One of the most effective tools in an athlete's training box is repetition. Look at the world's top athletes: they practice their routines, their workouts, their skills a million times over in training, especially before big competitions. Triathletes are no different.
By repeating certain training sets over time, triathletes can improve motor skills, develop intuitive understanding of their body, and more efficiently track their performance.
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More: 10 Reasons to Keep a Training Diary
Here are eight reasons to build repetition into your training plan.
Improve Motor Skills
Via certain specific sessions using a flat treadmill (a 0 percent incline helps encourage forward movement), athletes can work to increase running stride rate over time. This helps reduce the time spent on the ground, which in turn reduces the eccentric load on the quads.
Train Concentration Skills
Repeated workout sessions that focus on form, as opposed to aerobic levels of effort, encourage triathletes to develop more focus and concentration. This ultimately helps increase the effectiveness of workouts and leads to improved performances on race day.
Develop Intuitive Understanding
Over time, athletes who train with repetitions develop a keen ability to feel how they are performing on any given day.
More: How to Tell When You're Over-Reaching or Over-Training
Better Anticipate Training
For age-group athletes, especially, repetition is a predictable and structured routine that can be adhered to without compromising sound training principles. The structure actually helps athletes make more efficient use of their time.
Track Performance
With repetitions, athletes don't need to undergo physiological testing or worry about testing themselves over various race distances in training. Instead, repetition in training ensures that they can track their improvements in each sport every week.
Accurately Gauge Fatigue
Repeated patterns in training help the athlete determine if, on "one of those days," they are truly tired and need rest or are merely having an "off" day.
More: Can You Control Fatigue?
Build Consistency
Athletes who rely on repetition learn to accurately interpret their body's signals and better adapt to maintain training consistency.
Increase Relevant Strength
Triathlon, like all sports, requires strength and power for optimal performance. Repetitions in training help build that sport-specific strength.
More: Mark Allen's 12 Best Strength Exercises
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