Typical Weekly Training Schedule Part 1  

If you are a busy weekend warrior like me, trying to indulge in multisport while supporting 2 kids, a wife, keep a house from falling down and not get fired from your job, scheduling your typical training week is probably your easiest challenge.

It’s not always as simple as getting online, hiring a coach ,or buying a how to book, and faithfully following a set schedule. In fact flexibility in training schedules is one of the things that drew me to triathlon. Fortunately, the busier a person is, the easier it is to build a typical weekly training schedule.

I’m a fan of the typical weekly schedule where the focus of the individual workouts can change, but the schedule looks the same week after week. I got that advice from Gordo Byrne’s site when I was training for Ironman Florida 2006, but for the life of me, I can’t find the article again. In any event, this method makes scheduling so much easier, especially if you are trying to fit training in around set masters swim workouts, or spin classes.

Here is how I came up with my schedule for the next 10 to 12 weeks or so.

The first step was to lay down some soft goals and guidelines which looked like this.
1. Start my spin program. Plan for 2 to 3 spin workouts per week. Power builder on weekdays, longer aerobic on weekends.
2. 2 to 4 swims per week including masters. This was easy as I can swim on my lunch break.
3. Continue with strength, core, flexibility work. For this I plan to incorporate a combination of P90X core and yoga as well as some other core and/or yoga programs.

I don’t like winter running, so I didn’t plan for it, and didn’t worry about not hitting the pavement. I also wanted to focus on cycling which is my weakest discipline. Hence, the extra effort cleaning up the cave, and setting up the trainer.

So these were the guidelines that gave me my starting point. Once they were defined, it was relatively easy to lay down a fixed weekly schedule. To see what it looks like, check back.