To Everything There is a Season: Training Cycles for Triathletes

By Terry Laughlin

Lou Tharp, swim coach for the West Point Triathlon Team, was recently asked by several team members if the 10,000 weekly yards they’re currently swimming is sufficient. The question isn’t surprising, as many triathletes and swimmers are accustomed to “brute force” approaches: When in doubt, do more. But the world’s best athletes, by and large, are more thoughtful and artful in their training, with training cycles a key part of that.

Tharp, a trained TI Coach, has employed TI training to help transform the Army team into one of the top college squads nationally (described in his book, Overachiever’s Diary). He explained to his swimmers why that seemingly modest yardage was ideal for the “Foundation” training cycle they’re now in.

Because the West Point tri season culminates with Collegiate Nationals in April, Lou has organized their 8-month calendar according to this Cycle Plan:

Foundation Cycle: Aug. thru Nov. – Skill development:75%. Endurance:20%. Pacing:5%.

Building Performance (BP) Cycle: Dec. thru Feb. – Skill development:30%. Endurance:40%. Pacing:30%.

Peak Performance (PP) Cycle: March and April – Skill development:20%. Endurance:30%.  Pacing:50%.

Triathletes who follow a 12-month calendar, culminating in August or September, might break it into four 3-month cycles:

Recovery: Oct. thru Dec.

Foundation: Jan. thru March

BP: April thru June  

PP: July thru Sept.

The benefits of such an approach include:

1.    Focused training with clear purpose – the right amount, of the right kind, at the right time.

2.    Increasing physiological adaptation by regularly changing emphasis or “stimulus.”

3.    Improving the weaker parts of your race by giving them extra attention when the stress or pressure of racing is absent.

How long does it take to be race-ready?

One of the best training prescriptions I ever heard was also one of the simplest: It takes 12 weeks of concerted effort to reach a peak performance level. This presumes that at the start of that 3-month campaign you’re already at a good fitness level.  What you do during that final push is convert general fitness – the kind that gets you through a training session and typical training week – into race-specific fitness.

In running and cycling, race-fitness primarily means the cardiovascular capacity to fuel your muscles at the rate they’ll consume energy during the race, at the particular speed and duration, whether that means cycling at 16 miles an hour for an hour or running 1000 meters every 4 minutes for 20 minutes.

In high performance swimming, the readiness of your nervous system to repeat strokes of unvarying efficiency is more important than the readiness of your aerobic system to provide energy to your muscles. At the elite level, it’s estimated that efficiency determines 65% of performance, while fitness determines only 35%. For less experienced or skilled swimmers, it’s likely that efficiency may determine 80% or more of performance, with fitness accounting for 20% or less. Thus, skill development should remain a highly prominent part of training in all cycles.

If you can be peak-performance-ready in 12 weeks, then how do you spend the rest of the year or season? Here’s a suggested outline for the four training cycles I identify above, with more detail on how your swim practice might change:

Recovery: Mental and physical recovery from the rigors of the just-completed high performance season. Stay fit with activities other than your usual training diet, to strike a balance in how you use your muscles. Perhaps focus on improving your general “athleticism” by devoting more time to strength, “movement skills” training, and yoga than tri-training normally allows. In the pool, increase your stroke efficiency (i.e reduce your SPL) – possibly with a relatively high proportion of stroke drills.

Foundation: Here “foundation” refers as much or more to stroking habits (i.e. muscle memory) as to aerobic foundations. In the pool, the less-intensive practice sets that develop the endurance needed for a season of demanding training are also ideal for learning to maintain a lower SPL for longer distances.  Your sets will likely include more whole-stroke than drills, counting strokes most of the time.

BP: In this cycle, an athlete with ambitious goals will likely increase training intensity and begin including sessions that mimic the speed or intensity experienced during the race. In the pool, this can be done in a couple of ways. After focusing on reducing your SPL during Recovery, and on maintaining it during longer sets or repeats, you may include some sets where your intention is to increase your SPL (or your tempo, using a Tempo Trainer) in a controlled way, developing your ability to stay smooth and relaxed at faster paces and tempos. The goal is to make a faster pace feel sustainable.

PP: In this cycle, many athletes may be racing more frequently. If so, you should balance the physical demands of racing with that of your training. Your races may constitute a high proportion of your “high quality” training in each week, in which case you should plan training sessions with greater care. In the pool, this can mean lengthening warmups and cooldowns, including some “recovery swimming” during and between quality sets and reducing repeat distances and the duration of your quality sets. Your goal in quality sets is to continue strengthening your ability to maintain long strokes at higher tempos, yet minimize the fatigue that may be produced by those sets.  Maximize the benefit of warmups, cooldowns and recovery sets by doing them with lower SPLs (i.e. those you achieved in the Recovery and Foundation cycles). This way, you’ll not only help your muscles recover, but you’ll also reinforce – and possibly build upon – efficiency habits

This outline assumes a relatively advanced swimmer. For a novice swimmer (while your land training might follow cycles similar to those above) it might be best to spend most of a training year with Recovery and Foundation practices for swimming.

 

 

 

 

Typical Swim Workouts for Army Triathlon Training Cycles

By Lou Tharp

 

Foundation Cycle: Aug. thru Nov. Skill development: 75%. Endurance: 20%. Pacing: 5%.

Swim Focus 50’s – 50 yards of a specific drill done while swimming at a low heart rate. Stroke count is monitored. Splits are not.

Hand lead drills: Focus on high hips, head position, hand anchored at 45-degrees, and a gentle kick. These are usually interspersed with swimming drills because cadets get bored doing them.

Tracking drills: Scribing a single line in the water with your hand – whether it is above the water or below it. This focuses on not crossing over, not using the S-curve stroke, and avoiding a horizontal recovery.

Fist swimming: We love this one. It forces a high elbow before taking a stroke and allows the forearm to catch water. Stroke count must remain the same – with and without fist swimming. Speed will decline with fist swimming, but streamline should not.

No kick: Notice we didn’t say pull set. We do not believe in pull sets. It sets up the wrong stimulus and encourages the use of the wrong muscles. No kick means you don’t kick, but you do use your hips, abs and lats. A pull set means your lower body is along for the ride and the emphasis is on upper body for power generation. Power generation is focused on core body. Upper body is the power delivery system.

Two-second anchor: Focus on hand anchor at 45-degrees for two seconds. This allows swimmers to set up for the power phase of the stroke, to synch hip rotation with body movement over the shoulder. We don’t pull. The body moves past the elbow and shoulder, the wrist and hand stay stationary. This visualization is critical to efficient swimming.

Quiet swimming: No splashing, going through the water as quietly as possible.

In between these focus 50s, we swim 100s and 200s so the benefit of the drill is imprinted.

I look for details. Technique is either right or sloppy. Sloppy means hitting a plateau in mid season when there’s not time to go back and fix technique. During this period we will swim 3,000-4,000 yards in a two hour practice. There will be 15 minutes of on-deck core body strengthening and dryland drill review. We will flirt with speed during this period – always during the middle of the practice – in order to let the swimmers experience the breakdown of high-technique swimming and what to do when that happens.

Building Performance (BP) Cycle:  Dec. thru Feb.  Skill development: 30%.  Endurance: 40%. Pacing: 30%.

We never give up on focus 50s. They become the warm-up and the cool-down. They are adjusted to address stroke issues that come up as the practice splits get faster. We will still do between 3,000 and 4,000 yards during a two-hour workout, with dryland strength and drills as well as classroom.

Focus during this period is on ladders. We want the swimmers to appreciate the opportunity to reach a distance limit and experience control. We will do sets such as a 200, 400, 600, 800, 600, 400, 200. In between we will do 50 and 100 focus swims to reinforce high skill technique. Pacing plays a greater role during this period. Splits need to be within 2 seconds for the entire workout. Stroke count within 2 strokes. We believe the only way to get faster is to be consistently faster. It doesn’t help to be fast and then slow. Distance swimming is won by the person who slows down least.

Peak Performance (PP) Cycle:  March and April. Skill development: 20%. Endurance: 30%. Pacing: 50%.

Focus 50s and 100s are still used for warm-up and cool-down. At this point the variation in splits among the team will be greatest so distances are customized, allowing everyone to start sets together. It’s important that we have a chance to discuss the set as a team, and that everyone is able to push themselves to their own new performance levels. The higher technique swimmers may begin to push the 5000-yard mark, although this is not an objective. We do not swim yards to swim yards. But, when we have people who can consistently sustain 1:08 hundreds, it is important to challenge them from a speed and efficiency standpoint. Distance can play a role here, but its role has to be monitored closely. If pacing is not respected, distance is useless. We often use Tempo Trainers set to beep at the flip turn in order to provide instant goal reinforcement when swimmers are trying to shave one-half to one second off each 25.

Physical and psychological health is critical through all phases of training. We cannot tolerate anger, frustration or lack of focus. The cadet triathlon team is voluntary, therefore it must be challenging, interesting and enjoyable.

Lou Tharp, the swim coach for the West Point triathlon team, is also a Total Immersion coach and author of Overachiever’s Diary, a Total Immersion book that chronicles the training regimen of the cadet tri team. In 2008 the team finished third in the nation at the Collegiate Nationals.

 

 

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