Training can be fun, in fact it should be fun

Each athlete in the squad has his/her own goals for the season. My job is to become the athlete’s partner in achieving those goals.

I have my own goals for the squad as a whole. I start the season with a list of things I want to achieve with the group.

One of my goals for this season is to have at least eight of the guys ride 100km at faster than 40kph. Another is to have eight of them ride our local mountain time trial up to O’Reiley’s in less than one hour. (it’s 26km of mostly uphill)

I have quite a few other goals for the season (including the girls, but I like to keep them guessing) but for moment we’ll focus on these two.

The mountain time trial is a real fun day. What it really is, is an anerobic threshold workout of one hour plus. In triathlon training one of the hardest things for a coach to achieve is for the younger, testosterone filled “young guns” to go easy enough in the aerobic work so they have enough fuel left in their legs for the threshold work. They’ll gain exactly what I’m looking for if they approach their mountain time trials fresh and go there to smash themselves.

Often I put out a few baits to fire up the guys and the girls so they really “smash it”. You don’t do anerobic threshold work conservatively. What they gain from racing each other up that hill is just like doing a race but this is much more specific to what I want.

Then there’s the 100km time trial. I treat this as an aerobic threshold workout. It’s also a great opportunity for the squad to test their time trial position. Test their equipment. It becomes a full dress rehearsal for race day. It’s a chance to test their core strength and flexibility, can they hold the aero position for 100km?

While we’re making gains in all of these important areas, the guys are having fun and learning about themselves. Great gains in mental toughness can be made in these “battlefield simulations”.

Another area where the fun aspect can be applied to the swim is in our weekly “mass starts”. One day a week during our swim squad we do a set of mass starts. That’s up to eight or ten in a lane all going on “go”. Sometimes it means four or five swimmers side by side going flat out.

Just for fun, I let the athletes with brown eyes go first, then the blue eyed ones. Sometimes it’s over forties first then under forties. Sometimes it’s those who sleep on the right side of the bed then the left side people next. All sorts of combinations. But a set of flat out sprints becomes fun while we’re achieving a specific fitness benefit. Often people get scratched or the odd bruise, but in preparation for race day, they’ve really worked their ATP energy system, had a lot of fun and become race start hardened in the process.