Strength In Weakness

After a couple of weeks on my new program one key benefit has emerged. It highlights my weaknesses. The constant variety in body movements, areas of body worked, explosive versus steady-state work and other demands leaves no room to hide.

A few days have been a bit disheartening as I realised I was a long way off where I thought I would be. However, if I bring the right attitude to my training, then I can only benefit. Training for an Ironman triathlon is a massive task and definitely developed certain abilities to a great extent. The most obvious being pure endurance. Due to the specificity of the Ironman training program I developed certain aspects to the extreme, others were not addressed and a number of attributes have certainly declined. It's now time to give my ego a beating and take stock of my weaknesses.

The List:

Pure Speed
My pace over 40, 60, or 100m is about the same as 400 to 800m.

Explosive Power
Vertical or long jump results are just plain embarrassing.

Upper Body Strength Endurance
While I am happy with both my absolute and relative strength levels, I find that I just can't sustain any sort of upper body workload for any length time.

Impact Recovery
Recovering from any sort of plyometric or sprint training is taking a good 4-5 days. My tendons just aren't used to this kind of insult yet.

Flexibility
This is limiting my technique in a number of areas such as vaulting and overhead movements. Of particular concern is my shoulder girdle, wrist, and lumber area.

Static Core Strength
I thought this was one of my strengths, but as it turns out only pelvic stability for running and cycling are my strong points. Put me in any other situation such as front or back planche type positions and my core fails.

The positives from all this new information is that it gives me areas to focus on. This will allow for some good goal setting. Also in only two weeks I have noticed a reasonable improvement in so many areas. Now I can put a slightly different spin on a phrase I have used many times in the past:

Train your weaknesses. Race your strengths.

Comments

  1. Tea8 May 2008 at 11:40

    I admit that I'm now catching up.

    It seems as though you didn't take much time off after your IM race? I realize that "rest" time is fairly individualized, but do you think it would be reasonable for me to shoot for a HIM 12 weeks after my IM? Or is that just stupid?

    ReplyDelete

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