Any secrets for getting the most from two-a-days?

When I ride to work and run at lunch and ride home, those are 4 hour days more or less. The ride to work usually sucks. The run at lunch is good. The ride home is awesome, because I am going home, I mean, I really want to get home so there is no blah about it. I may sometimes lack some energy on the way home but it is a good ride.

I just make sure I watch my nutrition and get whatever rest I can.

For example, I used to always go out to eat for lunch...now, I go home and rest for an hour.

But, I will say, I'm pretty used to 2 workouts a day now. When I have one and 24 hours between workouts, it's like a mini vacation!

x2

Getting adequate sleep the night before and the night after is what helps me.  I can't do 2-a-days on 6 hours sleep and expect to have good workouts.

this, eating between workouts, and for me, doing the run 2nd. i seem to have very little trouble running tired, but biking/swimming tired never ends well.

I was doing twoadays for about 5 months straight last season training for my HIM.  Nutrition becomes a nightmare if you're not already on top of it.  You have to have the best sports drinks and eat the best food.  Recovery is extremely important.  I would sleep a minimum of ten hours a night.  I would have a minimum of 3 hours in between meals. I never ate a whole lot, i just ate often.  Except after super long bike rides.  I would gorge myself afterwards.

After all of it, i reccomend leaving at least a few hours between your workouts.  I would often bundle both sports drinking only a recovery drink and 45min break in between.  Doing both back to back like that does improve your base endurance significantly though, so if you can handle it, i would do that once or twice a week.

I would drink endurox R4 between my back to back workouts, and drink recoverite post workout. Reason being, R4 has more calories and its all from sucrose which hits your system much faster.  It makes your 2nd workout much more bearable.  I would drink heed during both workouts.  After 4 months of this, my requirements exceeded what those drinks could provide.  I started adding protein to my Heed, and making my own fruit smoothies as a recovery drink/meal.  My smoothies ended up being way better than recoverite, and i noticed recovery was better.

In my opinion, two a days are the only way to train if you're a serious triathlete.  Your performance skyrockets after a few months of this. 

But yes. Nutrition nutrition nutrition.  And having a coach design your workouts also helps a ton.

If you wanna know whats in my smoothies just PM me.  I just wanna say that if i could bottle this stuff, it would put every company's recovery drink OUT OF BUSINESS. There really is no comparison. 

Nutrition, recovery, and sleep.  All three are tied together. 

Edited by funkyd04 2011-01-20 7:13 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by 'blah', but if you mean that your legs are a little tired, and you don't feel like you can put in 100% effort, then I guess I'd say "welcome to two-a-days".  That's going to happen.  The things that people said above are true (for me, at least).

One thing I'd add is that I do not find that putting my harder workout first is always the best strategy.  Sometimes I do better doing an easy run followed by a hard bike, or an easy bike followed by a hard run.  This is especially true if the two-a-days are piled up one after the other (which they typically are for me).  So I might do a sequence like:

Day 1:  hard run in the morning; moderate bike in the afternoon
Day 2:  moderate run in the morning; hard bike in the afternoon
Day 3:  moderate run; no bike
Day 4:  hard bike in the morning; moderate run in the afternoon

and so on.  (I've left swimming out.  It is usually a late morning or lunchtime activity for me.)  'Hard' here can mean 'intense' or 'long' (or both).   The point is that it is a key workout that requires a bit more recovery than my bread-and-butter workouts.

This gives me more than 24 hours to recover from the first hard effort before I have to do another one.  (Of course, the above is assuming that life doesn't get in the way and force a reschedule.  It often does, of course, but I try to reschedule in a way that still maximizes time between key workouts.)

LOL...must refrain from comment.

1. Harder workout first.
2. Separate workouts by as much time as possible. hint - start early
3. Recovery drink immediately after first session, during cooldown even if possible
4. Don't make each workout a separate decision, decide once and for all.  But also, be prepared to not get the 2nd one done from time to time. It's ok. 
5. Sleep well
6. Eat well
7. Enjoy yourself

Agree with 2-7 100% (though I'd change 'recovery drink' to 'appropriate recovery nutrition' -- I don't fuss about whether the calories and nutrition are liquid).

But (and I'm speaking ONLY about my own experience here -- not making general claims) I've found that #1 isn't always true.  It would be true considering that one day in isolation, but fit it into a week containing several two-a-days and sometimes I find it's better to make the first one easy and the second one hard (as per my earlier post).

just to touch on another thing that i've noticed with 2 and 3 a day workouts


getting any food in between workouts was what mattered most, what it was didn't seem to matter as much.


workouts either needed to be close enough that i was still in training mode, or enough time to recover, either at elast 6 hours, or within 1 or so.


long bikes, and long runs effected the next workout WAY more than harder bikes/runs did.
IE a track workout, or hard FTP session on the bike would hinder the next workout much less than a 12-15mi run or 4 hour ride.

mental attitude has a lot to do with it.

you need to realize that sometimes you will be tired, and a logner than normal warm up tends to help, but you need ot know when you are beat

Yes, I read that and considered my #1.  I almost added, "most of the time".  I agree with what you are saying though.

I try to lump two-a-days into one longer workout to minimize prep-workout time/eating and time overall.

Going from a run immediately to a swim was dangerous for me. Only time I ever had a severe calve cramp was when I did this. But going from a swim to a run (a swrum) is AWESOME! My body is already juiced with blood from the swim that I can run way faster than if I run cold.

Otherwise, if I am running in the AM, then I will swim either @ lunch or in the evening or bike in the evening, but knowing that the bike might not be the most quality session depending on what I ran that morning.

a couple simple thoughts. The run bike days are tough because both work the legs and your legs are probably spent by the end of it. I would make one workout short and easy, and the other more intense (whether you add distance or speed, but probably not both).

those are my couple thoughts

that's how i'd look at it too.

ie i need to get the nutrition in but not always liquid form,

and the harder workout is often my 2nd.
Part of that for me is simply i do better with harder workout later in the day vs early. but when that happens the early workout is often fairly easy compared to the later one.

outside of that what dave said.

Not a lot to add really. Just that I'm not sure how long you have been doubling up for, in my experience after 3-4 weeks of increased sessions you get more used to it and less blah.....stick with it, eat well and sleep well.

Just wondering how many hrs/week you are doing?
Do you need to do 2 per day?

could they just be bricks?

Great thread for those of us whose work schedules include LONG days & a few xtra days off.  For me key seems to be good sleep & good nutrition/hydration between sports.  I even did a 3-a-day earlier this week.  After my planned swim-bike at fitness center I just HAD to use the window in the weather to ride outdoors for 1st time in 2mo.  Despite 38degF/freezing rain/slushy roads it was most enjoyable 15mi I've done in a long time

There is no secret. If there were, we'd all be doing the same thing.

Take the tips you've been given and start experimenting until you find what works for you.
For example, I am NOT a morning person, so my best chance of a two-a-day is doing my shorter workout during lunch and my longer one in the evening. 

Good luck!