5 Ways to Maximise Winter Training

The keys to a better season can be found in proper assessment and a focus on endurance and strength.

For many enthusiasts, triathlon training often feels like a full-time pursuit. Despite a calendar full of races, however, it's essential to include an offseason to reestablish a strong aerobic base. It’s also vital to enjoy days and periods throughout the year that are devoted to recovery or rest, which are as important as the days spent training. For many, especially triathletes in North America, the culmination of the year’s big races leaves an appropriate window for this type of evaluation and rebuilding.

As both a physician and coach, my job has always been to help athletes stay healthy, ensure fitness is developing and help them balance training and racing. I also consider diet, stress and other lifestyle factors, all with the goal of improving performance. 

Better performance tomorrow starts today. Here are five key features of a healthy off-season that I encourage athletes to incorporate as they start laying the foundation for next year. 

1. Assess the past season

Was it successful? If yes—meaning you were not injured and raced up to or beyond your expectations—it would appear you already have a great routine in place. Otherwise, things may need changing. This could include anything from your bike setup, training shoes and race nutrition to your eating habits and overall training philosophy. Take time to honestly evaluate all factors.

2. Address any injuries, minor or not, including health problems

For triathletes, an injury means something went wrong—it’s not part of the game plan. Barring a bike crash or other accident, knee pain, fatigue and depression are examples of physical, chemical and mental injuries. The causes of these problems should be found and corrected, which may require help from a professional. The result? Better performance and resiliency.

3. Develop an endurance-based training plan

About 98 percent of the energy needs for triathlons come from the aerobic system, so re-establishing an aerobic base once (or twice) each year is vital. Performing intervals on the track or bulking up in the gym can take up valuable endurance training time and often impair progress during the offseason base period. 

An important training "partner" and valuable asset for developing an aerobic base is a heart rate monitor and an understanding of a sub-maximum workout "zone." While it’s best to find this heart rate through extensive testing, the 180 Formula is very effective too.

Just as important is training all aerobic muscle fibers, which involves ramping up the heart rate during the warm up, maintaining and not exceeding the sub-max levels, and slowly cooling down.

4. Perform an endurance evaluation

You can ensure your endurance development is really taking place by performing ongoing, objective evaluations of your improvement. It’s during this aerobic base-building period that significant improvements in swimming, biking and running should occur. Plotting speed or power, for example, against an aerobic heart rate is a great test to perform now, and each month throughout the winter (and all year). Effective training should result in running faster, increased bike power and more laps, all at the same heart rate. I refer to this as the Maximum Aerobic Function (MAF) Test. For example, if you established that your max aerobic training heart rate is 146, and you can run 8:00 minutes per mile at this rate, developing a better aerobic base should result in running at 7:30 pace at the same heart rate.

If progress is not taking place after a month or two, it usually means something is interfering with some aspect of health or fitness. Anemia, allergies, asthma or other health conditions are clear causes for lack of improvement. But other, less obvious but common imbalances can contribute too. These include chronic inflammation, too high a training heart rate, hormone imbalance, refined carbohydrate intake, low vitamin D and even an uncorrected overtraining condition.

5. Strength train right

Triathletes can improve both bone and muscle strength with simple, short and non-stressful workouts. Correctly done, these should not impair endurance. Here’s a review of how to accomplish this:

→Begin and end strength training with an aerobic warm up and cool down of about 15 minutes each, or longer for more aerobic training time.

→ Use higher weight and lower (five to seven) reps.

→Instead of isolating muscles, use whole body actions such as dead lifts and squats for more extensive strength gains.

→Avoid excess muscle fatigue and next-day soreness.

One to three easy weekly strength workouts can be combined with endurance training of longer duration by extending the warm up and cool down. These low-stress strength sessions should minimize muscle bulk with little or no weight gain.

Effective implementation and measurable results should be expected by midwinter and planning a spring-summer training and racing season will then be more tangible. With significant endurance and a balanced body, expect a great performance in your first race.

Article written by Dr. Phil Maffetone for Ironman.com