Tag: Functional & Strength Training

Balance your body to prevent (and recover from) injuries

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Most of us have some type of muscular imbalance–even if we don’t know it yet. Unfortunately, these imbalances usually make themselves known in the form of an injury. But, we can assess and address muscular imbalance before we find ourselves on the DL. If you are already dealing with an injury from a tough season, well, this post can help you too. During the USAT Level 1 coaching clinic that John and I attended in October, we heard quite a bit about muscular imbalances that are typical for runners and triathletes. And, a year of battling with ITBS has taught …

CompuTrainer Ride of the Week: Felog’s False Flats

Every race has got ’em. Those infuriating patches where we stare in wonder at our bike computers as they report decreasing speed despite maintaining power and effort. False Flats. Just the phrase is enough to conjure another F-word. False flats remind us that not all elevation change comes in big leaps. Sometimes, we climb a hill 1-2% at a time. After two years competing in Ironman Lake Placid, I’ve learned quite a bit about how false flats will try to get the best of you. But–and this is a really important “but”– false flats represent an opportunity if we train …

Swimming in doubt

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At times, doubt can be useful to our survival. For example, if someone tells you that you will be just fine if you run into raging flood waters, it is smart to doubt the veracity of that claim. At other times, however, doubt can be counter-productive. Perhaps we are afraid of failure, or we lack confidence. In these cases, doubt can prevent us from reaching our potential. In triathlon, I have struggled with doubts of my ability. Most recently, these doubts have centered on swimming. Growing up on the Southern New Jersey coast, I learned the basics of how to …

Tempo Intervals: Crying for my mommy in the last 10 seconds

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With IMLP 2011 a fond memory, it’s time to enjoy a return of the sufferfest. We’ve moved the CompuTrainer into a deluxe suite in the garage, where we have a TV, cable, and climate control. Lap of luxury, people! As an added benefit of the deluxe sweet, I don’t have to worry about my house smelling like a locker room–or leaving bike grease all over the floors (which I did two weeks ago – oops!). I like sweat and grease as much as the next triathlete, but I think the garage is a better place for stinky and sticky stuff. …

A little help from my friends

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If you cycle or if you’ve seen cyclists, then you know that cyclists typically ride in groups – sometimes of only 2 or 3, other times of 20, 30 or more. And, then there’s me. I don’t ride with other people. Ever. I do all of my training rides solo: just me, the velo and miles of open road. Oh, if it were only that romantic! But it’s not. In reality, it’s holding me back from reaching my potential. While going solo is good for mental toughness, solitary cycling for every ride is not necessarily the road to success, particularly …

How can I do better next time?

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An endorphin-craving, wild-eyed smurf-like triathlete sits on my shoulder and consistently asks this question after every race, and most training sessions. While visible only to me, you will simply have to trust that she exists. In fact, she looks exactly like me, but just in miniature smurf size. With three weeks elapsed since IMLP, she has grown persistent and insistent in asking this question. She must be answered. I can no longer hide inside the post-race glow. It’s time to reflect reflect upon what worked–those strategies that helped me achieve a personal best by 41 minutes–and what didn’t work–those strategies …

How can we fit it all in?

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If you are going to train for an endurance event, you need time. No shocker there, right? Preparation for distance events, such as marathons and triathlons, can require anywhere from 10 to 25 hours a week. With family, friends, work, household chores and so on, it is challenging to find that “extra” time for focused training. Even more daunting still are the hidden time costs that come from doing extra laundry, preparing food, traveling to races or group training sessions, ensuring proper recovery, and of course, blogging and logging training milestones. While I wrote about time management last year, an …

The hay is in the barn, but the bats are in the belfrey

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With Ironman Lake Placid just a week away, there isn’t much that I can do that will make a substantial difference in my speed or endurance on race day. The hay is in the barn. So, that can only mean one thing: It’s taper time. For a week now, my body has been at work putting itself back together after months of abuse training. Cell by cell, fiber by fiber, my body gets stronger. For the past two months, I averaged about 18 hours of training per week, with over half of that time maintaining 20+ hours. So, I was …

Fartlek Freestylin’: Muscular Endurance Rides on the CompuTrainer

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Effective endurance training must incorporate sessions that work on muscular endurance, which Joe Friel and Gordo Byrn (2009) define as the point “where force meets endurance [which] allows the athlete to apply a fairly large force for a fairly long time and is essential for cycling” (p. 27). In a little more than three weeks, muscular endurance will power me up Whiteface Mountain, and help me push through those relentless rolling hills that make the Ironman Lake Placid course so challenging. In the early base phase of training (January and February), most of my workouts focused simply on re-establishing and …

Miley Cyrus is right: It’s all about the climb

With two laps of Mirror Lake completed, my fellow Fireman Ironman training partners were stripping their wetsuits, drying off and heading back to their accommodations to prepare for the long run, which would begin at 12:30 p.m. Me? I was trying to avoid throwing a pity party for myself. With less than 5 weeks to go until Ironman Lake Placid, I’m sidelined from running thanks to a cranky right leg that is suffering from a mixture of tendinitis and ITBS. Good times. So as I exited the water, I did not strip my wetsuit. I did not dry off. I …