Any Weightlifter Triathletes?

Just my 2 cents - pick a sport. I love lifting too, but you don't want to carry around all the extra muscle weight when you are doing endurance events. Assuming your lifting will suffer from lack of recovery days. Give endurance work a fair shot, see what you can do - but it will be better if you are lighter and give yourself real off days (no heavy lifting). Easy for me to say, as a middle aged woman there were decreasing returns on my bulking up and I decided I wanted a different look, healthy and lean. You might not want to go there.


You do get different highs from slogging out a 30 min run than from getting in that next set of curls.

What brings you to triathlons? What do you want to do in the sport?

Mitzi

from what I have collected, weight lifting can be used in conjunction with your training or against it. I often lift for weight gains, and somehow during my sprint training over 2 months I gained nearly 10 pounds. I limited my legs to once a week, but they were sore for a couple weeks but eventually adapted. I'm actually going to try doing legs 2 times a week soon to see if they hang in there more. I limit my weight lifting to 2 times a week and feel like it's a good balance for me between the 2 sports, but my weight lifting isn't improving as quickly as my endurance and cardio which is fine by me, so long I maintain my current strength.

Absolutely!!!

It can take a while for your body to adapt to running, and if you are also stressing it with the lifting, that time can take longer.

I'd suggest keeping your weightlifting in maintenance mode for a bit while progressing on s/b/r for a while, then once you have the volume up, you can make some changes.

I like Alex Viada's approach where he front loads the intensity in both lifting and endurance activity early in the training cycle ( whether that's 6 days, a week, 10 days etc. ) and back load volume.

Check him out though, he came from a strength background, and got himself into endurance sports.

http://k3fitness.fi/2014/05/alex-viada-interview/

I have turned myself into a hybrid over the last year. I was a competitive bodybuilder for over 8 years, BUT stayed very athletic. I'm competitive and bore easily lol I am about to turn 41 and started that bodybuilding quest at 15/16. My point? I have a serious lifetime of weight training, muscle developed base. When I made a transition to duathlons and triathlons, it was endurance that needed development. After spending decades in my life as a bodybuilding hard-gainer, I never planned on sacrificing any muscle it took my life to aesthetically build (I'm always bodybuilding minded).
To do so, I have virtually done nothing "by the book." Every bodybuilder has genetic strengths, in certain areas of strength and size development. If you've put years into training and developing, let those areas take a back seat, as genetics will make up the difference. For me, it's my legs, therefore, weight training hard and heavy with them is winter-time. The bike plays into my history of leg strength and genetics. I do range of motion maintenance for them mostly in spring and summer. This hopefully provides an example.
Now, as I said, I REFUSED to sacrifice hard earned muscle and I won't lie, the weight on your body's frame will be felt on runs and the bike, ESPECIALLY in climbs. Because of this, there is a serious adaptation period that just goes on and on and in stages. When I first started, I weighed a slightly softer (less lean) 204, I dipped way down to 184-6 for a period and people thought I "stopped taking the $hi!" if you know what I mean. Since I do it all naturally, it was muscle that freaked out during the early stages. Slowly, because I refused to change my diet, my supplementation and rest, my body adapted, but I did A WHOLE LOT based on feel.....understanding my body....what it needs, what it needed and exactly when. I shyed away from talking to too many hardcore by the book folk, because I would've gotten yelled at for too low run miles, too few swim sessions, too much "unnecessary muscle", not enough this, that etc. You get my drift. Thing is this, IF you're a conventional bodybuilder with little to no athletic base, it's gonna be a pain the , but if you have a diversified ethic, always training with proper ROM and no impingments that will affect a swim stroke, a run style, etc. it helps!

Today, I have literally transformed myself in about 16 months time. I weigh a solid 193-5 on average. I made up my mind, 188-90 is my muscularity cut off and eat accordingly. My volume is enough to be discussed now lol. It all grew over time, because I Iet my body adapt on it's own. Now, if I go 3 days without running, I am losing my mind. I still push weight considerable enough to keep size on. Be smart, there's a HUGE self-learning curve to do this and be bodybuilder-esque if you will. For instance, you best do your swim work in the days BEFORE hard chest or shoulders. Long run, there barely is a pure weight training day, because there just aren't enough days in the week for everything. So learn to add race pace run intervals after 45 or so minutes of weights.
Regarding "by the book", I did use Daniel's Running Formula for paces according to my progressive levels. His advice is so proven it WORKS. I did, however, modify his prescribed volume of running to fit my overall schedule. But his pace predictions, prescriptions according to his VDOT formulas WORK!

I can write pages of pages to be honest. I'll cut it short for now, feel free to pm me if you're really off a bodybuilding background and willing to put this new work in. Many bodybuilders have aesthetics in mind, many have some esteem or self-image issue, and this plays a role. These BT forums are great, but rare to find someone of true bodybuilding background and aesthetic maintenance. It's hard to explain and it's hard to understand for many many people. Diet, supplementation are a whole other part I didn't even get into.
Good Luck, feel free to ask any questions

I'm not much of a weight lifter, but I would recommend keeping track of your weight and what/how much you're eating as you wade into triathlon. Your body will probably change and it's helpful to be able to look back at where you've come from and how your body has responded to different patterns as you set goals going forward.

Might want to go ahead and do a complete body metrics measurement and enter that info on your log here in BT so you have a basis from which to measure in the future.

Just throwing this out as I'm novice in both:
I started Stronglifts 5x5 in June and quickly found that I couldn't handle the volume of that program with s/b/r training. Because I didn't have plans for racing this year (coming back from cancer) I decided to focus on lifting and swimming. That said, my schedule is going to change next month so I'll stop lifting and go back to s/b/r workouts for 2 months. Winter plans are to go with Starting Strength program which is linear progression like 5x5 but seems to have less volume so I'm hoping to combine it with s/b/r without burning out.

YMMV

This.

Just like we can't expect to run as much as a pure marathoner, bike as much as a tour de france rider, and swim as much as an olympian, even at the peak of triathlon it will be a delicate balance of trying to balance all 3 without overtaxing ourselves, adding in a strength program will also mean we will have to strike a balance between our weightlifting goals and s/b/r.

I do tend to periodize my training to be more strength focused in the triathlon off season, and as I get into season, then closer to race day, I lift less and less, and s/b/r w2ith specificity more and more.

thanks for all the advice and comments everyone. The first few days of my thread I didn't think I was going to get any feedback. I'm glad I did.

I did change my weightlifting up, and ironically since posting this I think my legs have come a long way because they aren't nearly as bad as they were. Just a small background as someone asked what brought me to this sport:

I was a college baseball player, never made the show and was jaded as I thought it was all because of my size. I realized I had all the talent, but I didn't have the work ethic, even being undersized I could have taken my career a lot further. So after baseball I picked up "bodybuilding". I use quotations because I never competed, or even close, but I was very hooked on lifting weights in a typical bro-split workout. So after about 6 years of that I got kind of bored and got into olympic lifting. I built a platform in my garage, where I still lift weights, and worked myself up to clean and jerking 300lbs, and snatching 255 at 175lbs bw.

I've dealt with Osgood-Schlatters (very severe) in m right knee since I was a teenager but it finally needed surgery to maintain the kind of activity I was doing. So 2 months ago I had surgery with an awesome Ortho in Houston and have been steadily recovering since. I'm still lifting weights, albeit lighter weight, and only 3 days a week now as I've started Triathlon training. I've always admired the Ironman, and I always thought I would love to be able to do that. So instead of telling myself that I hate running, or I'm not good with endurance, I decided to give it my best shot and see how far I can get. I've always been a natural at things, and the older I get the more I realize that talent alone isn't enough, so I'm happy to be training to compete in ANY sort of triathlon.... hopefully early next year.

Thanks again for the encouragement.

Are you talking about weightlifting or strength training?

Weightlifting is a sport, strength training is used to supplement another sports training, people oftentimes confuse these together.

What are you goals? Do you want to continue with the bodybuilding/olympic lifting background or focus on endurance sports. Both sports are on the opposite ends of the spectrum and work against each other so your ability to perform to you potential in either sport would be limited.

I will tell you from my real world first hand experience that you can definitely improve your results in triathlon with proper strength training. However, you will probably not see much, if any, of an improved performance if you are doing weight training, and the research will agree with it.

Are you talking about weightlifting or strength training?

Weightlifting is a sport, strength training is used to supplement another sports training, people oftentimes confuse these together.

What are you goals? Do you want to continue with the bodybuilding/olympic lifting background or focus on endurance sports. Both sports are on the opposite ends of the spectrum and work against each other so your ability to perform to you potential in either sport would be limited.

I will tell you from my real world first hand experience that you can definitely improve your results in triathlon with proper strength training. However, you will probably not see much, if any, of an improved performance if you are doing weight training, and the research will agree with it.

Someone else said it best, I am neither a weightlifter, nor a triathlete. I am an active duty Marine and do tris and lift to stay as versatile as can be. My true love is in adventure races. However, I also enjoy tris, I have just become content with never being anywhere near a podium. My Ops chief has a funny saying for staying in shape. "out run the lifters and out lift the runners". I personally think its a cop out as I always want to out lift the lifters and out run the runners. The problem lies that I am pushing 200LBS on a 5'9" frame (I'm working on getting down to 175) I run a 5k in about 20 minutes, but, we have guys that can post sub 15 minute times for a 3 mile run. I will never be there. I will also never clean 350LBS.

I picked up a pretty good book awhile back entitled, "Speed-Power__Endurance". For the record, I do not believe that crossfit cures all, but, he has some good training plans in the book.