Winter training? How to maintain motivation!

Your race season has come to an end, hopefully goals acheived, and you have now packed away your wetsuit, trisuit and summer racing kit, ready for the cold wet and windy winter months!! So, as bleak as it may sound, how do we maintain our motivation for the 2016 Season?

Firstly, have a break! After your last race, have a few weeks off, do different sports, avoid any form of structured training, and throughout this time, reflect on your season, what went well, what you feel your weaknesses are, and start planning your 2016 races, and think about how to work on those weaknesses. Over the winter, to keep some race pace efforts mixed into your training, enter some running events, and duathlons (Sika Woods is on the 22nd Nov – adults and juniors!). It gives you shorter term focus goals, helps maintain your sharpness, and will all go towards helping improve your run / bike splits come triathlon season

Also, try to maintain a healthy balanced diet, packed full of antioxidants and vitamins, plus carbs and  protein to help you recover and fuel yourself for your sessions. As I know I keep saying, consistency is everything in training, so do what ever you can to avoid the bugs. Including rest days is an important part of this, as well as making sure you are getting plenty of sleep.

With regards to your training, make sure you don’t fall into a trap of just pushing our the long easy endurance miles over and over again. Yes, it is really important to build a good solid endurance base, and the winter is a great time to be doing that, but there is no reason why this cannot be mixed up with some faster / quality efforts. If you are looking to come back in 2016 stronger and faster, then you need to progress your training over shorter blocks, (working with a 3 week build one week recovery works well, – though this really does depend on your type of work, and lifestyle) and avoid the temptation to miss the easier week. The recovery is just as important as the progressive harder sessions!!

Also, and I cant stress this enough, build strength and conditioning into your training! Yep, many of you will be saying, “I just don’t have the time ……” so, shorten your 3 hour ride to 2 hours 40 and finish with 20 mins of Core work! We can find time, and  strong core, glutes, back is so important to avoid injury, maintain technique and help your strength endurance…..If you are unsure what to do, or how, let me know, or come along to our session on a saturday 5:15-6 pm at the sports centre! All the exercises covered you can do in your living room, so there is no excuse!

Also, if you have highlighted a particular weakness in your swim / bike / run,  the winter is a great time to really focus on it. Get your swim technique analysed, dust off your turbo, and really get to grips with developing your strength on the bike, and the same for running, yes treadmills are horrible, but there are some great quality sessions they can be used for. Also, get off road, run hard up hills, enter some cross country events. All will help your power, strength and technique!

If you would like to find out more as to how progress training, and balance it with work, family and other commitments, let me know. It is more important to do fewer hours each week consistently, then trying to cram loads in, and ending up ill and injured,thereby missing blocks of training!!.

Finally, We will be running a swim video analysis on the 5th of December at the Purbeck Sports Centre, however,  we only have a couple of places left, so contact me asap if you would like help in developing your swimming technique, strength and power over the winter.