My Favourite Triathlon Training Sessions

My training philosophy is all about sustainable, consistent and balanced training.  Triathlon training is a balance. Not just between swimming, cycling and running but everything else as well: nutrition, conditioning, family, work, time… life!  Over the years, I’ve worked with a wide range of athletes (men, women and juniors). My coaching is an amalgamation of my experiences of being coached as well as my own sporting career.  I thought it would be great idea to share my favourite triathlon training sessions for each discipline.

The sessions that I set are based on not just those experiences but also on reading what works.  As a coach, I read and learn from other coaches, other athletes.  An experienced coach should be constantly learning and applying that new knowledge to their own athletes when it becomes applicable.

My coaching is an evolution.

I am self critical in my appraisal of my performance when coaching.  What worked?  What could I have done better?  Why didn't that athlete absorb that piece of information, could I have presented it differently.  Every session... a coach should not be just someone who sets a session and let's the athlete get on with it.  When I am coaching, my personal aim every session is to make sure that each individual gets at least one coaching point to work on during each session.  Its not always possible but I will endeavour to make sure anyone missed gets more attention at the next session.

This is something I bring to training camps also.

Swim - this is actually a Michael Phelps based session which has been adapted for Triathlon (he probably knocked this out swimming Butterfly!)

I have only shown the Main Set here:  The aim of this session is to try and swim the same time for every 25m swim you do.  So if you swim 30sec for 25m, this equates to 60sec per 50m, 120sec per 100m etc.  The time after each swim is the amount of rest you get.  It is a great session for nailing that pace judgement - it starts of real easy - but - by the end it is hard!

4x 25m - 5sec
4x 50m - 10sec
4x 75m - 10sec
4x 100m - 15sec
4x 125m - 15sec
4x 150m - 20sec
4x 175m - 25sec
4x 200m - 30sec

This session is great for developing endurance, practicing pace judgement and allows you to focus on some technique too.

Cycling - I was once told that if you want to ride well up hills...

you have to ride up hills.  (Just clarify I love this session as a coach - not as an athlete!).  This session is based around a two hour ride.  During the ride there are three hills of about 2km in length - you could of course use one 8km hill and ride up different sections of it!

Two hour ride of predominantly steady state riding with three lots of 4 times up each 2km hill.  So that is 24km of uphill!  Oh your recovery is to roll back to the start of each hill.

The session develops power, strength and muscular endurance.  It is important to pace your self - push yourself but you shouldn't be smashing yourself.  Go to fast up the first 2km and you'll pay for it later.

Running - It is all about pace judgement.

A great session for athletes of most abilities and doing any distance.  The session is about focusing on technique, holding your form, keeping up on your toes and building run strength not speed.

The Main Set for this session is 20x 200m efforts with 200m jog.  Yes that is 8km of running.  The idea of the session is to sustain the effort for each of the 200m efforts and learn about pace judgement.  It should be faster than your 5km pace but certainly not an all out sprint.  The recovery jog should be just that... You should try and do this on 'feel' rather that set a specific pace on your garmin.

Remember, that you should do a good warm up for each of these sessions to prepare the muscles - happy training!