Winter Training KISS

Winter is usually associated with the off-season for most triathletes, coinciding with cold and dark days where the prospect of training is a bit of a drag...especially when it is raining on Saturday morning. Usually it is training that suffers, which makes complete sense, and yet many people will battle with some feeling of guilt over what training they feel they should be doing, or as prescribed by a coach. 

This article to not going to suggest throwing a training plan out the window - a LOT can be achieved during winter - but to take a pragmatic and simple approach to how you go about achieving your winter training objectives. Basically, it is to KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)!!

As a coach I enjoy the challenge of weaving an intricate training plan, complete with necessary periodisation, progression, recovery and more, tailored for an individual athlete. But I realise there is a time and place for everything, including these detailed programs, and winter is often the time where the specific detailed is watered down in favour of JFT (Just F-ing Train), where just training is often more important than tormenting athletes with specific session plans.

There's a few reasons for this. First is that athletes need a break from complex training to just enjoy the simple beauty of getting out and doing something. In saying that, however, I do believe it is possible - and valuable - to insert some short and specific training elements into selected sessions during winter to achieve some training goals, but without making sessions too onerous. Also, training can still follow a strategic plan...we're only talking about the complexity of sessions.

A further reason for keeping it simple is that triathletes like going hard, and given the opportunity in any structured session will try and do it as hard as they can. This is generally not desirable during winter and will likely see athletes pushing themselves into great form in August/September, and then flat and dragging the proverbial chain when the actual race season comes around. So the best way to avoid that is to limit the structure of sessions.

So by keeping things simple, and proving guidelines, broad objectives and a skeleton template for winter training, you achieve flexibility for when sessions can be done to allow for various winter blues. The guidelines and objectives are the key ingredients to ensure athletes arrive at the post-winter phase ready for what is ahead, while the template provides some loose structure for actually doing the training. Of course, different athletes respond to different amounts of detail and information, and this would be catered for. I'll write more on winter training examples in a subsequent article. In the meantime, KISS and JFT for a while...and just enjoy training.