Morning Andre asked today’s Coaches Corner question which was What are the correct number of session per discipline per week?

One of the hardest things in triathlon is to get the correct balance of sessions across the course of the week. Single discipline sports such as running or cycling don’t have this as a major concern – squeezing in the training, but with three sports init one this can be the case.

So what is the ideal balance?
Basic: I strongly believe that in order to make sufficient progress within each discipline you need to have a 3:3:3 balance where you are training each discipline 3x a week. This would allow the body to progress its fitness levels and also give the body time to rest between disciplines. This would mean either training twice a day or back to back (aka brick sessions – see below).

If you are only doing 2 sessions per week or even one, the rate of progress will be little to none as the body will not be overloaded to progress.

NB: there are two types of brick session. Soft brick is where the time gap between one activity & then next is not a factor. A hard brick is where the two activities – commonly bike to run are seen as one session

Can everyone train twice a day?
The answer is yes IF your lifestyle, routine permits it. Running or swimming before work is common to most people, this may be unpleasant but it might be the only time you can get into the pool. Training during lunch breaks takes organisation and quality, avoid junk training as you need to ensure that your training is quality. Training afterward / in the evenings is where an athlete can make further gains. Running home from work, jumping on the turbo can help someone make those marginal games.

Weekends although are great, these are often the best time to get those key endurance miles in whether on the bike or running. The added time means you can spend time building that base.

Specialist: if you have a natural strength in one discipline such a running, then you could drop a session in that area to free up another time slot to focus on the other two disciplines. This would work nicely if you want to look at alternate weeks where one week you have 4 swims and 3 runs and the following week you drop to 3 swims and 4 runs. This would allow the body to adapt to the increase in volume for the weaker discipline.

Overload weeks: it’s also possible to have a week of intense training geared towards one discipline but this overload can create stress / fatigue and could lead to injury so please be wary of back to back to back sessions