An elite triathlete looking to stay healthy and injury free must including strength training as a part of their training. The pre-habilitation or injury prevention benefits alone will enhance the quality of your training and longevity of your sporting career.

At the RTC Vancouver, strength training is fully integrated with each individual’s functional movement needs and physiotherapy assessments.

From a sport specific point of view, a well designed program will prepare you to be stronger, faster, and more powerful. Additional benefits will be obtained through stronger tendons, ligaments and increased joint stability all of which will contribute to better pre-hab.

One of the most important benefits of strength training is the increased ease with which you can activate and deactivate your muscles. We have often heard how humans use only a small percentage of their brain’s capacity, well the same holds true for muscle. Until a muscle has been trained to work hard, it will seldom do so. This means that it will not be generating maximal stability, force, speed, power or endurance. Muscular conditioning can help you activate more muscle quickly and easily.

Strength training terminology

• Repetitions (reps.): the number of times you perform a given lift or exercise in succession without a rest
• Set: a group of repetitions
• Lifting tempo: a guideline for how long a given repetition should last as expressed in a time to lift the weight, pause, lower the weight and pause again.

• LIFT: a concentric contraction is one where the muscle shortens. Lifting a bag off a table, or walking up stairs requires a concentric contraction. In strengthening exercises, pulling yourself up into a chin up requires a concentric contraction as does lifting yourself from a squatting to standing position.
• LOWER: an eccentric contraction is one where the muscle is lengthened, such a when you lower a bag onto a table or go down stairs. The resistance provided by the bag or your body weight is lowered. In some common exercises the eccentric contraction occurs when you lower your body from a chin up, or squat down with a weight.
• PAUSE: an isometric contraction is a muscular contraction that results in no movement. Any time you push against a resistance that is too great for you, or one that results in no movement is isometric.

Through modifying the number of sets, reps and the lifting tempo, a strength training program leads to different results.