Triathletes have got so many ways of measuring their performance that it’s easy to get bogged down in the numbers on your GPS watch, the time you finished your race in, or even the data telling you how effective your sleep was!
These external measures for most triathletes are simply a distraction.
The absolute number one thing ALL triathletes should understand is that if your body isn’t functioning well, you won’t train well and you won’t race well.
Bodies are really good at making the best of a bad job, so come race day you’d probably be able to get to the finish line, but you’ll probably feel like your legs are made of lead, or that you’ve just gone 10 rounds with a heavyweight boxer!
If you REALLY want to perform well, focus your efforts on mobility training.
You see, in order to perform any type of exercise, you need your body to be able to move like that. Without it, you don’t get to train at all!
Let’s say your focus has always been on getting the training done. You want to tick the “completed” box on as many days as possible, so you struggle through your training sessions, ignoring the little niggly ankle/calf/knee problem that started a few weeks ago and just battle on.
After all, these pains seem to go away on their own, right?
WRONG!
The slippery slope to injury starts with muscle tightness.
The volume of blood flow getting through to your muscle tissue is significantly reduced, the tighter your muscles are. This means that your muscles cannot get the oxygen they need to provide you with energy (so you fatigue quicker), your joints will dry out because they’re not getting the nutrients from your blood either and waste products such as lactic acid will not get removed from the tissue as quickly, leaving your body feeling sore, creaky and much older than you are!
Over time, this will lead to pain. It may start as more of a small annoyance than real pain, but if ignored it will only develop into something much worse. Struggling through at this point will allow you to tick the “completed” box, but what good is that if you’re not training at all 3 or 4 weeks out from a race due to real pain?
Mobility training reduces this muscle tightness, which helps to increase the blood flow to your muscles, significantly improving your fitness, joint health and recovery rates. Which in turn, helps you to complete your training without being injured.
Can you even remember the last time you came back from your long run/ride and didn’t feel completely shattered?
Placing less importance on this HUGELY beneficial area of training is like going to a race without your bike – there’s no point in doing all that training, only to find that you can’t race anyway because your body wouldn’t cope!
If you want your body to function well, you’ll need to spend time getting to know it and where it feels stuck. Fortunately this doesn’t need to take long, in fact you can achieve it in just a couple of minutes each day!
Discover how in my FREE 5 day mini course!
My brand new style of mobility training will soon have you enjoying your training again, WITHOUT having to spend hours on a foam roller or on the massage table!