This program is designed as an aerobic base building program for triathletes to build aerobic foundation. The plan is designed to make the athlete more aerobically efficient, improve swimming cycling and running and build a stronger body to be as injury resistant as possible before starting race specific phase. It can and should be used in part or in whole to rebuild after the recovery phase from an event.
To note - there are a lot of notes included in the plan that do not appear in the week preview. Our goal is to not only train you but also for you to complete this plan more knowledgeable around all aspects of training.
Primary objectives of the plan:
Aerobic Capacity Development: Building an aerobic base helps enhance the body's ability to efficiently utilize oxygen during exercise. This leads to improvements in aerobic capacity, which is crucial for sustaining endurance efforts over extended periods.
Mitochondrial Biogenesis: Aerobic base training stimulates the production of mitochondria, the energy-producing structures within cells. More mitochondria mean greater energy production, contributing to improved endurance and stamina.
Improved Fat Metabolism: Training at lower intensities promotes the utilization of fats as a primary energy source. This helps spare glycogen stores, which are essential for higher-intensity efforts. Efficient fat metabolism is particularly beneficial for athletes involved in long-duration activities.
Enhanced Cardiovascular System Function:Aerobic training improves the efficiency of the heart and lungs. It increases stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped per heartbeat) and cardiac output (the volume of blood pumped by the heart per minute), leading to better oxygen delivery to working muscles.
Injury Prevention: Set your body up to be able to withstand a race specific prep by becoming more resilient and injury proof with the lower intensity aerobic focus this plan recommends.
Train the brain: A less mentioned benefit of having a large aerobic base behind you as an athlete is that you've trained your brain to accept the mindless duration and mild suffering. The brain is very trainable in this regard. Soon, the duration of a session that would have seemed inconceivable to you starting out becomes normal and even desirable.
Optimising Training Adaptations: With the focus on easy to moderate training and building up aerobic volume you'll be giving an uninterrupted period of time dedicated to allowing all of the below to take place:
- Training in zone 1 and 2 will improve your mitochondrial number, function, flexibility, efficiency and fitness.
- Improvement in mitochondrial function will improve metabolic flexibility or your ability to utilise fat for fuel.
- The more zone 2 training you do the more the body gets better at creating MCT-1 a transport protein that helps you shuttle lactate back into the cell for fuel when you go to higher intensities. So zone 2 actually helps your zone 3 + performance also!
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