Winter Training: The Base Phase (cont.)
Base – The Physical Foundation
Base building, which is often termed the general preparation
phase, creates the foundation for which the rest of the
season will be either a failure or a success. It is when
the most basic elements of fitness are developed. Think
of a triangle and the bottom of the triangle is the base,
where all other aspects of training stem. The three main
components of base building are endurance, speed and force.
Endurance
Triathlon is an endurance sport. Even a sprint triathlon
takes a great amount of time to complete when compared to
other sports. If you don’t build endurance, your racing
season will be poor. Endurance is simply the ability to
maintain a sustained effort for a long period of time. Some
athletes may consider endurance training, an effort at a
low heart rate or a rate of perceived effort (RPE) of 4-5,
to be “junk miles.” I believe every workout has
a purpose. What some may call “junk miles,” I
call laying the bricks for a successful season. Endurance
is more time intensive for an athlete, but with it being
less intensity, the body is able to recover quickly for
future workouts. Endurance doesn’t come instantly;
you must build your endurance up over a period of time.
Force
Force could also be called strength training. It is the
ability to apply force to the water, the pedal and the ground.
Force is developed in many ways. During this base phase,
lifting weights is a great way to build force. Weights prepare
the body for the more intensive workouts in the later phases
of training. Although weights builds force, no matter how
specific your lifting regiment, weights still aren’t
as specific as doing force workouts in the discipline itself.
Most triathletes have a difficult enough time trying to
fit the three disciplines into their bustling life, let
alone weight training. One option I give triathletes who
are and aren’t on a time crunch is to perform plyometrics.
Routines would include jumping rope, hopping, skipping,
two-legged bounding and one-legged bounding. You can do
plyometrics almost anywhere and it helps build strength
as well as enhance the fast twitch muscles to aid the speed
skills aspect of training.
Specific workouts for force on the swim are to use paddles,
wear drag suits or t-shirts. Force workouts on the bike
are hill climbing workouts on both short and long climbs,
pedaling in big gears on the flats and increasing resistance
on indoor trainers. Force workouts for the run would again
be hill climbing, step running such as stadium bleachers
or taking advantage of running into a 30-MPH head wind.
Speed Skills
Of the three elements of the base phase, speed skills are
the workouts often neglected. When I began with my coach
Joe Friel, one of the workouts he had me do throughout the
entire year was a 40 minute run with 8 X 20 seconds running
downhill on a soft surface such as gravel or grass. After
doing the interval, I would walk back to where I started.
This process took about 15 minutes. I asked Joe if I was
to include this in my 40 minute run because I felt like
I hardly ran. He said yes. It didn’t make sense to
me because I always had the mentality of the more time I
trained, the better I would become. That way of thinking
got me into a fatigue state for which I searched out a coach
after training and racing for thirteen years previously
on my own.
Speed skills carry immense potential to improving an athlete’s
performance. A speed skill is the ability to make the movements
of the sport to work efficiently at race pace or faster.
The length of intervals at race pace or faster is not long
so as to not stress training systems that deal with higher
heart rate over an extended period of time such as the lactate
threshold (LT). Speed skills may be 25 all out sprints in
the pool, spin-ups on the bike or the 20 second downhill
sprints running. Drills are also used to aid the speed skills.
These may be drills to minimize drag in the water such as
working on rotating the body. A cyclist may do isolated
leg training or high cadence repetitions. A runner will
also work on cadence and do a variety of drills to improve
form.
Reaping the Rewards
During the base phase, let’s say you were able to
increase your run stride length one inch per foot strike
from 5 feet to 5’1” while maintaining the same
cadence and running efficiency. This is because you worked
on force and speed skills. In addition, you did endurance
training so you can maintain this stride performance for
a 10K run. With the improved stride length, you would run
approximately 218 yards more than the10K. This translates
to a great amount of time savings when all things are the
same with the exception of that one inch improvement. This
can be said in the same terms of getting an extra inch reach
in swimming or being able to maintain the same cadence as
the previous year on the bike, but being able to pedal in
a gear one size bigger. Improving your performance by say
5% through this type of training is a lot easier than trying
to raise your lactate threshold (LT) or VO2 Max by 5%.
In summary, this winter, hold back on the workouts where
you go out and train at your LT or an RPE of 7-9. In the
short term, high intensity training will raise your fitness
quickly, but you will not be able to sustain it for an extended
period of time. After time, your body will become more susceptible
to injury and fatigue. When near the end of your base phase,
you will be surprised at how fast you can race even though
you have yet to train the higher intensity energy systems.
Set your goals and enjoy your winter base training.
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