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Wednesday, 05 December 2012 01:10

6 Tips to Boost Your Triathlon Fitness

By Justin Levine

More: 10 Self-Myofascial Release Exercises

Soft tissue work using a foam roll, massage stick or a baseball should be part of your strength program. Athletes that come through our facility start every workout with soft tissue work. It's the foundation of human movement.

"With soft tissue and flexibility issues, strength gains will be limited if we don't solve the tissue problems first", says Lee Burton, president of The Functional Movement Systems.

2. Quality Over Quantity

Just because you get sore and tired from a specific strength workout doesn't mean you're improving your triathlon fitness. In fact, hard, aggressive and random program design can actually lead you down the path of chronic pain and injury, and then you cannot do anything.

If you train to absolute failure, your form breaks down, the wrong muscles are being used and your movement will be impaired. This sets you up for injury and bad patterning down the road.

More: Weight Room or No Weight Room?

Think technical failure. Do as many repetitions as you can with absolute perfect form. Stop when the movement is no longer perfect.

If you do 100 squats, think you'll feel a burn? Absolutely. Is there a point to performing 100 squats? Not really.

A sore body doesn't necessarily mean you did something right. Clean movement enhances your functionality which sets you up to push harder in your swim, bike and run workouts, which then improves total performance. READ MORE