The season is almost over. Days are getting shorter, the weather is getting worse and so for a lot of people training time is becoming limited and requiring that extra bit of motivation.

At this time of year our athletes are planning for next season and starting to think about winter training – with a greater focus on indoor training than outdoor. As such we get asked the same type of question on this a lot:

“How do I make the best use of my training time over winter”

It’s a great question. With time at a premium, and training over winter naturally becoming more about an hour here and an hour there it’s important that you make every session count.

In the video below Coach Rob explains Team Oxygenaddict’s philosophy of winter training to ensure you see the biggest overall improvement in your triathlon performance come race season.

For the majority of triathletes, the area where most gains (in terms of time improvements) are to be had is on the bike.

A lot of coaches talk about the ‘traditional’ approach of building your base fitness through riding long, slow miles. And – if you have the time (and weather!) to do that, it’s still a great focus for your bike training over winter.

However… Most age-group triathletes are busy – balancing work life, family life and training. The shorter, colder days naturally mean less time realistically available to train in any given session.

The winter focus that more often than not reaps the biggest rewards come race season is increasing your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) on the bike. By increasing your FTP over winter, when you transition to more outdoor riding in the spring, you’ll be able to ride faster for the same effort. And this will translate into material improvements over all race distances.

The good news – we know what you need to do to increase your FTP. We’ve countless examples from our athletes from last winter of significant FTP improvements – many from athletes who were already strong bikers with relatively high FTP numbers.

The bad news – it’s hard work 🙂 But as long as you’re prepared to work hard and commit to some intense turbo sessions you’ll reap the rewards. And, start seeing a noticeable difference in as little as 4-8 weeks.

Onto swimming…

This is the area that a lot of triathletes feel they need to focus on most because it’s their weakest discipline. If you’re a “middle of the pack” swimmer or better it’s tempting to aim to become a “front of the pack” swimmer by swimming 3-4 times per week and knocking a few minutes off your swim time.

In our experience however it’s our experience that by reducing swimming down to once per week you’ll see little-if-any drop off in your swim times.

So you need to be asking yourself – is the 2-3 hours per week that’ll save me, better spent elsewhere. e.g. if I used this time each week to improve my bike power further, will I see time improvements greater than those I would have seen in my swim time?

Almost always the answer is yes.

If however you’re more of a beginner swimmer and are worried about making the swim cut-off time, the winter is the ideal time to improve your stroke and technique through specifically targeted swim drills. After all – your biking ability is irrelevant in a triathlon if you don’t make it out of the swim in time.

And in terms of running…

It’s tempting to assume you need to be going hard and doing lots of tempo / interval sets, cross country races etc.

But actually we find that if your bike focus is on building power, then running steady and often is the most effective run training. Your cardiovascular system will be developing from bike training, which translates into top-end run ability. The focus from run training therefore should be to develop your running mechanics – strengthening ligaments, tendons and run-specific muscles. And this is done most effectively by running steady and often over winter.

As winter turns to spring and your biking focus moves towards endurance and away from top-end power, you’ll have the strength, fitness and run durability to start to increase your running intensity without risking injury. And with the majority of triathlete injuries caused by running, this is an important consideration!

Again – we’ve seen many Team Oxygenaddict athletes smashing their run PBs this year, when the majority of their run-specific training hasn’t been speed based. Our team members never cease to be amazed by how well bike fitness and ability translates to running speed and ability!