# How To Build Your Winter IRONMAN Training Plan | Ep 561

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 22 Oct 2025, 29 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/110017923/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-9-21%2F1a77fbc2-69fc-d80b-db70-17d7a30592db.m4a

In this episode, Coach Rob breaks down exactly how to plan and structure your winter Ironman or 70.3 training so you make massive progress on limited time. You’ll learn: ✅ The right way to balance swim, bike, run, and strength work in winter ✅ Why 1 focused hour a day usually beats “big volume” training ✅ How to test and track your fitness in TrainingPeaks ✅ When to push hard (and when to back off) using HRV ✅ Nutrition planning to compliment winter training and maximise performance gains Perfect for busy age-groupers who want to build endurance, strength and consistency without burning out. * * * * * * * SPONSORS * * * * * * * * Thinking about your first Ironman or 70.3 in 2026? At Team Oxygenaddict, we specialise in helping busy professionals fit high-quality training around demanding jobs and family life. We’ve just reopened for new athletes with only a handful of slots available. Book an application call today to find out if you'd be a good fit for Team Oxygenaddict for the coming season here: https://team.oxygenaddict.com/consultation-call/ * * * * * * * * * * * * precisionfuelandhydration.com Precision Fuel & Hydration help athletes personalise their hydration and fuelling strategies for training and racing. Use the free Fuel & Hydration Planner to get a personalised race nutrition plan for your next event. And then book a free 20-minute video consultation with a member of the PF&H Athlete Support Team to refine your strategy. Listeners get 15% off their first order of fuel and electrolytes with Precision Fuel & Hydration. Simply click this link and the discount will be auto-applied at the checkout. * * * * * * * * * * * * Watch on youtube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

## Transcript

[0:04] Hello and welcome to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.
[0:08] We're brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel
[0:10] and hydration.com. You can get 15% off your first
[0:13] order with the code Oxygen Fuel 25.
[0:16] Welcome to the show everybody. I'm your host coach Rob Wilby
[0:19] from Team Oxygen Addict Triathlon Coaching, and every
[0:21] week we're being an episode of this podcast to help educate,
[0:24] motivate and inspire you. In this episode, I'm going to be
[0:28] breaking down exactly how to structure your winter Iron Man
[0:31] or 70.3 training to make the most effective use of your time.
[0:35] I'm going to use training peaks. I'm going to talk you through
[0:37] exactly how to lay out swim, bike, run training, strength,
[0:41] conditioning, nutrition, HIV guidance, all of that stuff.
[0:44] Show you how I structure it with team oxygen and its athletes.
[0:49] And then at the end of this, if you decide you want us to do
[0:52] this for you, let's have a conversation about you.
[0:53] Come in on board me and coach by us if you want to go away and
[0:56] structure your own training. I'm hoping to give you all of
[1:01] the information here in one short podcasting video that will
[1:04] help you take some massive strides towards being able to do
[1:08] that. Now listen, before we get
[1:09] started, there's two quick things you could do that would
[1:12] really help us out. If you enjoy this episode,
[1:14] please consider following us on Spotify or upper podcasts or
[1:18] subscribing on YouTube. And if you're looking for help
[1:22] training for your first time man or 70.3, please check out our
[1:25] coaching memberships over at teamoccasionality.com.
[1:28] I think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[1:30] programme specifically aimed at busy age groupers.
[1:33] If you're interested, there's a link in the show notes to book a
[1:35] membership call, have a chat with me and see if you'd be a
[1:37] good fit for joining the The purpose of this podcast and
[1:41] video is to talk you through exactly what I do.
[1:43] If you're watching along on YouTube, you'll see this within
[1:46] training peaks and see how I structure a plan.
[1:48] You'll get a really, really good feel for what we do, how we do
[1:52] it and whether it'll be right for you.
[1:55] So first up today let's kick off by talking about who's this for
[1:59] and how do we use it. So my approach is exclusively
[2:03] around how to design training for busy age groupers who want
[2:07] to get the maximum return on the time investment.
[2:10] I know most of the people that are listening and certainly all
[2:13] the people we work with, really busy professionals.
[2:16] They've got busy jobs, they've got often very busy families as
[2:20] well. They're often high achievers in
[2:22] more than one aspect of their lives and they really want to
[2:26] apply themselves to doing well. I'm on a 70.3.
[2:28] But there's so much information out there and so much of that is
[2:31] conflicting and so much of it says you have to spend 20 hours
[2:35] plus a week training that people get confused by it.
[2:39] So I don't take that approach. I'm going to build this from the
[2:42] ground up and I'm going to help you see how to make the best use
[2:46] of one hour of a week if that's all you've got, all the way
[2:49] through to how to make the best use of seven or 8 hours a week
[2:52] if that's what you've got. And then how we would structure
[2:54] that towards a 70.3 and Iron Man with some some extra training
[2:58] that might be necessary. But even applying 1 aspect of
[3:02] this train is really going to help move you forward in terms
[3:05] of forming an overall plan, how to structure your training over
[3:08] winter. So you've got swim, bike, run,
[3:10] strength, conditioning training that are all going to work
[3:12] together and complement each other, not that are going to
[3:17] either not complement or actively work against each
[3:20] other. So Next up, let's talk about the
[3:23] purpose of the winter training. If you consider the challenge of
[3:27] Iron Man or even 70.3 to be exercising for a very long
[3:31] period of time and getting it done within the time limit, you
[3:35] can see that the closer you get to the event, the most specific
[3:38] training is going to be doing the longer training, doing
[3:41] endurance based training. Now that's the flip of what you
[3:45] might have been told about, you know, traditional thinking being
[3:49] we're going to peak ourselves to the event by doing really short
[3:51] hard stuff close to the event. And that's that's accurate if
[3:56] you're doing a short hard event, but it's not accurate crucially,
[3:59] if you're doing a long event like Iron Man or 70.3.
[4:02] So there, the closer you get to your Iron Man event, you're
[4:07] going to peak your fitness by peaking the kind of fitness that
[4:10] you need for that event, which is longer, long run, long swim,
[4:15] long bike, putting those all together.
[4:17] So anybody's got the fitness to do that.
[4:19] Now that means if we're going to increase your endurance ability
[4:23] closer to the event, it means we need to find a way that we can
[4:27] improve your aerobic engine size.
[4:29] We can get you fitter and faster if you like.
[4:31] There's got to be a time of year we can do that.
[4:34] And that time of year is winter time.
[4:36] And luckily that ties in perfectly with the fact that in
[4:39] winter, most people who are working or even if you're not
[4:42] working, there's limited daylight hours, there's limited
[4:44] opportunities to get outside safely and train.
[4:48] So let's find some ways we can train indoors if we need to and
[4:53] time specific. Let's get the most return on
[4:56] your time investment. And since that's how we've built
[4:58] out our winter training plan, it's aimed at essentially an
[5:03] hour a day. What's the best return on the
[5:05] investment we can get on an hour's worth of training every
[5:07] day that you can fit in early morning, later evening, around
[5:11] your job and your family. And so by necessity, some of
[5:14] that is going to be indoors on the turbo trainer, maybe indoors
[5:18] on the treadmill if you're running or getting to the pool.
[5:21] And how often is it, is it worth?
[5:23] And, and what's a good return on your investment getting to the
[5:26] pool to train during winter time and fitting in around that?
[5:29] Strength conditioning, flexibility training, looking at
[5:31] nutrition, looking at heart rate variability.
[5:34] OK. So first thing we'll talk about
[5:36] is when we go into the winter block, we're going to do
[5:40] baseline tests. And I hesitate to even use the
[5:42] word test. I'm just going to say baseline
[5:44] because often the idea of doing tests fills people with dread.
[5:49] It's like an A level exam and everything becomes about how do
[5:52] I get the biggest possible score?
[5:54] How do I get the best FTP, how do I get the best CSS score?
[5:58] I don't want it to be about that, especially at the start.
[6:00] If you went to block, it's simply about finding what's an
[6:02] appropriate baseline for you to train at.
[6:05] So all of the intensities of your sessions are going to be
[6:08] accurate relative to your current fitness.
[6:10] It doesn't matter if you're an athlete who's never trained
[6:13] before, or an athlete who's in peak fitness right now, or an
[6:16] athlete who has been really fit in the summer and has let the
[6:19] training go and now isn't as as fit.
[6:22] What matters is that the levels that you train at relative to
[6:25] your current level of fitness are correct.
[6:28] It's irrelevant if you used to have an FTP of 400 watts.
[6:32] It's irrelevant if you used to have an FTP of 50 watts.
[6:34] Let's find out what it is right now.
[6:36] And the same for swimming and the same for running.
[6:38] And then everything's accurate. So we'll do three tests here.
[6:43] And if you're watching long on YouTube, we'll have a look at
[6:45] training peaks here. Our tests are going to be an FTP
[6:48] test on the bike, CSS test on the swim, and we use a a
[6:52] specific run test on the run. As long as you get an accurate
[6:56] measure of what your fitness is in these three sports, then
[6:59] you're good to go. But I'll talk you through these
[7:01] bike testing. We're going to use a 20 minute
[7:05] maximum effort time trial. So you're going to get
[7:07] appropriately warmed up and then you're going to go as hard as
[7:10] you can for 20 minutes. And at the end of that, we'll
[7:13] take 95% of the FTP power or 100% of the average heart rate.
[7:18] And that's going to be your functional threshold heart rate
[7:21] and your functional threshold power.
[7:24] Lots of different online training platforms like Swift
[7:26] and Ruby, they've got their own inbuilt FTP session.
[7:30] It's fine to use that. But I would strongly recommend
[7:33] using the 20 minute test and nothing shorter.
[7:36] And the reason for that is the shorter the test gets, the more
[7:39] excuse it towards away from being accurate.
[7:42] Essentially the perfect test would actually be a 60 minute
[7:45] time trial that would give you 100% accurate FTP test.
[7:49] But lo and behold, people don't really have the time to do it
[7:51] and they really don't enjoy doing it that often, especially
[7:54] not indoors. So if you're doing it on your
[7:56] own indoors, the 20 minute test, I think, I'm not going to say
[7:59] it's the most accurate, but it's the best balance of of all those
[8:03] different worlds. OK, in terms of a swim test,
[8:06] we're going to have you do the swim smooth CSS test.
[8:10] So you're going to do a 400 metres, A200 metres and use the
[8:14] results of those, plug it into a CSS calculator and that will
[8:17] give you an accurate number for your CSS swim pace.
[8:20] So think of that as something relative to your FTP, but for
[8:25] swimming O, it's the pace that you can swim at that we're going
[8:28] to set your other paces relative to.
[8:30] And then with the run test, there's a couple of ways you can
[8:33] go about it. I'll talk you to the way that we
[8:36] do it. What we do is we send athletes
[8:38] out to do a submaximal run test. So we'll do a 45 minute long run
[8:43] test, but we're not going to do it flat out.
[8:45] We're going to do it at what runners would traditionally call
[8:48] tempo pace. Or if you know what your current
[8:52] half marathon pace is, it's about your half marathon pace.
[8:55] It's Jack Daniels end pace within his books, if you've read
[8:57] any of his books there. And the reason that we do this
[9:01] is if you're going to get injured anywhere, it's going to
[9:03] be trying to run really hard at a time when you're perhaps not
[9:09] attuned to running really hard. So when it's really cold in
[9:12] winter, it's a it's a really bad time to decide you're going to
[9:15] go run really hard just to see where you run fitness is.
[9:18] If you've done a recent race, that's OK.
[9:20] You can use the result of that recent race, plug it into Jack
[9:23] Daniels's pace calculator and you can totally use the result
[9:27] of that. That's absolutely fine.
[9:29] But if you haven't, you can use the best estimate into the
[9:31] calculator, get the end pace from there.
[9:34] Don't do 45 minutes running at end pace and then we'll take
[9:37] your average heart rate for those 45 minutes.
[9:40] What that allows us to do is when we do another test in about
[9:43] 8 weeks time, we can see if you've run at the same pace, how
[9:48] has your heart rate come down at that pace?
[9:50] So it's a really simple way to prove to athletes they're making
[9:54] progress across the winter block in terms of the running without
[9:57] needing to worry crucially about pushing yourself to your very,
[10:01] very top end in the run during a winter phase when we're not
[10:04] doing very much, if any, hard running.
[10:07] We'll talk next about bike training.
[10:09] I'm going to structure bike training, as we're going to call
[10:12] it the most important part of your winter training.
[10:14] And, and the reason for that is we've got this kind of bike to
[10:18] run Halo effect. Your bike fitness is going to
[10:21] bleed over into your run fitness and to a certain extent, to a
[10:25] lesser extent into your swim fitness as well.
[10:28] All aerobic fitness is going to affect the fitness of all the
[10:31] sports. But it seems like biking
[10:34] positively effects running in a way that running doesn't really
[10:38] seem to transfer over to bike power.
[10:41] So it's the safest place for you to build fitness over the winter
[10:44] period. And what we're going to do is
[10:46] we're going to have two really focused one hour sessions
[10:50] working at or around 100% of FTP on one longer outdoor ride.
[10:55] Again, if you're following along on YouTube here, we've got an
[10:59] hour long session, we've got an appropriate warm up, and then
[11:02] we're going to do about 30 minutes of hard work within a 40
[11:07] minute main set. And we're going to work at about
[11:09] a ratio of 5 minutes of hard work to a minute of recovery.
[11:13] And if you do this right, by the end of this main set, you should
[11:15] be pretty spent. You should be about ready to
[11:18] stop and in fact, anywhere from 90 to 100% of FTP is going to
[11:23] give you that training stimulus that we're looking for.
[11:26] So don't worry if you can't quite meet the 100% every week.
[11:29] If you're somewhere in between 90 to 100% of FTP, you're going
[11:33] to be somewhere in the ballpark. And again, we're not looking for
[11:35] perfection here. We're looking for you to get
[11:37] those two interval sessions and a longer ride done every week
[11:40] and commit to it for a 16 week winter block.
[11:43] You will make massive progress over the winter block.
[11:46] Typically we see athletes making anywhere from 5 to 15% jumps in
[11:51] the FTP across an 8 week block and the same across the second
[11:55] eight week block. So for newer athletes they tend
[11:58] to be at the top end. For more established athletes
[12:00] tends to be toward the lower end.
[12:02] But I think a reasonable jump across the winter block, even
[12:06] for a very experienced athlete, is to come out of winter with an
[12:09] FTP 10% higher than you started. It often cases that would be
[12:13] higher than that and for newer athletes it might be, you know,
[12:16] 20 or 30% on top of where you started at.
[12:20] But obviously that the more experienced you are that the
[12:22] smaller those gains are going to be.
[12:24] But I do think 10% is a reasonable amount.
[12:27] In the past we've said 8% across an 8 week block making 1516%
[12:32] across the whole winter block in itself.
[12:34] And I think for the for the vast majority of the bell curve,
[12:38] that's what we should be looking at in terms of an improvement.
[12:40] So what that means is if you start the winter with a 200 Watt
[12:43] FTP, we're looking for you to finish with two 2230.
[12:48] If you start at 2:50, we're looking for you to end around
[12:51] two, 85290 Even so, you can make a considerable jump in FTP
[12:55] number just by dedicating 2 focus sessions a week and your
[13:01] longer outdoors or indoors ride at the weekends.
[13:04] And again, there's no magic to the structure of this longer
[13:06] ride At the weekends, we're going to be somewhere between 60
[13:09] to 75% of FTP. The exact amount doesn't really
[13:12] matter. Have it somewhere around the
[13:13] area, get that ride done outdoors if you can and the
[13:16] weather allows. And if not, do it indoors on
[13:19] Swift or Ruby. And there you go.
[13:21] Get that done every week. That's the basis of your bike
[13:25] training. OK, this is a great place for us
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[13:52] Iron Man 70.3 World Championships in Marbella on the
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[14:33] you have ridiculously high sodium loss levels.
[14:36] I've got close to 2000 milligrammes of sodium loss per
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[15:06] OK, next, let's talk about the approach to running across
[15:10] winter. So running is going to be your
[15:14] joy during winter. It's going to be a time and it
[15:18] might turn the run training on its head for you.
[15:20] It's not going to be painful, it's not going to be hard, it's
[15:23] not going to be unpleasant. It's going to be enjoyable.
[15:26] If you can get outside to do these runs, if you can get a
[15:28] headlamp on and go and do these runs around the local streets,
[15:31] went to the local woods, it's a perfect time to get out and get
[15:34] some headspace. And I encourage you to do this
[15:36] without having MP3 players on. Go out and enjoy being in nature
[15:40] if you possibly can, but all of your running is going to be easy
[15:44] and it's going to be frequent and its purpose, it's not to
[15:47] push your top end fitness, it's to build the durability in
[15:52] ligaments, in tendons and in muscles so that as we start to
[15:55] build the volume next season, you're able to absorb it without
[15:59] risk of injury. We know what kind of pace you're
[16:02] going to be running at and it is going to be easy.
[16:04] You're going to be able to have a conversation at this pace.
[16:06] So it's a great time to go for a run with a friend and have a
[16:08] chat. And you don't need to worry
[16:10] about losing speed because all of the cardiovascular benefits
[16:15] that you're going to get from doing hard track sessions,
[16:17] you're going to be getting those from doing those sessions on the
[16:20] bike. We're still going to include at
[16:22] certain points in winter, some faster run, drill speed skill
[16:27] type stuff if you like. So you've got that faster leg
[16:30] turnover happening. The purpose again isn't pushing
[16:32] you for speed, it's just keeping that leg turnover there.
[16:36] The focus of this is frequent, easy running to build
[16:39] durability. Again, if we go over to have a
[16:42] look in Training Peaks, what we see is we've got three runs here
[16:47] taken from relatively early in the winter block.
[16:49] So two runs of 20 minutes in the week and a longer run of about
[16:52] an hour at the weekend. These runs are just 30 minutes
[16:56] continuous. They're going to be run at your
[16:59] Jack Daniels E pace. And then at the weekend, again,
[17:02] the run is still at your Jack Daniels E pace, but it's going
[17:05] to be broken up into 9 minutes run, one minute walk.
[17:08] And that's going to really, really help you as those long
[17:11] runs get longer to not pick up niggles, not pick up soreness.
[17:16] It's going to mean you bounce back from training really,
[17:19] really quickly and you're ready to go again.
[17:22] OK, let's talk about swimming during winter then.
[17:24] So the first challenge of swimming in winter is how much
[17:27] time it takes you to get to the pool and back.
[17:30] If you're trying to do it before work, it's often defrosting the
[17:32] car and getting the ice off the windscreen.
[17:34] And it's the fact that an hour's swim is going to take you
[17:37] probably close to two hours of your time with driving time.
[17:40] So decide what kind of a swimmer you are.
[17:43] If you're a swimmer who currently isn't very confident,
[17:47] is really concerned about either not being able to swim yet, or
[17:51] is worried about meeting the cut off next year with your current
[17:53] swim paces, there's an inevitability here.
[17:57] You are going to have to swim frequently enough that you're
[18:00] swimming improves. And for most people I'm going
[18:02] to, I'm going to advise that means being in the water three
[18:05] times a week. Doesn't have to be for an hour 3
[18:08] * a week, but it needs to be in the water three times a week.
[18:11] However, if you're not in one of those categories, if you're
[18:14] comfortable, you're going to make the cut off.
[18:16] If you're not 100% dedicated to spending lots of extra hours to
[18:20] shave off a few minutes for next season's Iron Man or 70.3, then
[18:25] just committing to swimming once a week during the winter is
[18:28] fine. And so here what we're going to
[18:30] have is our key swim of the week is going to be a combination
[18:34] swim of drills and CSS type swimming.
[18:38] So about half the swim is going to be drill sets.
[18:41] We're going to include all of the drills that we will talk
[18:43] through on our website and you'll find the drill that works
[18:46] for you and do the drills that are going to improve your
[18:49] particular stroke weaknesses. Then the other part of the set
[18:52] is going to be probably 20 to 25 minutes worth of swimming.
[18:56] That's kind of interval based at or around your CSS pace with
[19:00] recoveries between 5 to 15 seconds.
[19:02] And if you get that key swim done every week, jobs are good.
[19:06] And for the vast majority of athletes who know they're going
[19:09] to meet the cut off and who aren't really, really dedicated
[19:12] to spending extra time to chop time off their swim time.
[19:16] If you are going to swim more often, the second swim of the
[19:19] winter and winter is going to be a technique based 1.
[19:22] And here you'll see there's much more focus on drill sets and
[19:26] hard swimming as a swim drill. And then a third swim a week
[19:30] I'll put in here is a recovery swim.
[19:32] So again, this is focused on helping athletes recover.
[19:35] It's just extra pool time. It's not hard swimming.
[19:41] It's getting the chance if you like, for a free massage by
[19:45] promoting blood flow to muscles that are tired.
[19:48] And I'll reiterate here, if you are an athlete who can't swim
[19:52] and feel more recovered at the end of that session, you
[19:55] shouldn't be doing a recovery swim.
[19:57] You should be making sure that you are having a recovery
[19:59] focused day so that recovery is the focus of that day.
[20:04] Let's talk next about strength and conditioning.
[20:08] I want you to think of this as little as big C.
[20:11] It's not necessarily for the majority of our athletes about
[20:14] strength. It's more about conditioning and
[20:16] doing exercises that are going to activate muscles.
[20:20] That are going to allow you to swim, bike and run.
[20:22] It's going to maintain our muscle mass and in a small
[20:25] number of athletes cases, you're going to have to do some extra
[20:28] strength work. If you're an ageing athlete of
[20:30] 50 plus if you're a smaller woman or a woman going through
[20:34] menopause, then do an extra strength based training using
[20:37] traditional weights can be worthwhile.
[20:40] And So what you'll see here is my sessions have all got links
[20:46] to YouTube videos you can follow.
[20:47] They can all be done at home. These conditioning exercises,
[20:50] think of it as activating glutes, strengthening hamstring,
[20:53] strengthening core. They're the things that are
[20:55] really going to help you stay injury free and improve your
[20:58] swim and you run for. On top of that, if you're an
[21:02] athlete who needs that extra strength training using
[21:06] traditional weight training methods, my advice is going to
[21:08] be firstly, if you don't know how to do this, go and see a
[21:11] professional. Go and get a personal trainer to
[21:14] show you how to use the weights room.
[21:16] And then get them to help you with a plan and explain that you
[21:20] wanted to fit in around your swim, bike and run training.
[21:23] And then do the bare minimum of weight training that's going to
[21:27] allow you to either maintain muscle mass as you age or to
[21:31] strengthen the muscles that you have as appropriate.
[21:34] So again, for the vast majority of our athletes who are not in
[21:37] those categories, 2 conditioning sessions a week that you can do
[21:41] at home are going to be adequate.
[21:43] For the other groups we've talked about, it is well worth
[21:45] spending the extra time and energy and it will be outside of
[21:48] something that we coach athletes for in team Oxygen addicts.
[21:52] Mainly because I'm really risk averse to the idea of giving
[21:55] people weight training exercises and not being able to see people
[21:59] do those in real life. Essentially.
[22:00] That's the real challenge for me.
[22:02] So that's why I advise either get someone to show you how to
[22:07] do it. If you don't know how to do it,
[22:08] and if you do know how to do it already, then fine.
[22:10] Do that kind of maintenance type weights, workouts.
[22:15] We've also got a yoga session included here.
[22:18] There's a YouTube video our athletes can click on.
[22:21] I think doing one yoga session a week is really great for a
[22:25] focused flexibility session if you like.
[22:28] And a lot of athletes don't do flexibility and often don't do
[22:32] core and strength work because it's the first thing to go.
[22:35] If you're short of time, if you possibly can tack just some of
[22:38] this onto one of your other workouts, even if it's just a
[22:41] couple of sets of one exercise or one run through of the Sun
[22:45] salutation to promote that flexibility, it's well worth
[22:48] building into your workouts. So Next up, we'll talk about HRV
[22:52] guidance. So heart rate variability is an
[22:54] established science at this point.
[22:56] We use an app that's called HRV for training and our athletes
[23:01] take the heart rate variability every morning for a minute or
[23:04] two, they just put the finger over the back of the camera.
[23:06] Or with some devices like a Woop band or an aura ring or an Apple
[23:10] Watch, it'll do it for you while you're asleep.
[23:12] It'll take your heart rate variability and it'll give you
[23:15] either a green, an amber or a red light.
[23:17] Green means train as normal and amber means you need to dial
[23:22] down the intensity and red means you need a rest day-to-day.
[23:25] So this guidance supersedes any kind of training plan and it
[23:29] says if you have got a red 1 today, you need to rest.
[23:33] If you've got an amber warning, you need to reduce the
[23:35] intensity. We'll give our athletes guidance
[23:38] here as to how to reduce the paces, the powers, the heart
[23:42] rates relative to if you've got an amber day and to give you a
[23:45] little bit of guidance here. Usually what we find is athletes
[23:49] might get a red warning once every 30 to 40 days and an amber
[23:53] warning once or twice every couple of weeks.
[23:56] Most of the time you should be good to go.
[23:58] If not, if your HRV is is flagging extremely high stress a
[24:04] lot of the time you've got to then look at ways you can try
[24:07] and reduce stress because it's usually not training stress
[24:10] that's causing the HRV warnings. It's usually things going on at
[24:14] work, lack of sleep, too much alcohol, the the associated life
[24:18] stress that people are under. The thing to accept here is if
[24:22] you're under those stresses, your body is not going to absorb
[24:25] high intensity training, so there is no point in doing it.
[24:28] You're just going to add and layer on more stress onto a
[24:32] system that isn't ready to cope with it.
[24:34] So the only time I think this is really a challenge for athletes
[24:37] is if they get a red or an amber on a day when they're meant to
[24:40] be testing and they have to say, I really, really want to do the
[24:43] test. Please let please say it's OK.
[24:45] And I'm always going to say no, it's not OK.
[24:48] Follow the guidance because you're not going to test well on
[24:51] a day when you've got those warnings.
[24:53] And if you consistently getting more of those warnings than I'm
[24:56] talking about this things here that you can do and change in
[25:00] effect in a lot of instances that is going to mean your body
[25:04] is more able to accept the training.
[25:07] And the last thing I want to talk about here for for the
[25:10] Winds training block is paying attention to everyday nutrition
[25:15] planning. And by this I don't mean the
[25:19] carbohydrates that you eat during training.
[25:22] I mean the meals, the breakfast, the lunch, the dinner, the
[25:25] snacks that you have on a day-to-day basis where you
[25:28] possibly can plan your nutrition.
[25:31] So it matches the training you've got, so that on a day
[25:33] when you've got recovery training, you've got lower
[25:36] calories, On a day when you need to do a really big session of
[25:40] endurance training tomorrow, you have higher calories and more
[25:43] carbs. If you need more recovery, you
[25:45] need higher protein. Now we're really lucky.
[25:47] We've worked with Alan Murchison at the Performance Chef, He's
[25:51] written a whole menu to go alongside our training plan.
[25:55] So here, for example, on a Tuesday for bike interval
[25:58] training day, we've got higher calorie, higher carbohydrate
[26:02] foods. You can see we've got the recipe
[26:05] written in here in training picks.
[26:06] Our athletes can go and prepare this the night before and then
[26:10] the dinners all listed here as to what they're going to have.
[26:13] So that can all be planned at the start of the week.
[26:16] It just takes away the pressure of the planning of what am I
[26:18] going to eat. And often athletes are reported
[26:21] back to us having the meal plans are great because they don't
[26:24] then train and go and just eat whatever's in the fridge when
[26:27] they're hungry. It means you plan a really high
[26:29] nutrition foods all the way through the week and plan highly
[26:33] nutritious meals rather than just eating what's ever in front
[26:37] of you. And obviously for our athletes,
[26:40] they're included in our coaching package.
[26:42] If you don't have that, I'd encourage you to go away.
[26:45] Alan Murchison's book is fantastic for the 15 lbs or
[26:48] whatever it is on Amazon and it's got all of these menus in.
[26:52] It's got all of these meals and certainly go away and learn how
[26:55] to make nutrients dense meals to really support your training.
[27:00] OK, so I hope this has really helped you out.
[27:02] To wrap this up, here are some discount codes and deals for
[27:04] you. Precision Fuel and hydration.com
[27:07] can use the code Oxygen Fuel 25 for 15% off your first
[27:10] electrolyte order. And at Team Oxygen Addicts, I
[27:13] think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon coaching
[27:16] programme that's specifically designed for busy age groupers.
[27:19] If you've liked and what you've seen and heard today and you're
[27:21] looking for coaching for Iron Man or 70 points for each
[27:23] triathlon this year, please get in touch.
[27:26] There's a link in the show notes to book a membership call with
[27:28] me and see if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[27:30] And I'm strongly going to recommend this.
[27:33] I've given you the blueprint here for how to go away and do
[27:35] your winter training. If you want to come on board
[27:38] with us, fantastic. If you're going to go away and
[27:40] train on your own, fantastic as well.
[27:43] But structure your training out and make sure you have a way to
[27:46] go away and get that training done and maybe check in with
[27:48] yourself in a week after watching this video.
[27:50] If you've planned to do the training, have you actually
[27:53] planned out and have you got it done?
[27:55] And if not, what are you going to change that's going to mean
[27:59] that you managed to get that done?
[28:00] And that's the one thing that athletes who come train with
[28:02] those always report, is we take away the worry and stress of
[28:06] what they're going to do so they can just focus on getting the
[28:09] training done. And if that sounds like it'll
[28:11] work for you, sounds like it's something that'd be worth having
[28:14] just an exploratory membership call with us over.
[28:17] So remember, there's links in the show notes.
[28:18] You don't have to remember them. Till next week.
[28:20] Have a great safe training and racing week.
[28:22] I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've been listening to the Oxygen
[28:25] Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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