The 2016 OutSeason: Core and Strength Accountability
The EN Core Challenge Tracking Spreadsheet is here.
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Team,
PnI are making our edits to the OutSeasons plans for 2015. One of the changes I want to make is to make Mondays and Fridays our "Body Composition, Core Work, Upper Body Preparation (?), and Accountability Day."
This is what I see happening / my notes:
I want to use the OS to have us all create good habits and make progress towards chipping away at goals that help us reach our bigger goals later in the season. Specifically:
- Good eating, diet logging, etc, that help is establish good habits, which help us reach our body composition goals across a wide timeline = much more likely to meet those goals.
- Develop core strength and flexibility, enabling us all to address bike fit, positional fitness, range of motion and other issues.
- Prepare our upper bodies for swimming without actually swimming in the OS. As a frame of reference, the NovOS crew will exit the OS on Feb 1, typically drop into two weeks of Swim Camp before carrying on with the rest of their seasons. So my intent is to have us do stuff through the OS to enable us to make ^that^ transition smoothly, while also helping us to look decent on our Speedos, when we dust them off in Feb
- W/KG and VDot goals.
So actions I see on Monday in the OS:
- A weekly weigh in.
- A planks routine -- total minutes are tracked
- Some flavor of pushups, pullups, and/or stretch cords routine -- total reps are tracked.
Fridays:
- Repeat of the planks and upper body jazz above
Simple tracking of minutes in plank and pushups was inspired by a local friend of mine: he and his wife got Kona Legacy slots this year. Not wanting to embarrass himself at the Underpants Run, he set simple goals of #X' in plank and #Y pushups by Date Z and tracked it via a simple handwritten chart.
Tracking: all of this is recorded weekly and we track our own progress towards the achievement of goals that we set for ourselves. For example, by date X, Timmy wants to achieve:
- 3.75 w/kg
- 49 VDot
- 150lb body weight
- 1000 minutes of plank
- 5000 pullups
- 10000 pushups
- 10000 reps of stretch cords
Twice per week, Timmy records his actions towards achieving those goals by Date X.
See the Watts per Kilo Klub tracking site that Marc Robards created for us a while back. Hopefully Marc can modify this to have it do all of this for us?
The Upper Body and Core Routine
I see this as largely being self-directed, simple, and easy to get done. More importantly, I don't want to create a system that has specific sets and reps in it, because I know from experience that triathletes are all over the map. An Advanced triathlete could very well only be able to manage 1' of plank and 20 pushups and 6 pullups. A Beginner could be a former lifter, able to do pushups all day. Rather, the system I envision is one whereby
- We set goals to reach X minutes / reps by Y date
- We manage ourselves on Mondays and Fridays towards the achievement of these goals.
- There are specific forum threads where we post questions, observations, share ideas, and help each other accomplish these goals.
For example, I started my stuff last week. I've never done planks voluntarily (lots of involuntary plank-like exercises in the USMC 
). So I just rolled up a towel under my forearms, started the stop watch on my iPhone and went for about a minute. Rested a bit, and repeated for a total of about 5-6'. I was fookin' sore the next day and repeated the routine a couple days later when I wasn't as sore. Recorded total minutes in plank in a spreadsheet. I imagine at some point I'll experiment with increasing the interval length (from 1 to 2 min, for example), the cumulative session minutes (from 5' to 10'), adding stuff to strengthen other stuff, etc. IOW, ideas to make it more challenging, that's where you come in 
.
Likewise, on Wednesday I did about 3 x 8' pullups and became bored. Then, while doing TSRs I decide to do a set of 8 x pullups after each TSR I did = 8 TSR's and 100+ pullups for the day, entered into my tracking spreadsheet. I could see myself doing something similar for pushups and stretch cords, but the intent would always be to spend no more than about 20-30' total time on some self-directed combination of planks and upper body exercises.
Most importantly...today is Monday. But rather than doing my stuff after my run today, I was able to find excuses to "do it later." 5:15p here...it ain't gonna happen. But if I knew that #xxx people were expecting me to log my stuff into spreadsheet, I'd probably be more inclined to get it done . You're probably the same? 
Any thoughts or input?
Comments
Sounds like fun. I was part of the body comp. challenge that went from 1 month to 3 months by general agreement. I hope there's some tools some where to guide us newbies in proper tech., I have no idea what a stretch cord is. And I have never been able to do pullup. Even when I was at my leanest and power lifting. The pull ups might turn out to be a bust for the girls. But who knows.
Yes, I'll create a resource for stretch cords. And I totally get that for pullups. For some of us it might be pushups + cords. For others, pushup, pullups, and cords...or just cords. My point is that I'd rather issue broad guidance and create an infrastructure for helping people develop what is best for them vs trying to figure out 3x one-size-fits-all solutions, that won't really work for anyone.
Make sense?
I think that is a great idea.That is something I can look forward to after a long day at work.
@Jacklyn. There are bands out there that you can get that give you an assist with the pull-up. Kind of mimicking the gym assisted pull-up machine. As you get stronger they have different weight bands that give you less assistance. Example of them here: http://www.roguefitness.com/iron-woody-bands?gclid=CPHkr4WEq8ECFc1Z7AodvEgAnw
Pullups would be optional / suggested, etc. I have a pullup bar in my doorway so a no brainer for me. I also have pullup-related goals that are independent of other tri-related stuff.
Stretch cords are here, good dryland tool that a lot of swimmers use.
Thank you Attila and Coach. I'll start doing my homework.
All sounds good, Rich. Writing things down always helps me and I think the core work and using Stretch Cordz to strengthen the hips, knees, shoulders etc will pay dividends.
As to the planks, on our club swim team the kids do the front plank, of course, but also plank on each side, and also on their backs (i.e., heels and elbows with butt up off floor).
Great idea. I've have some TRX knockoff straps that I've been using during the bike focus I've been doing for the last 6 weeks. I do a set of 15 pushups (with feet in the straps), 25 row, 10 triceps, 10 bicepts, 15 abdominal crunches (feet in straps and in a plank then draw your knees towards you chest, kinda like the opposite of horse kick), and then 10 one leg squats on each side (foot in strap and then do a squat on one leg I'll probably drop that one during OS). Sometimes I add jumping jacks to each set at the end but today I put in some swim moves with stretch cords after each set. I started out 4 weeks ago doing 1 full and then 1 partial set. Today I was able to do 5 sets except for the pushups where I was only able to hit 11 on the last set. I take a short break between sets to get a drink of water but it only takes about 25 minutes to go through the whole thing. (I'll give credit where credit is due, this is one of the workouts in Ben Greenfield's tri-ripped plan.)
My arms were really sore the next day when I started several weeks ago but not so much any more. I guess that's progress.
Especially the Core work. Really liked the "core routine" that was used for the Core Challenge last winter. maybe a good place to pull from. I like that it will be written into the plan since it really just becomes reality for many folks after years of doing Tris. Doing Core work for me is no longer "optional" as it had been when I first started this game. For me Hips, Glutes and Ab work are required training in order to stay moving so it would be fun to track over the season.
I think a lot of experienced folks are probably doing this anyways in some way, but by adding it to the plan, it would really show the new to Triathlon folks the importance of this type of work in order to stay healthy.
I think the broad guidance is key. Should be low admin cost to do this routine i.e. in front of the TV at night. We also don't need everyone to go out and build pull up bars in the back yard.
The only thing I'm getting hung up on is trying to predict how many pushups/pullups/plank minutes that I need to set for so many weeks down the road.
I knock out the bare minimum on this, about 2x week, just to keep some upper body strength. If I play that forward based on what I'm doing now, my goal numbers will still be pretty small.
What's a good build for this stuff? 20% increase? I guess it's still a big win even if I set the bar just a little higher. This would just encourage me to stick with it, consistently, patiently, building the engine and the frame.
Let me know if I'm off base here, please.
It also comes at a good time for me, I have been struggling with glut-periformis-tensor fascia-illiopsoas imbalance/pain for the past 6 months and I start PT this week. I just hope the PT guy is as good as his resume implies.... not a lot of options locally for sports medicine.
- Accountability
- Flexibility
- Less monotony
Great idea. You write it, I do it!
I vote for this. I'm down with a 20' routine that includes some planks, pushups, pullups and dumbells/cords.
For instance, I want to lose 20 more pounds and I want to increase my 'swimming muscles' capacity (e.g. - my arms get fatigued when I increase my stroke count as part of improved technique) and improve my ability to do bi-lateral 3-stroke breathing without getting fatigued. It would be helpful to have an 'out of the pool' fitness plan that targets these specific areas.
Thanks!
Thomas
I like the stretch cords on that site and would like to order. I noticed that they come in various colors related to the amount of resistance. Anyone have a suggestion on selecting the right one? or am I over thinking it, and should just get one from the middle of the group?
ThanksSo guidance on what to do would be great. I end up googling for good workouts and then get completely overwhelemed and do nothing. Body weight stuff that we could do at home would be great.
I am one of those that can't do a single pullup, went through the entire P90X stuff once and could still do nary a pullup.
http://members.endurancenation.us/R...on+Routine