Boris Fernandez

PRINCIPLES OF TRAINING

Here are some principles of training that are very simple and will help you in directing your training plan into an effective, efficient program. Athletes that have a full schedule will benefit from following these principles in order to have an overall purpose for their training-year. SPECIFICITY OF TRAINING. The system you train or the sport you train is the one that is going to benefit the most from the training session. In other words, if you want to improve your swimming you have to swim. If you want to improve your run, you need to run and if you want to improve your bike, well you guessed it, you need to bike! Also, the improvements in a particular sport can be counterproductive to the other sports. That is why it is very important to have a balanced training plan that addresses the need of the particular athlete especially geared toward any of the weak spots. Triathletes need to train as a triathlete not as an individual runner, cyclist or swimmer. PROGRESSION. In order to improve your results you need to increment your training. There are many ways that you can change your training. You can change the frequency (amount of times that you do a particular set during a week) or you can change the amount (how much or how long you do it). You can change the recovery (how much you rest) and finally you can change the intensity but be careful with this one as it could lead to overtraining or losing the intended purpose of your workout. For example, I recently did a progression swimming set with the athletes that I work with where we went from 4x3x100 to 3x4x100 to 2x6x100 to 12x100 and finally to 16x100. We played with the recovery and finally we played with the amount. Intensity was always kept the same. REVERSIBILITY. This principle says that consistency is a very important part of your training program. If you stop training for two weeks you might reverse back twice as much. As an example, I had a bike accident that sidelined me from swimming for a month and it may take me twice that much time to just get back to where I was at the time of the accident. TEDIUM. Triathlon is a very demanding sport. It requires the improvement in three disciplines that contradict each other. They do, however, have a characteristic in common and that is monotony. Fortunately, there are many ways that you can vary your training. You can change locations. Instead of swimming in the pool you can swim in the ocean. You can change your running venues to give you a change of scenery unlike me, who loves to run in circles around the Village Green. I am sure by now I must hold the record for the most times run around in circles in the park. You can have good training partners that support and keep you motivated. So to sum up be specific to what you want to achieve in the training session, week or year. Progress you fitness gradually. Be consistent and don’t forget to have fun!