Building an Iron Core – Day 1

In an effort to hold myself accountable I am going to be frequently posting my workouts that will build an Iron Core.  Thus, making me strong enough to withstand an uppercut from Iron Mike Tyson, run a smoking fast marathon off the bike and allow me to be a stunt double on the next movie about the great Spartan warriors.  Alright, I may have got a little carried away there but the hope is that the marathon part will be true.

I will preface this whole core workout thing by saying that I understand their is great debate on weights and strength building and the role it has in training for triathlon.  I personally have spent my fair share of time in the weight room, most of which was done during my college years.  Yes, I traded parties and booze for iron plates and protein powder…I was one of those guys.  You know the dude you see in the weight room every single time you go.  He is bench pressing when you come into the weight room and an hour later he is reppin out biceps as you leave to go have dinner and be social with your friends.

He’s this kinda guy –>

and this dude too–>

Believe me I worked out in multiple gyms, from colleges to high schools, posh country club type gyms to the ones with steroid riddled 40 year olds.  I have personally come to the conclusion that in the sport of triathlon the only thing that really matters is swimming, biking and running.  You do these three things on a consistent basis year in and year out and you will succeed in the sport.  In most cases the average age grouper who wants to do well in triathlon is working full time.  Thus, in order to maximize the triathlon potential that the person has they should put all there efforts into the three disciplines of triathlon.  Plain and simple, SPECIFICITY RULES ALL!

However, when you have time to “fit it all in” including rest then you can start to think about adding proper strength training into the weekly workouts.  For the most part I believe that during the “offseason” or winter months is when this can be best accomplished.  The overall training volume is usually decreased during these months and since you are not constantly prepping for a race you can come into workouts with a little soreness and fatigue from a strength workout and not be giving anything up.

I will conclude by saying that I have no issue with strength training including squats, lunges, and some press type movements with db’s and plates.  It’s just that for me personally I would rather shock my core with body weight movements, lessening the strain on my body with to much “excess weight” and spending more time actually swimming, biking and running.

This brings me to how I am going to build my iron core on just 25-45 minutes per day.  It will be accomplished with at least 3 “big” sessions of at least 35-45 minutes where the gym and its machines will be utilized.  In cooperation with these days I will be utilizing the TRX hopefully on a daily basis, worst case scenario I bang out a set of atomic pushups before I head out for my bike ride and then another set before bed.  I will be keeping you all up to day with my workouts through this blog.  So if you too would like to build an Iron Core that you can show off this summer feel free to join in and let me know how it goes.  Hopefully in a few weeks we can have some competitions based on time and how many reps of a certain workout you can do.

I will leave you with two video’s that I will be basing my training off today.  They were recommended by Coach Chad Holderbaum who made to sure to let me know that the guys who does these movies is a bit of “one of those guys” but his workouts are legit.  I would have to agree.  So without further ado here are the videos and todays workout.

Video # 1(Ab circuit at the gym)

Video # 2 (TRX AB routine)

Todays Workout

At the Gym:

1 circuit of the exercises shown in video #1 ( 3 sets with 20 repetitions each)

At Home: (See video #2 for examples of the below exercises)

3 x 15 suspended crunches

2 x 12 pikes

20 window washers (side to side from suspended position)

20 standing body crunches (“ab wheel”)

40 atomic crunches (record how many sets it takes you to achieve)

3 x 1 minutes suspended planks