The off-season is the time of year when triathlon experts agree that everyone should head to the weight room. Muscle is eaten away over a season of long, exhaustive aerobic exercise, and winter is the time to build back your muscle mass and increase power for faster biking, more efficient running, and injury prevention. Triathletes need to train differently from body builders, doing longer sets to increase muscular endurance rather than maximum power. In The Triathletes Bible, Joe Friel recommends beginning a winter weight-training cycle with 3-5 sets of 20-30 repetitions, and many other coaches recommend maintaining a similar weight training regime throughout the winter. However, doing bodyweight squats ad nauseum is enough to send most scrawny, cardio-loving triathletes screaming out of the weight room for a 6-mile run.
Crossfit is gaining popularity among endurance athletes and the general population as a fun way to build strength, power, and top-end aerobic fitness. CrossFit's followers are often compared to a cult, with its flock sounding like fanatics to the un-indoctrinated athlete. The fact that CrossFit has its own language of acronyms, proper names, and invented words only serves to further-confuse skeptics. But where there are devoted followers, there is often a core concept that resonates, and in this case thousands of rock-hard bodies to back up CrossFit's credibility.
What is CrossFit?
CrossFit is as much an online community as a fitness philosophy. At its core, CrossFit is just a blog where a workout of the day (WOD) is posted every day, and CrossFitters around the world can post their results for all to see. CrossFit calls the sharing aspect of their training "evidence based fitness" because workouts can always be quantified, usually by time. Sometimes the WOD contains a prescribed number of sets and repetitions, and the time each participant takes to finish the whole workout is posted. Other days, the time is fixed and participants post the number of repetitions they were able to complete in the allotted time.
The WOD's attempt to deliver "constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movement" through a combination of high-intensity aerobic exercise (such as track sprints or fast rowing), gymnastics moves, and Olympic-style weightlifting. According to CrossFit's own charter, CrossFit aims to train all kinds of athletes from triathletes, to fire fighters, to powerlifters by being "by design, broad, general, and inclusive." CrossFit avoids muscle isolation, favoring multi-joint movements through the full range of motion to best mimic the movements an athlete will use in his sport.
When is CrossFit right for triathletes?
CrossFit attempts to (re)define fitness based on ten "recognized fitness domains," including not only cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, and speed, but also strength, flexibility, power, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. While the focus on sprinting, strength, and power may be contraindicated for mid-season triathlon training, the strength and neurological adaptations may be appropriate for many triathletes trying to increase their strength, power, muscle mass, and neuroendocrine system in the offseason.
Cross fit Endurance (CE), is lighter on the weight training, but still re-invents traditional endurance training based on the philosophy that if you work on the neurological aspects of your sport, endurance will come. The more efficient an athlete is, the less energy it will take her to go fast, and the less she will fatigue over time. CrossFit develops neurological pathways through plyometric training, while CE focuses on specificity by developing strength and power through exercises like hill sprints and short, fast swim sets with little recovery. CE marathon plans don't actually involve long runs, and most workouts take significantly less than an hour to do. For those who become all-out CrossFitters, CE may become their only in-season training plans, while traditional-minded triathletes may use CE as the basis for their in-season quality sessions, or as part of a reverse periodization plan.
When is Crossfit wrong for triathletes?
Crossfit involves a number of complex movements under load, putting the weak areas at risk for injury, especially if an athlete's form is off. Triathletes who do not have an extensive weight-lifting background should not begin a Crossfit training program on their own without a personal trainer, physiotherapist, or certified Crossfit trainer to supervise their form.
Triathletes interested in beginning Crossfit training should also undergo a basic strength adaptation program comprised of controlled movements to get past the initial high-soreness, high-injury-risk phase of any strength training program before beginning a Crossfit program. Since integrating strength training into your program is likely to affect the quality of your aerobic workouts, athletes should avoid beginning a Crossfit program mid-season.
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