Training

Twice A Day Training For Triathletes, A Beginner’s Guide

twice a day triathlon training

It’s never a question of can you, but will you?

Training every day is part of any triathlete’s requirement especially for the age group athletes. But unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there only if you have more than 7 sessions per week. Many age group athletes address this issue by training twice a day while still putting in a full day at the office. Two a day workouts may be necessary, though not always optimal if you’re constrained for time or can’t cope up with the added stress.

If properly done, integrating double session per day is a great way to prepare for your upcoming race and improve your performance. But, to implement this, one needs to be very measured at their approach. If you combine 2 days’ worth of regular training in one day, soon you’ll burn up, hamper recovery and even might get injured. I struggled with balancing my swim bike run workouts for a long time and sometimes, even now, I face the same issue.

If you’re keen to implement twice a day workouts but not sure how to start, let me give you some of my training strategies to solve such conundrum.

Plan ahead for twice a day routine

Just like you plan or create a structured routine weekly for your single day sessions, you have to do the same for double session days. If you find yourself an extra hour in any day of a week randomly, don’t just train as an afterthought. That might even hamper your next day workout, which was scheduled beforehand and has a higher priority.

So, to implement twice a day workouts, first find out how much time you can set aside every day. That’s the biggest reason why, I’m biased towards training by duration, not by distance. If you can only set aside 1 hour for a specific day, then train in the morning. If you can squeeze in 30 minutes extra after office, plan accordingly to utilize that time without hampering your recovery and prioritized sessions.

Start conservatively

At the very beginning, start with just 1 double day in the week and see how your body reacts to the stress. Your second workout should be very easy and the duration should be no more than 30 minutes. This way, you allow your body to absorb the extra training stress and prepare it for higher volume. Don’t think of putting a second double day before you reach the 8 weeks’ mark. Just take it slow and be patient with your gradual training volume.

twice a day training and cycling

Prioritize your sessions

When you implement two a day workouts, put the priority session 1st and then the less important session later. Usually, the priority sessions are more demanding such as intervals or long endurance sessions and secondary sessions are mostly recovery or technique oriented such as swim drills or cadence drills.

If you’re a morning person, do the harder session in the morning, followed by the easier one in the evening. If you prefer to schedule the priority sessions in the evening, make sure you sleep properly and do the secondary sessions in the early morning with empty stomach.

Recovery is key for twice a day workouts

It is paramount that you recover from the first and intense session of the day when you’re about to do the second one. Give yourself at least 7-8 hours before you start your next workout. Make sure you eat properly in this time and stay hydrated. Proper foods and hydration really help to enhance your recovery. If you want to take recovery drinks such as protein shakes, go ahead, although I find that my body reacts better after eating healthy and natural foods rather than taking a bunch of whey protein.

Even better, if you have the luxury to have a power nap of 15-20 minutes at the office, take it. The duration might be shorter but it will still help your body to shift into recovery mode and start the rebuilding process.

Secondary sessions are important as well

Just because the secondary sessions should be easier and in short duration, it doesn’t mean that they are not vital to your training. So, don’t make the mistake of regarding those sessions as an “Optional” one and skip those randomly. No matter how short or how less intense they are, those sessions are actually adding up training volume.

The focus of twice a day workouts is to build fatigue resistance. Just imagine, during Ironman, you’re tired after swimming and cycling. You still have to overcome that fatigue and complete the run. Hence, when you train for a triathlon, especially the longer ones, your main objective is to train with tired legs and arms so that you improve your ability to push yourself even if you’re not fresh. To most, that is the hardest part of triathlon training, to beat yourself up every day and still keep going strong.

twice a training triathlon running

Perform separate disciplines

You can train for a single discipline on the same day, i.e. cycling intervals in the morning and recovery cycling in the evening but I prefer to do two different disciplines. In that way, you tend to use different muscles of the body and get adapt to the training stress of different disciplines. Even if the workouts are separated by 6-8 hours, you still reap the benefits of using different muscle groups. Keep in mind that, it’s not necessary to sequence them in the order of the actual sequence of a triathlon. Which bring me to the next topic of.

Add brick sessions

Brick sessions are very effective and you can consider them like twice a day workouts. To include brick sessions, you have to keep in mind that you can’t push yourself to the absolute limit for the first one to be able to perform the following workout. So if you plan to focus on speed intervals or HIIT sessions as the priority session, don’t include them as part of brick sessions. It’s better to recover 6-8 hours and then jump into the next one for such cases.

For brick sessions, it’s best to train at the race pace or just above for the first session. The secondary session pace should be at the race pace or just below to get used to the changeover from one discipline to another. When you switch from one discipline to another, your body’s blood movement and muscle usage change. That’s why brick training is very effective to build fatigue resistance and like adding a cherry on the top, adding another training session.

Adding strength training

Now so far I have only talked about the endurance sessions as part of twice a day workouts. You may be wondering, how to add those as well after reading my previous article on why strength training is important. For me, the best time to add strength training is after office, in the evening. You should always do your endurance and focused workouts in the morning and then follow it up with strength training later in the day.

The reason for this is both uses different energy system of the body and since you’re an endurance athlete, you should focus more on your endurance system. When you’re fatigued after the workout, you can figure out how fresh you are and how much can you push in the gym without hampering recovery and causing injuries. Strength training in the morning may be a detriment for your endurance session scheduled later on the day.

Avoid impact-oriented disciplines on the same day

It’s something I try to follow strictly. Both running and cycling impact the legs so it’s best to avoid training for both on the same day unless you do a brick workout. If you do leg busting cycling intervals, it’s better to recover or swim, rather than run later on or vice versa. The extra impacts only prolong recovery and due to fatigue, you can easily develop bad forms hence increases injuries as a consequence.

In conclusion, you need to plan thoroughly to meet the demands of sufficient training volume for a triathlon and twice a day training can resolve that issue. But you have to be very careful at it, just because someone else is doing it in a way, doesn’t mean you can follow the same route and recover. Also, you have to consider your current daily life and whether you have enough time to dedicate another session per day without hampering other aspects.

So, what’s your current goal? How much training load do you need? How much suffering do you want to go through?

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