How to train like a ‘Pro’ on an Age-grouper’s timetable
Wouldn’t we all love the opportunity to be able to follow a professional triathlete’s training timetable, right? Or instead, we love the idea of what we think a pro triathlete’s schedule might be - what does it look like? Why do we care? What magical ingredients set professionals apart from most age-groupers? Read on, as coach Tracy discusses the key differences and perhaps, how you can bridge some of those gaps.
Most of us imagine that pros have it easy and get to train whenever they like; that Triathlon is their primary career and that there is potential to earn a lot of money through sponsorship and prize money, which for the majority of pros is far from the truth.
Despite what many might think, age-groupers share nearly as many similarities in their approach to training as differences. So, the questions that need to be answered are:
Which elements of a pro training timetable sets it apart from an age-grouper’s?
How can the gap between the two be reduced?
Let us start by looking at the most apparent differences between the respective timetables.
What does a pro’s training timetable look like?
Consistency in training across disciplines
Flexibility in training: choice of when, where, how, and how long
Higher training load over a more extended period
Training several times-a-day
Longer periods of rest between multiple training sessions
Consistent self-care focussed on the needs of the athlete
What does an age-grouper’s training timetable look like?
Inconsistency in training across disciplines
Limited flexibility in training, when and for how long
Less time to train effectively: lower training load
Training often limited to training once a day
Shorter periods of rest between training sessions
Increased injury rate
Inconsistent training set up or access to equipment
Variable self-care, often influenced by external factors such as
Family
Gender
Career type / environment
Available income
All these variables and influencing factors can affect the age-grouper’s rate of progression and their capacity to navigate through triathlon pathways and on to the world-stage.
The main difference in their respective training schedules is the time available to apply to their training cycles. For the pro, it includes not only more training hours but also more quality hours in support, e.g. recovery, sleep, massage, physio exercises, etc.). In essence, it comes down to the individual’s priorities and the training constraints placed upon them by:
Family (what matters most to many)
Work (income to live and fund your sport)
The demands of the sport itself
Professional athletes merge priorities 2 and 3 such that sport becomes the income stream affording them more time to focus on the sport.
How can the gap between the Pro and Age-Grouper training timetable be reduced?
Age-groupers generally have more factors to consider when creating training timetables. Their job is not their sport, and they place additional stress on body systems, e.g. from work (and the stress it can cause) and family commitments. A sound training plan must account for all of these factors.
Increased training load is not necessarily the ideal solution. Age-groupers need to be smart with their training to avoid packing out the week unspecific junk miles. Planning time for rest and recovery within the timetable is fundamental to effective and sustainable training. It is through rest and recuperation (self-care) that most significant gains are made and is the crucial difference that makes the pro’s training more effective than that of age-groupers’.
With the choices and compromises that many age-groupers must make to fit in with ‘life’, they cannot try to make up for lost time but rather accept without a doubt and must therefore focus their attention on the next session; if a session is missed, it will make you stronger for the next one!
If a session is missed, it will make you stronger for the next one!
Having access to coaching can help achieve maximum gain for the training time available and can be a positive step towards reducing the gap to the professionals. Having a well-structured, personal, and streamlined training programme is key to a successful sporting journey. Much of the additional stress and time spent self-coaching can be offset by having sport-specific expertise on tap to create the training plan most relevant to your individual circumstances. In turn, this will allow more time in the training schedule for more effective self-care!
Athlete’s Self-Care
Athlete self-care is a crucial, foundational element that must be built into any effective training programme. Logically, it must be more challenging to build fitness in the absence of self-care (where the body is weaker and more prone to fatigue) and can exponentially increase the risk of sport-related injury!
Self-care is about promoting your own physical and emotional wellbeing. It is a deliberate process, essential to the maintenance of a healthy relationship with oneself to ensure a longer and more balanced life. It is initiated and regulated by each of us to enable safer functioning day-to-day, whilst minimising the physical and emotional effects that daily living places upon us. It helps us to provide space in often busy lives to ‘take breaks’, ‘put our feet up’, ‘read a book’, and relax (by whatever means), in the knowledge that it will ‘rejuvenate mind and body’ for the other tasks ahead. Failing to recognise our own self-care often needs results (over time) in adversely affecting our personal sense of wellbeing.
By extension, self-care helps focuses the athlete on what she or he needs to better sustain their training load, to improve their performance, and to remain healthy and injury-free whilst doing so. This is achieved by utilising a range of modalities to help maximise recovery, reduce injury, and to gain the maximum benefits of training to help us achieve our goals. These are fundamental in bringing about the most significant return for expended effort and mainly include, for example, rest, sleep, soft tissue therapy, hydration, and nutrition.
It is the professional athlete’s consistent approach to self-care as a key component of training, that differentiates them and, ultimately, their superior performance. Time limitations often force age-groupers to make hard choices and many athletes, particularly triathletes, who train for three disciplines rather than one, believe that more training is better training. However, neglecting the other essential elements of a complete and balanced training programme to make time for “more” is unlikely to help achieve success as a triathlete, regardless of whether it is the professional or the age-grouper who does it.
If you want to increase your training load to “train like a pro”, you have to be able to increase your recovery and self-care proportionately as they go hand-in-hand. That is the significant difference between professionals and age-groupers. Therefore, if you want to be able to train like a pro on an age-grouper timetable, you need to program your self-care and recovery times into your weekly schedule.