Do you do other sports?

Sure....but here's the thing....

If you want to be better at doing triathlon then swim more, bike more, and run more.....it's really that simple.

Lacking the above, boxing won't help you in triathlon, lifting weights won't help you in triathlon, playing softball won't help you in triathlon, bowling won't help you in triathlon, fishing won't help you in triathlon, and on and on.

This is swim, bike, run.  You get better at it by doing those three things......don't be fooled by anyone who tells you differently.

Now, if you are talking about just finishing a sprint or Oly distance triathlon.....do whatever you want....it's not that hard if you are in shape.  It's three things most people have been doing since they were kids. I'd swim enough to be sure you don't drown, but that's your call based on ability....I know people who can basically not swim train at all and finish in the top 10% of the swim in an AG triathlon....but they were club or HS swimmers....they can actually swim, unlike most people who do triathlon. 

But, if you want to get better at triathlon, no amount of boxing or anything else will replace the time you could have spent swimming, biking, or running.

Oh yeah.....there's no rope jumping in triathlon either....no matter how much you sweat.  If triathlon is your goal.....spend those 5 minutes running.

Your example proves my point.  You say your marathon time improved because you lifted weights but basically made no run workout changes.....ok....you added, not replaced.  And you didn't gain that much on your marathon time, no matter how much better you felt.....it's completely counter-intuitive to running much faster in a marathon. (yes, you may have gotten incrementally faster)

Still.....you would have been even faster if you would have ran more (spent the extra time you lifted by running more....yeah, that includes doing strides if nothing else......it's not arguable).  If you want to be a RUNNER, do what RUNNERS do.

This is not rocket science or new science.....and yeah, it's really simple....unless you are running elite times, or maybe even BostonQ for most (mortal) people.  Without specific times it's irrelevant.

Footwork for boxing has nothing to do with triathlon.....and that's the main purpose for rope jumping while training for boxing. 

I fish and hunt......it doesn't help me at all for triathlon.  I throw darts sometimes when I'm having some beers with a guy who has a nice home bar.....no help with triathlon.  I played a lot of ball when I was younger and first doing triathlon nearly 35 years ago.....no help with triathlon.  I quit lifting weights because it did nothing to make me faster in triathlon.

I'll go back to my original post here.  There is not a sport that you can do which will help you in triathlon more than spending that same time swimming, biking, or running. 

Dude......outside of swimming, biking, or running, the list of aerobic "sports" is REALLY short    .....and neither xc skiing nor rowing is going to help your race like swimming, biking, or running will.

No.....if you want to get faster at swim, bike, and run and you have extra time, then you swim, bike and run more.  Tennis won't help, jumping rope won't help, soccer won't help, skiing won't help. 

I'm sorry you don't like the answer.....but it's important for people who are just starting in triathlon.  

It's not arguable.

Sometimes it helps during the swim.

But seriously:

1.  The most efficient way to get *faster*, if that's the point, is to train swim, bike, and run as much as one 'can'.  I don't see any good argument against that conclusion, nor do I see any empirical evidence against it.

2.  There are many meanings of the word 'can'.  People have physical, psychological, logistical, and other limits.  Sometimes they bump up against those limits with their s/b/r training, but at the same time, for whatever reason, can get in something else.  Like chess boxing (yeah, it's a thing), or snow polo (also a thing).  Some of those something elses might provide some marginal benefit or comfort of various sorts.  They won't help as much as more s/b/r.

It's really an interesting discussion, and even more interesting on the pointy end.  I get the benefit of being around some of the fastest runners and triathletes in the country.  I watched almost all of them come up through the Jr. ranks.  Most of them, including my own kid, went on to run on scholarship in college.......to the detriment of their triathlon times.  It's been a problem for our country in producing top level international triathletes.

That may now be changing.  USAT has launched the "podium project" and has lured some very top level kids away from college running programs and put them in a college environment, but training triathlon.....yes, they give up their NCAA eligibility, but they retain the benefit of free college and top level triathlon training.  I think it's FINALLY the right track.

My point, in relation to this discussion, is that you can't even train in just one discipline and expect your triathlon times to drop, and triathlon development to continue.  Triathlon IS three sports.......it's the very nature of it.  You can't get faster at s/b/r by doing any other sport......you can't even get faster by only concentrating on one of the three (and none of the other two)....no matter how much time you put in to it.

You don't get better at hitting a baseball by hitting a golf ball.  You can't get better at golf by hitting a baseball.  No other sport will give you the benefit of s/b/r for triathlon. 

Triathlon is it's own sport.....it's NOT three sports. (and it's NOT tennis)

When I posted that triathlon IS three sports early in that post what I meant was that it's three sports TOGETHER.....it's not three sports standing alone.  As I said later in the the post....it's NOT three sports. 

It's triathlon....a sport on it's own, that cannot be replicated or trained with any other sport, or with any individual discipline of the sport alone.

Agree 100%.  I do think that the importance of your second point ('triathlon is not three sports') really begins to be clear only at the pointy end.  Most AGers don't really need to think hard about that mantra, and will reap massive benefits by just training 'the three sports' more, and then paying some reasonable attention to pacing on race day.

(I admit that it was mostly my approach even at the time when I was somewhat competitive; e.g., I trained the swim pretty much just enough to make it to my bike and was still able to compete at a reasonably high level amongst my AG peers.  Of course, I'm not saying that you can *ignore* one of the three sports...)

But the point of it not being tennis...well, that's just as true for AGers -- maybe even more so, in fact, the reason being that there is a point of diminishing returns in training, and most serious college or pro athletes are much further beyond that point than most AGers.

I want to expand a little bit on what I just said, without editing.

If you totally ignore one of the three aspects of triathlon, you will perform badly.  Probably, you will perform badly even relative to any modest goals that you might have.  I would be surprised if anybody disagrees with that claim.  (Of course, I don't mean *YOU*, whoever you are, but 'one', 'a person', 'the usual suspects', etc.)

So I'd suggest that the point of 'triathlon is not three sports' is not just that you cannot ignore one or two of the disciplines and expect success.  I hope we all agree about that.

The point, I'll suggest, is that if you want to maximize success in the sport, then you have to approach the three aspects of it (plus the fourth discipline, transitions!) with some sense of balance relative to current strengths and weaknesses (and sometimes relative to the conditions of your goal race, or the state of your competition).  I mentioned in my previous post that I had some success with less than great swim training.  And I did, but I would clearly have had more success if I had given up some time running (assuming I was maxed out for total time, which is debatable) and spent it swimming.

In fact, while I have no intention of going back to read them, I would be very surprised if my old race reports didn't say things like "I can't afford to be giving up 2 minutes on the swim" and stuff like that.  Of course, I don't like to train the swim and I love to run.  So I kept giving up that 2 minutes, or more, and thus the top guys almost always beat me.  And I was fine with that.  I don't really care about winning.   (OK, that's an exaggeration.  The few times that I took an overall win I was thrilled.  That thrill was never enough to make me want to swim more.)

That's the difference between me (together with 98.34% of the people who do this sport just for fun) and serious triathletes.  The serious ones do what they need to do in order to train triathlon -- which means approaching it in the balanced way I mentioned above -- while those of us in the peanut gallery just try not to suck too much.

(None of the above has anything to do with playing tennis for the sake of triathlon training, which is a separate issue and I think the point has been made on that issue.)

I believed for many years that if I would limit myself to a single sport I would progress faster in that sport than I could by split time between multiple sports. 

About 12 years ago I made a goal to go back under 18 minutes in my 5K run.  I was very consistent in my training for 2-3 years and was regularly running in the 18-05-18-10 range.  One race I went as fast as 18:01 but nothing I did could get me under 18:00 flat.  So I decided to give running a break and try something else.  One of those things I tried was Triathlon.  I trained 8 months for my first Triathlon (a 70.3) two weeks after the race I had not ran swan or bikes a single yard and my legs still were sore and beat up>  I found myself out of state in a community that I knew very little about.  I was going to be there over the weekend and was looking for community activities to get me out of the Hotel and found a 5K race.  I didn't have any race gear but showed up and ran.  I felt like I was doing the last half of the 13.1 mi run of my triathlon all over again.  It hurt but as I came through the 4K I was feeling I was on pace for about an 18:03 and I had some downhill portions ahead of me to I gave it all I had and finished around a 17:53.  nearly ever race I have done since then have been sub 18:00 minutes with a PR last fall at 17:48.  I am now convinced that focusing on one sport is NOT always the fastest way to improve.  I now feel there is a lot of value in cross training.  I am currently only doing Triathlon.  Three is enough for me for now but I think that rowing, boxing, soccer, etc could all be means to improvising triathlon with the right balance.  

Yes! I am am 100% convinced that Triathlon helped me improve my 5K time.  Pre-triathlon I was doing speed work outs workouts, tempo runs, and long runs every week (along with other work outs on to hit 6 days and 40 miles a week).  There were also lots of local races and I did a good share of them placing first place in the mens 26-30 year old age group at every race I ran in Tulsa, OK for more than a dozen races in a row.  My focus was there.  I didn't know how to train any more efficient for 5K races but I now believe that over focusing can create tunnel vision to where you can't see what you are missing in the peripherals. Doing more of what you are already doing is not the answer if you are missing something.  I believe that the adage that "If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you have always got" applies here.   I believe that cross training helped with what I was missing in the peripherals.  Specifically I believe that the cycling at a higher RPM than my run cadence help speed up my feet and run speed.   The 8 months leading up to my first triathlon my running mileage dropped from 40 miles a week to 25 miles weeks (to make time for cycling and swimming in my finite available hours in a week).  So with fewer miles and no focus at all on 5K races you would think that my 5K times would be slower than when all I was training for week in and week out were 5K's.  The opposite is what happened.  At age 40 with a focus on Triathlon I can run a faster 5K time than I could at age 26 with a 5K focus.  I don't believe the the answer is to always do more.  If you have hit a plateau to were you are not longer improving it may be time to mix things up. 

Triathlon worked for me.  One of the trainers at the gym I swam at before I moved from Texas did Ultra Marathons.  When he was a younger man he wanted to hit a Boston Qualifying time in a full Marathon.  He worked for years to do that and was successful, but he told me he doesn't run much any more.  He said he does most of his cardio on the rowing machine.  I know he also is the instructor for a spin class so I am sure he gets cardio several times a week there too. He now is is his late 40's and says with most of his cardio on the rowing machine he doesn't care about Boston Qualifying times any more because they don't challenge him any more.  He shows up at Marathons with his rowing machine and spin class as the bulk of his base training and will typically run in the 2:45-2:55 range.  

All I need to say about soccer is that all our best Cross Country recruits came from the soccer team. 

I don't know any boxers who have turned to Triathlon but I believe that cross training is a very valuable tool in preventing burn out and keeping you motivated.  I believe It also can add to your over all base training and possibly fill other needs that you miss when you are over focused on one sport.