Why Amateur Triathletes Shouldn’t Train Like the Pros
A balanced life is key to success for the amateur triathletes says coach Matt Dixon. I often discuss with athletes the concept of their potential within the context of the life they lead. Many triathletes never reach their potential; it’s difficult to manage all of the training hours, it’s not possible to be present and focused enough to train effectively, or the emphasis on training leads to feeling distracted and overwhelmed in other areas of life. Even as athletes try to cram the training into daily and weekly schedules filled with other important commitments, the results become more elusive. Amateur triathletes as well as many coaches have traditionally turned to top-level pros for inspiration, studied their approach, and mimicked how they train. Although there are certainly many things to learn about training and racing from the professionals, it’s a mistake to attempt to emulate a professional approach at the amateur level, especially within the context of a busy life. Professional triathletes train many more hours every week than you can, and they can put more time, effort, and resources toward training and recovery because triathlon is essentially their full-time job. Many coaches suggest that amateur triathletes try to execute a similar training regimen summarily diluted to accommodate far fewer hours of training every week. For a busy amateur limited both by athletic ability and by other commitments, a training plan that imitates a pro athlete’s preparation develops bad habits rather than performance. If an athlete is never able to effectively execute the requirements of the training plan, it creates a platform for failure, opens the door for many other follow-up mistakes, and ultimately invites overload and exhaustion. I’ve coached athletes through the transition from amateur to pro.
Easy Meals For Busy Athletes
In today’s chapter, I’m giving you 40 meals for busy athletes, along with how to fuel your body with the thousands of calories necessary for endurance and extreme exercise – without destroying your body. I’m also going to give you a comprehensive and simple list of the most easy-to-prepare, quick and nutrient-dense meals. Share a secret with you: aside from occasional nice sit-down dinners, my personal diet is extremely quick and non-complex because I simply don’t have much time to cook – and I’m going to give you the exact quick and non-complex meals I base 99% of my diet around. Below, I have 40 meals that I’ve designed for you to fuel your body with nutrient rich foods that are simple to prepare, but that also provide the density and digestibility necessary to fuel an active lifestyle. These meals are not designed to impress or to knock people’s socks off at dinner parties. If you were going to go through an entire year and eat nothing but the meals outlined in this document, you would be completely set with everything you need for supporting your body with nutrient density. Finally, before throwing at you an entire laundry list of random meals, please know that in later chapters I’m going to help you create your own personal meal plan based on calories, carbohydrates, proteins and fats – but for now, quit worrying and start chowing away! Don’t be afraid to order off-menu – meaning if you see that they have unhealthy chicken breast meals and unhealthy salads, you can just ask for a regular chicken breast served over a bed of mixed greens with a generous portion of olive oil. The recipe uses 1/2lb of liver, so will be enough for 2-3 meals – and leftovers can be refrigerated for 2-3 days. In the meantime, leave your questions, comments and feedback about easy meals for busy athletes below!
Road to Kona: How Your Bike Trainer Can Help Get You There
A time-efficient training tool to help us integrate training into a busy life. As we head to the final block of training toward the IRONMAN World Championships in Hawaii, it is timely to outline how we tend to utilize bike trainers for the purplepatch athletes heading to Kona. The truth is that for the vast majority of athletes the trainer remains a key tool in successful preparation, mostly born out of the reality of life situations and the demands to think outside of the box of classic training in order to arrive to the island prepared. We generally utilize a bike trainer for the three main reasons listed above, which we’ll explore in more detail. This is where the trainer can come in; to help facilitate the needed muscular resilience and endurance required to ride well over 180 km. Rather than simply thinking in terms of a single session, and trying to force long duration in a trainer ride, I often leverage the chance to easily integrate shorter sessions in the week and around the weekend, when most athletes do have a little extra time. One example of how you can apply this approach is to map a double-day of short to medium duration trainer rides, prior to a weekend ride that is truly IRONMAN focus. The ideal scenario is that this session is completed outside, to help with terrain management and real world riding, but now comes the role of the trainer. We must use it or lose it, and with the majority of the amateur athletes outside rides rightly focusing on dialing in race intensity, the indoor bike trainer is a wonderful venue to hit some higher intensity. Using the bike trainer as a tool to hit the top end, but compare objectively to outputs in earlier parts of training is not only valuable in-week training, but a great barometer of freshness and fitness.
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