# The IRONMAN Winter Training Blueprint | Ep 560

An episode of [Oxygenaddict Triathlon Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/951501034), 15 Oct 2025, 29 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/ea99f7d8/podcast/play/109668874/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-9-14%2F35b81067-a25e-0f56-1929-46680609059a.m4a

This week Coach Rob discusses how to effectively plan winter training for a successful Ironman and 70.3 season. Including: -> Clear goal setting to enable consistency... -> Incorporating specific aspects or training like swim technique, bike power, run strength, and indoor training... -> Developing aerobic fitness through FTP focused sessions... -> Improving swim efficiency... -> Incorporating strength and conditioning... -> Optimising nutrition... -> The significance of mental well-being and motivation during the winter months. * * * * * * * * 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 Electric Triathlon Podcast, but
[0:08] brought to you every week by our sponsors Precision Fuel and
[0:10] 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 Oxygenatic Triathlon Coaching, and every week I bring
[0:23] you an episode of this podcast to try and help educate,
[0:26] motivate and inspire you for your 70.3 and Iron Man
[0:29] endeavours for this season and next season.
[0:32] And on this week's episode, I'm going to be talking about how we
[0:35] can break down how to plan your winter training.
[0:38] So you have a really successful Iron Man and 70.3 next summer.
[0:43] If you are racing those distances next summer, I think
[0:45] it's temting to well, not temting, but it's easy to to end
[0:49] U not really doing much during the winter and without a focus
[0:53] and without a plan, it's very easy for February, March, time
[0:57] to roll around and your fitness isn't really in a very different
[0:59] place to how it is right now at the end of the season.
[1:02] But with the right plan, with a solid winter plan behind you,
[1:06] you can really move your performance on to the next
[1:08] level. So that's what I'm going to
[1:09] focus on today is putting that plan together and then putting
[1:13] that plan in place. Before we get started though,
[1:16] there's a couple of quick things you could do to help us.
[1:18] Please, if you like and enjoy this episode, please follow us
[1:21] on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And if you're looking for help
[1:25] training for your first time Minor 70.3, please check out our
[1:29] coaching memberships over at teamoxygenaddict.com.
[1:31] I genuinely think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon
[1:34] coaching programme that's specifically designed for busy
[1:37] age groupers. It's the perfect time of year
[1:39] right now to commit to a coach training structure so we can put
[1:43] everything in place for you and you don't have to do any of the
[1:46] thinking. We can just get up, get the
[1:47] training session and get on with getting it done and not have to
[1:51] worry about whether what you're doing is the right thing or not.
[1:54] Just put all of your energy into just getting the sessions done
[1:58] and we'll make sure they're at the right duration and intensity
[2:00] for you. If you're interested, there's a
[2:02] link in the show notes to book a membership call with us and see
[2:05] if you'd be a good fit for joining the team.
[2:07] Right then let's get started. OK, so firstly, I think the most
[2:11] important thing to do here is to set your long term vision.
[2:15] Have a really clear, ideally write this down.
[2:18] Write down what it is you want to achieve next year.
[2:20] If it's your first 70.3, if it's completing your first Iron Man,
[2:24] if it's specific time goals, if it's increasing the power you
[2:28] put out on the bike, whatever your particular goals are, I
[2:30] think it's really important to write it down somewhere and then
[2:34] revisit this all the way through the winter.
[2:37] And the way to think of this is if you've got a clearview of
[2:41] where you want to get to, it makes the planning of how to get
[2:44] to it much, much easier. If you don't have that clear
[2:47] vision though, you're going to find yourself falling into the
[2:50] trap of not really knowing why you're training on a day-to-day
[2:53] basis. And and that makes it really
[2:55] easy to skip sessions. So with us with with athletes
[2:59] that we coach, they've got that really clear vision to start
[3:02] with. They know what event they're
[3:04] going to enter next season, they know what they're aiming
[3:06] towards, they know what they're trying to achieve.
[3:09] And we can then break that goal down into little chunks and we
[3:11] can, we can work on it as as small as improving FTP on the
[3:16] bike or increasing critical swim speed on the swim, any of those
[3:20] tiny micro goals. But we can then make sure that
[3:23] the training through the winter has a purpose and that our
[3:27] brains can really understand what the purpose of that
[3:30] training is. It's not just getting sessions
[3:32] done for the sake of it, although there's nothing wrong
[3:35] with just getting some training done.
[3:37] But I think I'm talking here to the athletes who really struggle
[3:40] to maintain consistency through the winter.
[3:43] So I'd, I'd encourage you here, winter's the time to think of as
[3:47] your foundation phase. It's not about trying to get
[3:50] into peak fitness, but it's about building durability.
[3:54] It's about building consistency and building those habits of
[3:58] daily training, even maybe twice daily training that will then
[4:02] carry you all the way through to Iron Man.
[4:04] And if you can get those habits in place during the winter,
[4:07] you'll end the winter as the sun starts to rise earlier and the
[4:11] days get lighter and the weather gets nicer.
[4:13] You'll be in a really good place.
[4:15] You'll be, you'll be riding and running and swimming much faster
[4:18] and you'll have, don't think of it as a base in terms of just
[4:22] an, an aerobic level of fitness, but think of it as a traditional
[4:27] base to jump off from. You're in a really good place
[4:29] fitness wise to then really build towards your goal of that
[4:33] season. OK, Next up, make the winter
[4:37] have a focus on consistency. And what I mean by that is the
[4:42] frequency and completion of the key sessions during the winter,
[4:48] day in, day out, week in, week out is more important than one
[4:53] massive hero session, one race on Swift, 1 running race that
[4:58] you've entered. And I think without a long term
[5:01] plan, it's easy to lose sight of this.
[5:04] What we're ideally looking for here is where every day taking
[5:08] the session off that you've got in that plan becomes the thing
[5:11] that you want to do. And overall achieving
[5:14] consistency is the big goal that you've got.
[5:17] So whether that's training every other day to start with, or
[5:21] training every day or, or training twice a day some days,
[5:25] if you, if you're not coached and you haven't got a training
[5:27] plan written down, it's really hard to do this if you're not
[5:31] coached, It's not to say you can't have a training, but I'd
[5:33] encourage you to go away and use the information that I give you
[5:36] here to build out a training plan for yourself.
[5:38] Have it actually written down. If you don't use training Eaks,
[5:41] it's a really easy system to use to put something in place.
[5:45] Turning boxes green is a real great motivator on a day by day
[5:49] basis. But also seeing those boxes go
[5:51] red if you don't do them is another kind of motivation in a
[5:55] way that just sitting down and thinking at the start of the
[5:58] week, well, I'm going to go and do a club bike session or I'm
[6:00] going to go and do the club swim session.
[6:03] If that doesn't build towards something in your mind, there's
[6:06] no real downside to not going when you're tired at the end of
[6:11] a work day and there's there's actually no real sort of
[6:14] consistency payback for doing it day after day and adding those
[6:18] things together. So I'd really, I'd really
[6:20] encourage you to find some way to reward yourself, even if it
[6:24] is just ticks on a piece of paper when you've got those
[6:26] sessions done. But the athletes we coach, we've
[6:29] got a really complex system called the race ready system
[6:31] that assigns scores to each workout.
[6:34] Key sessions are rated more highly than non key sessions.
[6:37] And depending on the time of year, some of the sessions are
[6:40] more important than others, and so are scored more highly than
[6:43] others. And that builds to a score out
[6:45] of 100 every week. Lots of athletes find that
[6:48] surprisingly motivating, trying to get their score to as close
[6:52] to 75% or as close to 100% even in some cases to try and get
[6:57] themselves as much consistency as they can.
[7:01] So the short term goal may well be to make that number as big as
[7:04] it can be within a week, but that builds into a long term
[7:07] goal of consistency is going to equal a much better performance
[7:11] come race day next summer. So it is a little bit of a way
[7:14] of tricking your mind into getting it done, but it's a way
[7:17] of tricking your mind into doing something that has a long term
[7:21] goal. And I think that's really,
[7:23] really important. Next tip I've got for you here
[7:26] is make the turbo trainer your ally this winter and also the
[7:30] treadmill if you're lucky enough to have one and and they find it
[7:32] difficult to run outdoors. Don't think of indoor training
[7:36] as in some way less than or as in some way not as good as doing
[7:41] the training outdoors. Genuinely isn't.
[7:44] At this point, with the advent of Swift and the various other
[7:47] indoor training platforms for both cycling and running, you
[7:51] really don't have wasted winter training time anymore.
[7:55] There isn't the situation where people just get on a gym bike
[7:58] just to ride for a bit to try and get the legs turning over.
[8:01] If you use the the indoor trainer, this is worth the
[8:04] kicker. Bike whatever it is that you
[8:06] have. If you use it for specific
[8:08] indoor training, for structured, efficient bike work where the
[8:12] sessions fit together and they work with each other from
[8:16] session to session and from week to week, and they build into
[8:19] blocks and they have an overall long term goal.
[8:23] That kind of training is really, really beneficial.
[8:25] And if you're new to it, it's going to feel different.
[8:28] But I think you'll find at the end of the end of a winter where
[8:31] the training is incredibly structured and it is very
[8:34] controlled. Some athletes find they miss
[8:37] that when they transition back to riding outdoors again because
[8:40] the control of the power numbers or the control of the heart rate
[8:43] is much harder to do outdoors. And they've really enjoyed that
[8:47] focus on it indoors now. I think it's necessary you have
[8:50] to go and do that training outdoors in the lead up to your
[8:53] race, but over these winter blocks is a really great time to
[8:58] shift your focus. And if you, if you haven't done
[9:00] this before, you find you can get massive, massive payback.
[9:03] You can find extra motivation in doing things differently.
[9:06] And even if it is just trying to deliver that 5 minute block at
[9:10] exactly the wattage that you're looking for, for that specific
[9:14] training purpose, that can be a goal in itself.
[9:17] And often the kind of type A personality that's attracted to
[9:21] Iron Man or 70.3 gets a lot of satisfaction from ticking each
[9:26] individual interval off and ticking each individual session
[9:29] off and completing each individual week.
[9:32] And that then builds again towards that long term goal.
[9:36] So don't think of it as wasted training time or junk miles.
[9:40] It has a very specific purpose and it can be as effective or in
[9:46] some cases more effective than going for a ride outdoors,
[9:49] certainly at this time of year in the winter would be next part
[9:53] of winter I think is to spend some time planning out what you
[9:58] think your your biggest weakness is and having a plan to address
[10:02] that so that it isn't your biggest weakness come next
[10:05] summer. So you might not know this if
[10:07] you're new to the sport and you're training for your first
[10:09] event. But if you've done some racing
[10:11] this season already, or even if you haven't, if you know that
[10:15] swimming is your weakest leg, or cycling is, or running is, have
[10:19] a plan to find a way to spend some extra time over this winter
[10:23] to address that weakness now. It might mean taking swim
[10:27] lessons. It might mean talking to a
[10:29] qualified coach and finding out what kind of plan you need to
[10:31] put in place to address that weakness.
[10:34] I'd advise finding a source of wisdom that you trust.
[10:38] And I'm not talking about ChatGPT here.
[10:40] Whatever you do, talk to someone who's been in the position of
[10:43] helping people like you make the kind of changes you've made to
[10:47] change. I'm happy to talk to athletes if
[10:49] you you want to go down and look in the show notes here.
[10:52] It's exactly what we do. And this isn't an advert for me.
[10:55] It's saying any triathlon coach worth his or her salt is going
[10:59] to be able to help you put a plan in place to address the
[11:02] weaknesses that you've got. So whether that's bike power,
[11:05] swim technique, run strength, strength conditioning,
[11:08] nutritional challenges around your body composition, whatever
[11:11] that is, identify it, make it visible, and then have that as
[11:15] part of your winter plan so that you can work towards addressing
[11:20] that. And it won't be a weakness or it
[11:22] won't be as big of a weakness come next summer.
[11:26] And who knows, it might even be your strength.
[11:28] Speaking personally, when I first came into triathlon I was
[11:33] a really strong runner. My swimming wasn't great, but
[11:36] the thing that really let me down was my bike power just
[11:39] wasn't there for the guys I was trying to compete with.
[11:42] Now I knew that over time my swimming was was going to come
[11:46] to a better level. I needed it to.
[11:47] But I recognised that for me the bike power was the thing I
[11:51] really needed to work on. So I went away and spent a whole
[11:53] winter really working on my bike power and two things happened
[11:58] that surprised me. Firstly, how much I was able to
[12:01] close the gap to the guys I wanted to race on the bike.
[12:05] Secondly, given that I'd really reduced my focus on the running
[12:09] and having come from a run background, I completely changed
[12:13] my approach to running that winter.
[12:14] There was almost no fast or hard running at all and I really
[12:18] expected that my run, which always been my strength, was
[12:21] going to drop off a Cliff and it didn't at all.
[12:24] And that was a light bulb moment for me of the bike training is
[12:28] the thing that's going to carry all of my training here.
[12:30] It's going to really improve my aerobic fitness and that's going
[12:34] to carry over into both swimming and into running as well.
[12:36] So that was a light bulb moment for me.
[12:39] You'll find something similar yourself, but you need to sit
[12:41] down and analyse what that is for you.
[12:44] And Next up, the next thing I would say is find a way that you
[12:49] can through the winter, stay motivated and mentally fresh.
[12:53] And sometimes that can be as simple as plotting out on a
[12:57] calendar what your winter is going to look like.
[13:00] Have a have a, a real clearview of which block is going to go
[13:04] where, where it starts and where it ends and when you're going to
[13:07] transition from the winter training into a different kind
[13:10] of training. Now with athletes that work with
[13:12] us all through the winter, we'll typically start our winter block
[13:16] at the start of November, the end of October, we'll do 8 weeks
[13:20] worth of training. We'll have a week or two of
[13:23] stepping back and refreshing over the Christmas period.
[13:26] Then we'll have another eight week block.
[13:28] Then our athletes have got a really clearview of what they
[13:31] need to do. It's eight weeks of hard work.
[13:33] Within that eight weeks we break that up so there's an easier
[13:37] week in week 4. So there's there's kind of two
[13:40] four week blocks there. We'll do the testing in week 1
[13:43] and we'll do the testing in week 8.
[13:45] And in between that we've got a really clear structure of, OK,
[13:49] three weeks of hard work, back it off a bit.
[13:52] I've got three more weeks of hard work, back it off and test.
[13:55] We'll have a break over at Christmas and then we'll do
[13:58] another similar block. That kind of approach means that
[14:02] you know what's coming, you know how it's broken down, and you
[14:05] can allow yourself to stay mentally fresh.
[14:07] I think if you haven't got that approach, if you're just doing
[14:10] whatever session pops up in front of you today, you're at
[14:14] the mercy of whatever arrives on the screen and this whiffed in
[14:16] front of you. And it's really important.
[14:19] I think if you are going to dedicate yourself to working
[14:21] hard over the winter, you also have to dedicate yourself to
[14:25] building in recovery days and recovery blocks.
[14:28] So that that works if you in a way that you're not totally
[14:31] burnt out and fried by the time next springtime come around.
[14:36] I think it's a great plan to build some fun indoor challenges
[14:39] in. I think it's a great, a really
[14:41] important plan to build in some kind of warm weather training
[14:45] break if you possibly can at some point during the, I say the
[14:48] Northern hemisphere winter. For my British listeners, we all
[14:52] know how difficult it gets in January, February time.
[14:55] If you can get yourself away to the Canary Islands for even a
[14:58] short break, it makes a massive, massive difference.
[15:00] If you can get yourself away to Majorca in the spring, it can
[15:03] make a massive difference. So that's a great character
[15:07] dangle in front of yourself to be able to go away and know that
[15:10] there's a little bit of sunshine on the horizon.
[15:12] So that winds consistency will really build you some
[15:16] performance. This is a great time to give a
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[15:22] the official title sponsors of the 70.3 World Championships.
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[15:31] The plan will help you understand your own
[15:33] carbohydrate, electrolyte and fluid needs and you can also
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[15:43] I think in terms of electrolytes, there's nothing
[15:46] easier or simpler out on the market to ensure that you can
[15:49] keep your electrolyte balance and your fluid balance correct.
[15:53] And it's super important to do this when you're training
[15:55] indoors. And also, I love their gels and
[15:57] their chews. You got to make sure you
[15:58] properly fuel through your indoor training sessions.
[16:01] So head on over to precisionfuelandhydration.com
[16:04] and you can use the code Oxygen Fuel 25 for 15% off your first
[16:09] order building aerobic power with FTP efforts.
[16:13] Now, I think this is the best return on investment in training
[16:16] that you can have all the way through the winter because that
[16:20] fitness that you're going to build, it isn't just the bike
[16:24] fitness, it's overall aerobic fitness.
[16:27] And what I mean by that is the fitness of your heart, your
[16:29] blood, your blood vessels, your ability to transfer oxygen from
[16:34] your lungs to your blood, from your blood to your muscles, the
[16:37] waste products back again. All of that efficiency is going
[16:42] to directly carry over into running and to a slightly lesser
[16:45] extent into swimming as well. But all aerobic fitness capacity
[16:50] is aerobic fitness capacity and it is going to really help you
[16:54] in that way. And what we found training
[16:56] triathletes taking a big view of the training is you have to find
[17:01] a way to do your intensity in the smartest possible way.
[17:06] Now what do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is we can't
[17:09] train like a swimmer and a cyclist and a runner.
[17:12] We have to train like a triathlete.
[17:14] A swimmer would be doing really, really hard, intense efforts and
[17:18] swim. A runner would be doing really
[17:20] intense, hard run intervals either on the hills or a running
[17:23] track twice a week. Cyclist is going to be doing
[17:26] those intervals twice a week on the indoor trainer.
[17:30] You can't Add all three of those together and do six really hard
[17:33] sessions a week because your body just can't take it.
[17:36] So we have to find a way that we can get the overall fitness
[17:38] change in the balance right in a way that works for you.
[17:42] The way we're going to approach this is we'll do the hard work
[17:45] on the bike in the winter. We'll do steady aerobic work on
[17:49] the run. We'll do technique based work on
[17:51] the swim, but the majority of your hard work is going to be
[17:56] done building aerobic power with FTP efforts on the bike.
[17:59] So we're looking for really structured interval sessions.
[18:02] We're looking for 30 to 40 minutes worth of work broken up
[18:06] with recoveries during an hour long session.
[18:09] Typically you want this work to rest ratio to be about 5 to 1,
[18:13] so 5 minutes of work for one minute of recovery and you want
[18:17] to be working at or around your FTPA, 100% of your functional
[18:21] threshold power. We will structure sessions so we
[18:25] build toward that and we build beyond that.
[18:27] We'll get the balance of the length of the sessions and the
[18:30] length of the recoveries correct.
[18:32] For athletes. We'll make sure that the FTP is
[18:35] correct all the way through the training.
[18:36] So you need to do the same if you are self trained or self
[18:39] coached. It's, I guess the phrase is
[18:43] simple but not easy. Make sure that you're doing
[18:46] enough work to get those changes, but without doing so
[18:49] much work that you cook yourself and you can't train again next
[18:52] week or you can't train again next session.
[18:54] It's a delicate balancing act. So make sure you're getting the
[18:58] correct work done on the bike and leaving yourself the energy
[19:01] to do the work on the swim and the run and strength
[19:04] conditioning as well. Next up, running through the
[19:08] winter, I'm going to strongly suggest that you focus on
[19:11] frequency and run strength, not speed.
[19:15] So what I mean by this is the running during the winter is
[19:17] going to be focused mainly on building the strength of your
[19:21] tendons and your ligaments. You're going to get that through
[19:24] frequency. It's not going to get any more
[19:27] of it by running really hard. You know, going to get more of
[19:29] it by running really hard uphill.
[19:32] You're not going to get more of it by making yourself really,
[19:34] really sore by doing really hard track efforts with the local
[19:38] running club. And it's something that often
[19:41] athletes struggle with when it comes to us with the aims to and
[19:43] Iron Man, they say I'm really afraid I'm going to lose my run
[19:46] speed. I still need to be doing those
[19:48] hard run sessions. My question to that athlete is
[19:52] what's your overall goal here? Is your overall goal to be a
[19:56] fast runner and to do an Iron Man?
[19:59] Is your overall goal to complete your first Iron Man?
[20:01] Is your overall goal to be a really fast runner over 5K local
[20:05] running club? Because you're going to have to
[20:07] decide between the two of those if you want to do the Iron Man
[20:11] effectively now. I personally don't see much of A
[20:16] drop off, if any drop off in run speed for our athletes when they
[20:19] do the majority of their hard work on the bike.
[20:22] But we need to focus on making sure we're not making ourselves
[20:26] really sore and opening ourselves up to the risk of
[20:29] niggles and injuries by running either too hard or running
[20:33] really hard uphill. Doing a lot of hard running on
[20:36] concrete or running tracks if you're an ageing athlete, and by
[20:39] that I mean if you're 35 plus, any kind of faster or harder
[20:44] running is going to exponentially make you sore,
[20:48] much more so than you remember it doing when you were younger.
[20:50] And as a guy in his mid 50s now, I can clearly see this decline
[20:55] that happened in my ability not to run fast.
[20:58] I want my ability to recover from running fast.
[21:01] When I look back at my running diary from being an 18 year old
[21:04] or a 20 year old, I just didn't get sore after track sessions.
[21:08] I would do them and I would go out and do an eight mile run the
[21:10] next day as a 30 year old, As a 35 year old, I would still try
[21:15] to do the same sessions. And in some cases the times were
[21:18] not 1,000,000 miles away from where they had been.
[21:21] And I held on to the idea of I'm not losing speed, but the
[21:24] comments in my training diary around soreness and the
[21:27] undeniable number of niggles that built towards injuries
[21:30] across the years because I was unwilling to let go of this
[21:33] image of myself as someone who was a fast runner.
[21:36] It wasn't actually all that important to me anymore.
[21:39] I wanted to be good at Iron Man and it took a long time to see I
[21:43] had to let go of one of these things to dedicate myself to the
[21:47] other thing that was more important to me.
[21:49] So winter running should be about frequency of running,
[21:54] steady running. You'll you'll build the
[21:57] durability to keep on running and to build that running base
[22:00] so you can add lots of run volume on later in the season.
[22:04] You'll do that through frequency in the winter, not through
[22:07] speed. And that's the thing to remind
[22:09] yourself of. Next up, swimming.
[22:12] Let's use the winter to fix and improve your swim technique
[22:17] weaknesses. Now almost all of age group
[22:21] triathletes, unless they've been swimmers as a as a child, unless
[22:25] they've been child swim club members, there's something going
[22:29] on in their swim technique that is holding them back from
[22:33] swimming at a speed appropriate to their fitness.
[22:36] Almost all adult triathletes are fit because of their biking and
[22:40] they're running. And if they're not very good
[22:42] swimmers, it's not because they're not fit enough to be
[22:44] good swimmers. It's not the oxygen transfer
[22:46] that's slowing them down. It's the ability to transfer
[22:50] their fitness to the water, to transfer force from their body
[22:54] to the water meaningfully. And that's much more like a
[22:57] skill based sport like tennis or golf then it is like running or
[23:01] cycling. It's not about how hard you try,
[23:04] it's about correcting the technique to alley force to the
[23:08] water in a way that's going to move you through the water more
[23:11] efficiently. O often if we see athletes come
[23:14] into the sport in middle age, they'll often be really, really
[23:18] out of breath at the end of a length or the end of two
[23:20] lengths. This is you.
[23:22] I guarantee it's a technique based problem or sometimes even
[23:25] a breathing technique problem rather than a fitness based
[23:29] problem. So by fixing those swim
[23:31] technique weaknesses, by doing specific drills through the
[23:34] winter that are going to address your weaknesses, you can make
[23:36] yourself a much, much faster swimmer without needing to train
[23:40] harder or even with more volume. We've seen this in person on our
[23:43] training camp in Majorca. I've managed to help athletes
[23:47] cut literally 10 or 12 seconds per hundred of their hundred
[23:52] metre swim time in one session. Now that isn't a fitness change
[23:56] that's happened. It's because I've been able to
[23:58] see something in their stroke that they've been doing and help
[24:01] them change it immediately and it immediately transfers to a
[24:04] speed change for them. Now you're not immediately going
[24:08] to be 10 or 12 seconds, 100 faster over every distance.
[24:11] It's going to take time to embed that.
[24:14] But often the athletes for whom have had this experience,
[24:17] they're totally blown away by the fact that they thought they
[24:20] were, I don't know, a two-minute 100 metre swimmer and now
[24:23] they're A140800 metre swimmer, or they thought they were 145
[24:27] and now they're 132. Those kinds of speed jumps are
[24:31] totally reasonable to happen because they're already fit
[24:36] enough to swim at that speed. It's just they haven't got the
[24:38] technique to be able to do it yet.
[24:40] So improving stroke efficiency has got to be the purpose of
[24:44] your swims during the winter. Let's talk about strength
[24:47] conditioning. Really important time of year to
[24:49] have a conditioning and strength programme included.
[24:53] So for some of you, just pure conditioning is going to be the
[24:56] thing that we need here. It's going to be weekly sessions
[24:59] that prevent injury, improve posture and help your stability.
[25:03] So we're going to prioritise core work, glute strength work,
[25:07] hamstring work, single leg hip bridges, things like that.
[25:10] They're going to help with glute activation and they are going to
[25:13] help your stability and that's going to help limit your run
[25:16] injuries. That's essentially what we're
[25:18] looking for here. Conditioning work helps prevent
[25:21] injuries. There's very, very few athletes,
[25:23] especially under 40, for whom strength is a limiter.
[25:27] So you don't need to be stronger.
[25:28] You need to be more conditioned and better conditioned.
[25:31] Now, the caveat for this is our older athletes, 50 plus, I think
[25:35] it's well worth including strength routines that are aimed
[25:38] at maintaining and even building muscle mass.
[25:41] So you don't necessarily have to go into a weights room if you're
[25:43] not someone who knows how to do that, but push pull type
[25:47] exercises that are going to cause your muscles to be under
[25:50] strain and are going to activate your ability to either maintain
[25:54] or build muscle. I think they're well worth
[25:57] building into your training programme.
[25:59] And lastly, in terms of nutrition and body composition,
[26:03] I think the winter is a time to focus on your nutrition but not
[26:07] to obsess about your body composition.
[26:09] What I mean by that is you can get a much bigger payback by
[26:12] building a positive habit during the winter of eating nutrient
[26:17] dense foods and trying to reduce the amount of if you like let's
[26:21] say junk food, sweet snacks, chocolate, crisps, alcohol.
[26:25] Reduce the amount of those that you have in the evenings and
[26:28] replace them by a focus on the healthy foods and high nutrient
[26:32] dense foods. You can have fruits and
[26:34] vegetables. That is a really good way to
[26:37] focus. Now you are going to need to
[26:38] fuel yourself and although this this isn't going to sell at any
[26:43] coaching memberships, it's not a time to be trying to cut down on
[26:47] body fat, reduce your body composition.
[26:49] The winter just isn't a time that's very well set up for
[26:52] that. I believe your body is going to
[26:54] find its own way to its own weight if you're training well
[26:58] and if you're fuelling it effectively and efficiently.
[27:01] I think the early springtime is a much better time to make a
[27:03] focus on body composition changes.
[27:05] But again, those changes are going to happen over time.
[27:08] Don't try and restrict yourself during the winter time.
[27:11] Try and make good nutrient dense food choices and your body will
[27:16] find its way to a healthy body composition.
[27:19] Okay, hope this episode has been useful for you.
[27:22] I'd love to hear about how you're planning to make changes
[27:25] this winter so it'll help you reach your summer goal.
[27:28] So drops a line to help Oxygen addict.com.
[27:30] If this podcast has been helpful.
[27:32] To wrap this up, here some discount codes and deals for
[27:35] you. Remember you can use the code
[27:36] Oxygen Fuel 25. That'll get you 15% off your
[27:39] first order of electrolytes. Fuel Gels chews over at
[27:43] Precision Fuel and hydration.com and at teamoxygenite.com I
[27:47] genuinely think we've got the most comprehensive triathlon
[27:49] coaching programme that's specifically designed for busy
[27:52] age groupers. It's the perfect time of year to
[27:54] get involved with structured training.
[27:56] You can make a massive difference to how your race is
[27:59] going to go next summer at 70.3 or Ironman.
[28:02] But having structured training in place now, I'll take care of
[28:05] all the details. I'll give you the training plan.
[28:07] It'll be the right intensity, the right duration.
[28:09] So all you have to worry about is getting the session done day
[28:13] by day. Not.
[28:15] I'm constantly wondering whether the training you're doing is
[28:18] correct, whether you could be training differently, whether
[28:21] this is going to be effective. I guarantee it will all be
[28:24] effective for you. All you'll have to do is let me
[28:28] take the worry away and just get on with doing the training.
[28:30] So if you're interested in having a chat, click the link in
[28:33] the show notes. You can book a membership call.
[28:35] And yeah, we'd love to see if you'll be a good fit for joining
[28:39] the team. So remember, there's links in
[28:41] the show notes. You don't have to remember them
[28:43] until next week. Have a great safe training and
[28:45] racing week. I'm coach Rob Wilby and you've
[28:47] been listening to the Oxygen Addict Triathlon Podcast.

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