Any Triathletes out there have advice for combining SS and Tri training?

[grant.meeker]

Hey all,

I'm trying to overcome two herniated discs in my back and have been employing SS with great success for a little over a month - but it's getting into Tri season and I'm excited to get back into the cardio that caused me to look into this in the beginning. Does anyone out there have advice on how to continue to make at least some strength gains while ramping up the cardio without overtraining?

[Eric Larousse]

Yes start off slow maybe a couple of LSD sessions a week for a few weeks to develope your aerobic base and then going advance into doing intervals for a given distance and slowly increasing how many intervals and decreasing your rest periods as time goes on.
example
y amount of distance x 4 with 3 minutes rest
y amount of distance x5 with 2:30 rest
y amount of distance x6 with 200 rest
y x7 w 1:00 rest

you could start out doing one interval day and one LSD day a week and gradually build it up to two interval days. This all depends on how long your cycling will be if it is long distance you'll probably want to keep LSD in there

[grant.meeker]

That makes sense - but I assume that doing all that while still lifting SS 3x/week will lead quickly to overtraining, especially after a rather severe downtime and injury issue this past fall - thoughts?

[ColoWayno]

That makes sense - but I assume that doing all that while still lifting SS 3x/week will lead quickly to overtraining, especially after a rather severe downtime and injury issue this past fall - thoughts?

Cut down to two days, and probably down to 1 day once you ramp up the Tri training. Use low rep sets with as much weight as you can handle.

[Kazzin]

There was a recent thread on this in Rips Q&A--find it. IIRC Mark's general opinion was that there's simply no way to counteract all the LSD bullshit you'll have to be doing, and strength will regress quite significantly.

[Eric Larousse]

That makes sense - but I assume that doing all that while still lifting SS 3x/week will lead quickly to overtraining, especially after a rather severe downtime and injury issue this past fall - thoughts?

you should try squatting two days a week and the other lifts once per week.....it will not be optimal but you will see progress and the added strength will be great for your cycling goals...you dont have to put up world record powerlifting numbers to be a good cyclist i guarantee you that

[Tapeworm]

A lot of it comes down to priorities. Do you want to be a triathlete who lifts or a lifter who does triathlons?

The former is using strength training to maintain some semblance of structural integrity throughout the season and gains are hard and often lifting will be dropped when high levels of volume and intensity/racing are reached.

If the latter then you should be able to maintain some good linear progress for a long time but the performance in triathlon will plateau.

Whilst against the grain of this website but for the very serious aerobic-based athletes the lifting is a second priority and a low one at that (rehab injury aside). There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that some lifting can help aerobic performance, or hopefully not impede it, even the odd study (the lifting protocols used are dodgy) but largely to be good in tris or cycling or long distance running you need to do a LOT of that. And that makes the lifting hard.

My general practice is to get my riders to use strength work in the off or low racing part of the year, usually for 3 months, 2-3 sessions per week, down to 1 for 3 months and then often dropped (varies person to person).

Exception is track riders of course. Speak to Mr Hill about that.

[Paul1]

I'd suggest looking at the new book "Power, Speed, Endurance" by Brian McKenzie. The book is specifically about triathalon and marathon training using LESS time doing LSD and more time doing strength and power training. He has a LOT of programming suggestions and templates in the book. It's sort of Crossfit oriented, but I think you could easily sub out the WOD routine with your own strength training preferences.

[subwindow]

If you're still a novice in SS (I am), I'd advise to delay doing any LSD training for as long as you can. For instance, I can get into 10k shape in 4 weeks, so if I want to run a 10k I wouldn't start any earlier than that. Even running 3 miles will completely kill my lifts for 48 hours. Overeating helps somewhat, but is not sustainable.

[Tapeworm]

^ Just curious, what's your "into 10km shape" like?