When beginner triathletes start thinking about doing a race, they will find all kinds of blogs and videos written by coaches who start with prescribing a beginner triathlon training plan. But at the complete beginner point, this is already too much and it sets us up for failure. Instead, when beginner triathletes are
Literally just starting out, they need some specific training just to get ready to begin a training training plan. In the same way that CrossFit has an onramp program or surfing requires some dry land lessons before you get going, we are going to start by giving you a four
To eight week start doing triathlon program here that will get you ready to take on any triathlon training plan that you want. You’ll be able to breathe and float easily in the swim. You’ll have the right bike and be able
To bike strong enough so that you’re ready to run after the bike and you will learn how to run and not have it feel like a struggle. Bus shuffle. What’s up, Motivators? My name is Taren. When ordinary people want to accomplish something amazing in endurance sports,
They choose our totally free motive training plans. You’re ready to take on that next big challenge? Let’s do it. When I started triathlon training, I did what most new triathletes do. I read books, watched YouTube videos, and read blog posts. That all felt like they helped.
But I spent the first two years making almost no progress until I realized that I had never even developed the basics for triathlon training. I just jumped right in and it had me struggling through every swim, bike, run and race.
This system we’re going to give you here will start you from absolute square one. It’s like a couch to triathlon program, where you’ll develop the foundation from which you can build up as an athlete to who you really want to be, and you’ll skip the first couple of years of a learning curve.
In fact, some people never even take the time for these basics. And instead of those first couple of years of a learning curve, they struggle through triathlon their entire life. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen to you. The goal when you’re starting out swimming
Should be to be able to swim 400 meters or yards continuously, no breaks, without feeling strained or out of breath whatsoever. And that key of being not out of breath whatsoever is the determining factor of whether or not you are ready to start a swim training plan.
Unfortunately, what happens with a lot of swim coaches is that they became swim coaches because they grew up swimming and became a really good swimmer. So when this happens, they don’t even know what us adult onset swimmers go through.
So you might be in a Learn to Swim program by one of these really good coaches, and they’re telling you about a high elbow catch or an early vertical forearm or all of these things where you are in the water literally not even understanding how
To breathe, or how to stay at the surface of the water and not sink. We filmed a series of drills here in the Master Spa Swim spa, which is excellent for working on drills. And the two things that we work on at the very start of getting.
Into triathlon training is how to breathe. In the water and how to not sink in the water. And the sequence of drills we’ll talk about more in depth in another video. But what you want to work on with the how to breathe portion of getting
Into the water is developing comfort in the water and the instinct that the second your face goes into the water, you start blowing out and getting rid of all of that carbon dioxide that’s built up. So what you do is start with not swimming.
You put your hands on the edge of the pool deck, stick your face in the water and start breathing out really forcefully. Do that while humming and staying calm, getting used to blowing out really, really forcefully and getting rid of all that carbon dioxide. Start building from that drill
Into kicking your feet off the floor of the pool while having your hands on the side of the pool deck and then breathing very gently to the side as you need a breath, taking a tiny little sip of air. When you turn to breathe. Build from that into adding some fins
And some snorkels so that you can get used to that sensation of kicking really, really gently with your feet at the surface of the water. Then transition from that into swimming across the pool with the fins and the snorkel. As you’re doing this, you’re always focusing on keeping your
Heels, your butt and the back of your head at the. Surface of the water so that you’re. Learning how to float. And then as you take the snorkel away, you start turning to breathe. And you’ve developed the instinct so that as soon as your face goes
Into the surface of the water, you start breathing out. By doing this, you are going to be getting rid of a lot of the carbon dioxide that builds up in your lungs, giving you that screaming response to breathe. It’s not actually a shortage of air that you have.
What it is is a surplus of carbon dioxide. So if you can build the instinct that the second your face goes into the water, you forcefully start breathing out, you’re going to be dispelling all of that carbon dioxide, making it much easier for you to stay calm
In the water and not have that panic response. Now, let’s get on to the bike. So now, when it comes to the bike, the first question that most beginners have is what bike should I get? And the answer that I give is very
Different than the answer that most coaches give, because most coaches will say, well, for a triathlon, you need a triathlon bike. And I don’t think this is right for beginners, because beginners aren’t yet sure of whether they want to do solely triathlon or whether they want to do some
Group riding or maybe some cycling vacations. And the thing about a triathlon bike is that, yeah, even though I love my Canyon triathlon bike, it’s really only good for doing triathlon. It’s not good for group riding, it’s not good for cycling adventures or cycling vacations, because it’s just too focused on triathlon.
It isn’t very versatile. So the bike that we actually recommend for beginner triathletes is this whatever bike you have access to. If you have a road bike, if you have a hybrid bike, if you have a mountain bike and you’re starting out with a sprint or an Olympic
Distance race, throw some aerobars on that bike and use that bike. And then let’s say you do a triathlon, you say, hey, I am completely dedicated to triathlon, I love this sport and I want to be as good a triathlete as I can be, then step up to a proper triathlon bike.
But if what you find is that you’re just into endurance sports in general and you just want to dabble in triathlon, in that case, get yourself a road bike. It doesn’t have to be this absolute top of the line aero road bike. You get yourself a nice road bike that you
Like, flap on a pair of aerobars, and what you’re going to give up is a tiny little bit of, like, one or two to 3% speed in triathlon, a little bit of comfort when you hop off the bike and get into the run.
What you’re going to gain is thousands of dollars that you didn’t have to spend on a road bike and a triathlon bike, and you’ve got a bike that can be used for triathlon, for group riding, or all of those cycling adventures.
Once you get into that bike that you like, we’ve got to get into the training. And most coaches will say that getting good on the bike requires a ton of time. You just need to put in a lot of hours to get good on the bike.
Something that I get a little flak for online is believing that we can all be excellent triathlon riders with just two bike workouts per week. I think that one long, low intensity ride where you just build up gradually by eight to 10% every week, and one high intensity ride of 32nd
To eight minute intervals where you are going really hard and you’re spent by the end of it, is enough to be a very tremendous cyclist. And I don’t just believe this. I actually did this myself. I became a four and a half hour,
Half ironman athlete with just two of these bike workouts per week and then 160 minutes, super low intensity, like ride to coffee and back kind of ride. That’s not a workout that’s not adding anything to bike training. So it was really just those two bike workouts where I became an athlete
That qualified for Half Iron Man World Championships. Is this going to make you world class and a professional? No. But for us beginners, it’s enough to get started where you can have that framework of doing one harder bike workout per week with these intervals and you should end feeling very, very challenged.
And then one longer, low intensity bike workout where you build up from maybe starting at 20 minutes to 25 to 30 to 40 to 45, 50, 80, and on and on. And if it’s that nice low intensity, you’re going to be building your aerobic base with the long low intensity workout
And then your anaerobic base with your speed in the high intensity workout. Pair that with a bike you really like, and once you get to the point of being able to ride continuously for 60 minutes at a reasonably decent pace, you’re ready to take on a triathlon training plan.
When it comes to learning to run, we have to do a couple of things. We have to be able to run continuously for 30 minutes without stopping, using as little energy as possible, and build the ability to have a little bit of pep in our stride, be able to build that speed.
Now, to do this, we have to learn the right running technique and we need the right learn to run training program. The issue that I have with couch to five K, half marathon, ten K or marathon training plans,
Is that they tend to build a very shuffly stride where you become a single speed athlete with an inefficient running stride that is actually leading you to being very prone to injury and not actually build up some speed. So let’s talk about how you build the right running technique and build
That training plan so that you can actually adapt to some speed. To run with the right technique, you need the right shoe, especially when you’re starting out. Studies have shown that what you need is a shoe that encourages your natural range of motion.
Typically, that tends to be a shoe that is fairly neutral. So what you’re looking for is a shoe that’s about seven to 10oz, so not too light, not too heavy. You’re also looking for a shoe that has a low heel to toe drop.
So that means the amount of material under the heel and the amount of material under the forefoot is only different by about 6 mm. You don’t have a big built up heel that is going to cause you to not run in a natural range of motion.
And then for most people, we’re looking at a shoe that is fairly neutral. So a lot of people will go into a running store and get fit for overpronation or motion control shoes. Instead, what you should look for is just the shoe that feels the most natural to you.
Try a bunch of shoes on a treadmill and decide on the one that just feels the most natural. Regardless of whether that is motion control or over pronation or under pronation or neutral. Most people will find that the neutral shoe tends to suit them the best when they’re just getting started.
So instead of following the guidelines of the shoe store clerk, follow your sensation of what feels the most natural. Let’s get into the technique. Now, to build a good running technique, you want to learn to land under your center of mass. This means not landing out front of you, putting on the brakes.
You want to just roll smoothly over your foot. Now you can land on your heel, your midfoot, your forefoot, as long as you aren’t loading and compressing your shoe way out in front of you, that’s putting on the brakes and that is slowing you down. And it’s an inefficient way to run.
To learn the nice, efficient running technique, you want to land almost directly under your center of gravity. And how we recommend you learn to do this is by stopping every three minutes or so during all of your runs. For the first few weeks that you’re learning to run and jumping up and down
In place, then adding some butt kicks where you’re jumping up and down from one leg to the next, kicking your butt, then start leaning forward from your ankles. This is going to give you the sensation of landing directly under your center of gravity.
Do this every few minutes to remind yourself roughly how that should feel and translate that into all of your run workouts. Now, these are the run workouts that we recommend to build the ability to run long and fast. Our version of a learn to run or a couch
To five K run training program has three runs per week. The first run that we recommend is a standard run walk program. Like all of those other learn to run programs, start by running continuously for 20 to 30 seconds or whatever you’re
Capable of doing, and then have a one to four work to rest ratio. So if you start by running for 30 seconds, walk for two minutes, and then gradually, week by week, add a little bit of time to the run and reduce the time that is in the rest.
And what you’ll have is over the course of about four to eight weeks, you will gradually become a four to one work to rest runner. So where you might be able to run two to three minutes and only need about 15 to 30 seconds of rest, build this up week by week.
The second run per week is a little bit different than most training programs, where a lot of them will focus on strictly running. What we want to do is focus on time on feet. So instead of having a bunch of 15 to 20
Minutes runs, what I want you to do in the second run per week is go out for 30 to 60 minutes with a shuffly running kind of hike, go out onto some trails and just try to be on your feet for 30 to 60 minutes. Increase the amount of time every single
Week and keep your heart rate up nice and high. It should feel like exercise, even though you’re going back and forth between little bit of shuffling and a little bit of walking, you’re going back and forth just with some easy exercise. And what this is going to do is it’s going
To train our heart rate to stay at a higher level for a longer period of time. Build this up by time a little bit every week. So if you start with 20 minutes, go to 25 and then 30, 35, 45, and it’s going to build a lot of endurance.
The third run is very different from most Learn to Run training programs. And this is where we actually build in the speed, where you don’t become a single speed, slow shuffling runner. In the third run per week, it should be only about 20 to 30 minutes.
And what you do in this are really fast five to ten second wind sprints with big, big rest. So go to a soccer field or a track or somewhere where you can go all out safely, go absolutely all out for five to ten or 15 seconds and do this once per week.
What this is going to do is it’s going to connect the brain to your legs and teach the muscles how to fire really quickly. With most Learn to Run training programs, what they do is just get you out and get you shuffling a whole lot.
And because people are sedentary most of the day and as we get older we get more sedentary, we have a hard time building speed doing these wind sprints. At the very start of our Learn to Run training program, you’re going to be able to build that endurance with the long run
And the walk run, and then you’re going to also be able to easily add in speed. And when you can run continuously for 30 minutes, you’re going to be ready to take on a triathlon training plan. So put all of this together and you get
To about eight workouts per week, which for a total beginner might seem like a lot, but it’s really only five total hours. And we are going to lay out a training plan for how you would do that. Very simply, the first thing we’ll add are the bikes.
So we’d typically do a long bike on the weekend, ideally on Saturday, so that on Sunday we can do a run on tired legs like we’ll do in a triathlon. You can start this at somewhere around 20 to 30 minutes and then gradually build that up by about eight to 10% each week.
This should be low intensity, very low intensity. Make sure that you’re able to talk throughout. Then we want to do the intense bike, so we’re going to do a hard bike over here on Tuesday. This only needs to be about 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how much you’re able to do.
And you want to do intervals of 30 seconds to eight minutes. Just end this workout, playing around with intervals, feeling really challenged. However that works out for you, you can add in a lot more structure when you get into a proper training plan. Next, we’ll do the three runs.
So on Sunday, we’re going to do the long hike kind of run. Make this somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. Make this very low intensity, but gradually build it up again from 30 minutes to 35, 40 or 60 minutes. Then on Friday, we could do the run walk,
Because we don’t want to do a really hard workout right before a long bike. So make this 20 to 30 minutes where we are doing the run walkout. Then midweek, we can do the hard wind sprint workout, where that is going to be, again, 20 to 30 minutes.
Taren we can add three swims. These only need to be about 20 to 30 minutes as well. Focusing entirely on those drills, we don’t want to be spending a lot of time swimming with really bad form. And then you can add in the third swim
On either Saturday or Sunday, depending on what’s good for you. Doesn’t really matter. Make it work with your schedule. Follow that plan for six to eight weeks, and you are going to have the foundation to swim continuously for 400 meters, bike continuously at a reasonably fast
Effort for 60 minutes, and then run again fairly fast for 30 minutes. And you can start any triathlon training plan that you want. All of this probably sounds really simple, and it is. But focusing on those simple things to build the foundation of being able
To swim well, being able to bike and know how to build up speed, and being able to run and not just be a shuffly, injury prone athlete is the key to actually taking on and successfully completing a triathlon training program. Finally, click the video on the screen.
I mentioned how learning to breathe is so very critical, and that we would address how to do this in another video. The video on the screen is our exact drill sequence that we would start anyone with to learn how to breathe in the water. How you do this successfully is the exact
Opposite of what you think it’s actually by breathing less. This video will explain the entire process of how you can learn how to breathe in the water. Later. Motivators.
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