Description
A breakthrough program for triathletes — beginner, intermediate, and advanced — showing how to balance training intensity to maximize performance — from a fitness expert and elite coach.
Cutting-edge research has proven that triathletes and other endurance athletes experience their greatest performance when they do 80 percent of their training at low intensity and the remaining 20 percent at moderate to high intensity. But the vast majority of recreational triathletes are caught in the so-called “moderate-intensity rut,” spending almost half of their time training too hard–harder than the pros. Training harder isn’t smarter; it actually results in low-grade chronic fatigue that prevents recreational athletes from getting the best results.
In 80/20 Triathlon, Matt Fitzgerald and David Warden lay out the real-world and scientific evidence, offering concrete tips and strategies, along with complete training plans for every distance–Sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, and Ironman–to help athletes implement the 80/20 rule of intensity balance. Benefits include reduced fatigue and injury risk, improved fitness, increased motivation, and better race results.
Becky –
If you want a plan to follow for your first half distance triathlon 70.3 this book will get you to the finish line feeling great!
I wrote out the weekly work outs on big index cards so I could plan my week.
There’s lots of great info for general strength for a triathlete.
The Explanations of zones for each discipline and effort help understand the why of the plans.
I used level 3 half iron plan and it had about 8 hours a week all the way up to 13-14 hours in the peak weeks.
There are other levels for more time crunched people.
Highly recommend this book.
Martin Biermann –
No other book that I read on triathlon training has taught me as much on how to design your own training plan.
Rogerio Carvalho da Silva –
Para quem não é treinador ou não tem experiência com triathlon o conteúdo se mostra bem esclarecedor. Mas para treinadores ou atletas experientes que buscam se aprofundar mais no treinamento “polarizado” para essa modalidade, o livro é bem abrangente. Explica, mas sem se aprofundar muitos nos porquês e nas teorias de treinamento. É um livro “prático”.
Jessie Richardson –
Don’t be afraid of this book. It’s a lot of information and can be confusing but it’s more than ok to jump around and not read chronologically. My recommended approach is read the intro that explains the concept of 80/20. Then read the section on swimming. Flip forward to the ideal plan you want to use based on your race. Then look at some of the swim workouts recommended (they are in a section AFTER the training plans and not available in the index which is confusing). Rinse and repeat for cycling and running sections. While you do this, questions will naturally come up in your head that you can find the answers to by browsing other sections of this book. The value of this book is that if you devote some time to understanding it, you will never have to purchase another 80/20 training plan, no matter what race you’re doing.
Jeff –
Great planning and insight on how top level triathletes train and how it applies to regular people like me.