Sunday 15 January 2012

Taking part in Triathlons, HAVE A TRAINING PLAN

I have now been involved in Triathlons for 20 yrs now and seen and met a lot of different aged and ability athletes out, however one thing in common for all athletes is having structure to their training. I've seen far too many athletes trying to complete their first triathlon or improve their performance by simply following an 'ad hoc' approach to their training.  

Here are the major problems I've witnessed first hand that you will need to overcome:
 
1.  Despite your best intentions, you may lose the motivation to train and never start that first triathlon, let alone finish it.
 
2.  You will struggle to fit your training into your already busy life.  Job, family and other commitments all compete with your valuable free time and 99% of the time it will be your training session that will be sacrificed.
 
3.  You will under-train for your weakest event.  Everyone has a weak link and human nature dictates that if left to make the decision of "what type of training should I do today" more often than not you will train for the event you enjoy.
 
4.  You will overtrain.  I mean two things by this.  First you may literally overtrain - that is, not give your body enough time to recover, burn yourself out or injure yourself.  But second, and equally dangerous in my opinion, is that you will spend more time training than you are required to.  You must do the precise amount of training that will improve your performance and not a minute more.  Anything more than this is simply wasting your time; time which could be spent with your family or friends.
 
A Structured Training Plan Will Help You go from being a COMPLETER to a COMPETER  
 
Following a training plan has been proven time and again to dramatically reduce these dangers.
 
More importantly, you are committed to "Training Smart".
 
Set Your Goals and Commit to Them
 
The first thing to ask yourself is what are you trying to achieve?  This will obviously depend to an extent where you currently are in terms of physical fitness. It's better to start small (with, for example, a Sprint Triathlon or an 'easy' Olympic distance) and your goal should be both challenging and realistic.
 
You must be passionate about your goal - without the passion you will not be willing to push yourself that extra mile in training or get out of bed to train when its still dark outside.  Write your goal down.  Once you have your goal you have a target to focus your training plan design on. 

PARADISE TRIATHLON TRAINING can help you set out these Targets / Goals and make sure your on the right track to be safe and injury free.  Contact us...........  enquiries@paradise-tri-training.co.uk

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