven out of ten and a run effort level of about a seven out of ten and then an ironman athlete is going to have a swim effort level of about a five to six out of ten consider the swim mandatory transportation to the actual start of the race it's about as casual as could be on the bike about a 6 out of 10 and on the run about a 5 to 6 out of 10. this is actually going to be a little bit lower at the start we want to make sure that we're not really even considering it a race where you're pushing hard in an ironman until the last 20 kilometers or so it's like an 8 to 13 hour warm up and then two hours of hell sounds fun right so i gave you these effort levels but how do you actually start dialing it in and saying well what is a five or six out of ten what is a seven out of ten what's a nine out of ten what i recommend doing is in that long weekend race simulation workout that is a long bike followed by a brick run afterwards you start using these effort levels as a guideline and you start doing intervals at or slightly above those effort levels and what is going to happen is as you do more and more of those workouts you're going to get into the run after the bike and you're going to either feel like you could go harder or feel like it was too hard and know that you've gotta back off do that week after week after week after week and what is going to happen is you will find what is your appropriate six out of ten what is your seven out of ten what's your eight out of ten what is your ideal race pace what is your race effort level you're going to be able to feel it out and then instead of doing what most coaches and athletes do starting with a metric and a certain percentage of your max heart rate or your max power or your ftp what you're doing is you are starting with the effort level first and seeing what is an appropriate effort level and then go and look at your workout data after the fact and say okay now that i've dialed in what a race pace really feels like what is the metric and the data that is going to correlate with that so maybe you're doing those effort levels and seeing that your power numbers are 170 to 180 watts and that is your comfortable race pace power level or your heart rate is around 157 beats a minute then you all of a sudden have an effort level that you can feel what is appropriate for your body and you can correlate that with a metric so when you get into a race on race day maybe you've actually just nailed the taper and hey you can actually push a little bit harder because you know what an appropriate difficulty and effort level feels like or maybe you traveled and your body was just kind of a little bit off but to have the best race possible you know that you've got to back it off a little bit and that's okay we've got to develop that ability to be able to go and see what you're capable of on race day to make sure that you're not going too hard and blowing up or not going too easy and underperforming all right so we've got the gear we've got you started we've got your training plan your nutrition your race strategy this is seemingly everything right well the last part of it is motivation even a really well-designed training plan even the most dedicated athlete is going to go through periods of low motivation where they struggle with how do they keep going how do they push through those low moments sometimes you should push through the low moments sometimes you should back off and listen to your body but how do we set ourselves up such that we are going to be able to not have as many of those low moments and we're going to be able to execute really good training so that we get to the race not feeling like we've just hammered ourselves for three months or four months or six months or a year but we are really eager to get into that race and have a good day a lot of people will get to that race and actually be burnt out and say things like i just want to get it over with so i can get that medal or i can say that i'm an iron man and that's because they haven't set up their training to be mentally fulfilling and nourishing along the way we have a three-step system that i'm going to tell you about now that is going to help you to get to that race really mentally ready and not mentally ready and like a girl i'm going to rip this a part way but i'm mentally ready in a hey i'm excited for this day and i'm going to have a good time kind of way i'll give you that three-step process now so there's three steps that i want you to take to keep that motivation level high but appropriate is as follows first i want you to use a triathlon training plan it can be our triathlon training plans again link is in the description below for that or anyone else's by having a plan as opposed to having to make up the plan yourself it takes out the decision factor you don't have to wake up every single day and have that moment of well what should i do should i do this i mean i know i have this session in mind and for this rough guideline of what my triathlon weekly plan should be but should i go with two minute intervals or four minute intervals not having a training plan puts doubt into your mind that little bit of doubt can build up throughout a day and lead you to not actually doing a session or it can lead you to just gradually being less and less confident that you're on the right track i really do believe that a well-structured training plan is worth a ton because it just keeps you motivated all you have to do is you show up and if you have confidence in that plan you just do the work the second step is that i want you to have a goal and yes it's okay just to put a race on the calendar and say that's my goal but what i want you to think about is have a goal in mind that if you were to try to accomplish this goal tomorrow you'd have a 50 50 shot of actually being successful you know that even if you got through it it'd be really challenging really hard and it wouldn't go very well having this goal that is slightly scary to you ends up motivating you every single day because you got that little bit of fear and that little bit of fear gives you the motivation to get up and get out and get going every single day that little bit of fear also makes it really exciting when you accomplish that goal because you faced your fears you drop kicked your fears and you battled them to get through and be a better version of yourself the third thing that is going to make it motivating is to involve friends this means a few things this means when you have that goal that is a little bit scary to you tell your friends state it tell people what your goal is and by stating it that's going to be really scary but it's also going to motivate you to go out and do the training and achieve that goal because all of a sudden it's real other people know about what you want to achieve having friends involved also means that you aren't just training by yourself this is something that i wasn't good at when i was doing my really competitive training i suffered from just getting a little bit burnt out because i put the exact session that i needed to do and it was only about me above being social with everyone else and because it was only about me over and over and over it became a little bit less enjoyable it became just about the work as opposed to challenging myself with friends and seeing what they could do and taking fulfillment in my success and their success and going and racing with people so i would very very much encourage you to have a training partner for at least a third of your workouts do those three things and you're going to get through the low moments but at the same time i want you to recognize when there's low day after low day after low day after low day over and over this is actually an indication your brain is telling your body that you need a little bit of rest at which case maybe it's time to either peel back a little bit on the training plan or increase your recovery one or the other when you start having a number of low motivation days in a row this is the first indication that your body is likely not keeping up with the workouts so back off before that happens but if you've structured the training plan your goal and your support network hopefully these low motivation moments don't come in nearly as often but if the low motivation moments do come in because you've structured everything so well you really know that for certain your body needs a little bit of a change a little bit more rest or a little bit less training it's not just like a false positive so set that up and you are going to be set up for really successful success thank you for watching and listening to this motivators i really appreciate you making it to the end and i hope that you found this very helpful and i hope that you now go and take this into your endurance adventures that you want to conquer hopefully this gave you the confidence to know that you can do it again spoiler alert you can it might seem intimidating right now but i really hope that this gave you some of the structure to understand how to take those next few steps if you're wanting a little bit more guidance and you want the exact workouts to do in strength in running swimming cycling and the nutrition for what you should do every single day there's a link in the description below to our training app that is as good as a 101 coach but as cheap as doing it yourself it's the motive training app that all you have to do is put in what race dates you have in mind at how much you want to train and boom all you have to do is the work of showing up every single day and doing the workouts and i guarantee that you are going to be able to over perform your expectations in any endurance race that you want to go into being triathlon events running events cycling events swim runs duathlons we have training plans for all of that so there is a link in the description below to that you can check it out for free for 14 days and if you found this helpful and you're watching on youtube hit the like button below if you are listening i'd love if you send us a message on instagram and let us know what you found helpful and what your next race is i'd love to hear from you and how everything is going later motivators

Channel: Taren's MōTTIV Method

Views: 49,554

Keywords: triathlon, triathlete, triathlons, fitness, triathlon tips, triathlon training, triathlon taren, beginner triathlon training, beginner triathlon tips, beginner triathlete, triathlon training tips, triathlon (sport), beginner triathlon, triathlon for beginners, triathlon training plan, triathlon training plan for beginners, beginner triathlon training plan

Id: hNjK7Z8ZYxY

Length: 70min 52sec (4252 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022