How Top Triathlon Pros Make Sure Their Training Counts

1. Every Session Counts
No junk miles here. All sessions have a clearly defined purpose.
Remember garbage in = garbage out

2. Preparation
Being mentally prepared for each session will help you to get the most out of it. This is where good time management is important.

3. Time Management
Arriving at the sessions early so that they can follow a good warm up routine and mental preparation. Starting 6 minutes late in a 1 hour session is a 10% loss of training time. How about if that translated into a 10% loss in race time?

4. Planning
The whole season is planned out in advance. Only the immediate few weeks might be in detail but they have a good idea about what sort of training they expect to be doing in 3 months time and also what sort of performance markers they will use to indicate they are on the right track.

5. Realistic Goals
Based on previous performances, experience and course knowledge.

6. Do What They Need to Do, No What They Want to Do
You may love cycling, but if you need to swim to improve your performance then this is where you should invest your time.

7. Coach/Adviser
Top pro athletes usually have a coach or a group of advisers who they can bounce ideas off. Not many are successfully self-coached.

8. Recovery
The most successful athletes know how to balance training with recovery. If they have more time to train they don’t always fill it with more training!!

9. Consistency
How much improvement could you make if you were able to train consistently for the next 6 months – no injuries or illness – just 100% completion of your programme? Check out the athletes who perform best. More often than not its when they have been able to train with consistency.

10. Weight Management
At Ironman carrying around extra weight for 9 hours can really slow you down. Not only does it require extra fuel, excess fat also inhibits your ability combat heat. The top performers are almost always very lean!!