Tri Zones Training

From the coaches: Tri Zones Training is designed to optimize your training, maximize your efforts, and make your training time productive. Tri Zones Training utilizes heart rate training -- we apply predetermined training zones to the building blocks of triathlon training – speed work, strength work, steady state work, and recovery. If you do not own a heart rate monitor, we will also be referring to perceived rates of exertion.

Our philosophy:
1. Goal setting -- The most important part of a training plan is to set a goal -- we use races (mostly in the Austin area) as our goals. Your goal may be a race or it may be improving your run time while running your neighborhood loop. Whatever you goal, make sure it is SMART -- Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and has a Time in which you desire to achieve it.

2. Percent Rules -- Approximately 60% of your total workout week should be spent in an aerobic zone. 25-30% of your workout week should be spent in the performance zones to develop the anaerobic system. We have planned the workout weeks to build and gradually increase training volume to avoid excessive overload.

3. Workout types -- There are four basic types of workouts - speed work, strength work, steady state work, and recovery.
a) Steady state: A combination of working on endurance as well as building a base for other training. Steady state workouts provide the foundation for your training plan--it provides an adequate training load to drive the training effect without overload, yet it is gentle and fun! Steady state swimming/cycling/running is the comfortable center to your performance training program.
b) Speed work: If you want to race fast, you need to train fast! If you are interested in speed and performance, intervals workouts add variety and adaptive training benefits to your training program. We use a variety of intervals to increase our speed for short periods of time which, if repeated, will teach our muscles to fire faster, and allow us to swim/bike/run faster for longer periods of time in a race. Intervals are short increments of speed followed by rest.
c) Strength/Form work: To help develop the muscles needed for triathlons you need to focus on sports-specific strengths. Hill training for running and cycling is the best way to increase your strength -- either ride/run a hilly route, or do hill repeats. Form is improved in all three sports through the use of drills -- running-, swimming- and cycling-specific drills are incorporated to not only add variety to your workouts but improve your ability to perform each sport more efficiently.
d) Recovery: You need to allow recovery time so that your body can adapt to the training you have undertaken. If you train too much and recover too little, you will become rundown and fatigued. Performance will deteriorate, not improve. It is important to design your training to accommodate these important aspects of training.

4. Keep a training log -- It can help to motivate you and keep you on track to write down your workouts. One of the most important aspects of a log is that it gives you a place to record your actual workout and track/monitor your progress.