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Sports Performance Coach: How to Avoid 3 Mistakes That Triathletes Make

By Jonathan Wong

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 01Apr2009 Word count: 402 Viewed: 267 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Triathlon of all distances, sprint, olympic and ironman, are a sport that is growing in popularity here in my home town of Singapore and around the world as well.

As a personal trainer in Singapore as well as a sports performance coach, I see many tri-athletes who want to improve their performance and prevent injury.

There are many common injuries and problems with triathletes. Knee pain, back pain, poor posture and low values for male sex hormones are all caused by excessive triathlon training.

Here are 3 mistakes that tri-athletes make that totally stop them from reaching maximum performance.

1. They ignore maximal strength. This means that they don't spend enough time getting strong. The general thought is that triathlons are endurance event and that strength training is no important. But all sports are power and strength events. You win and improve your triathlon timing by doing the events faster than the competition, not by lasting longer. Perform a good weight training program with a good personal trainer or sports performance expert.

This program must include stuff to strengthen your buttocks, muscles that stabilize the knee, your postural muscles of the back and also those that take care of your shoulders.

2. They don't care of their back. The cycling and running components in the triathlon are especially harsh on the back. Cycling means many hours in a hunched over position. This leaves the lower back in a flexed, rounded state.

This is a weaker and more injury prone position. The running also means that forces which are more than 3 times your body weight run through your body with each of the hundreds of thousand steps.

3. They don't take care of their joints. The running component is tough on your knees, feet and ankles. Running that far is not a "natural" thing to do. You do need to do some special exercises to activate and strengthen the hamstrings and the stabilizer muscles of your hips so that they can work properly to take care of your hips and knees. Some of the muscles that need work include the hamstrings, the psoas, and the glute complex (buttocks) this includes the glute maximus, minimus, and medius.

There we go some of the mistakes that keep tri athletes in pain and frustration. Don't let it happen to you. Make sure you don't make these mistakes when training for a triathlon and you can have a safe, enjoyable race.

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