You're a busy professional...a CEO, physician, lawyer, small business owner, or maybe a full-time working parent. Do you ever feel like you are completely stretched thin with no time for triathlon training? Have you read popular books and articles on triathlon that espouse long-slow-distance training and shun faster workouts? If so, you can appreciate the frustration that many busy triathletes also experience...you just don't have time for it all. 

There is great news for you. You can complete your triathlon training and still have time for work, family and play by incorporating higher intensity into your training.  

Sports Medicine research studies have proven over and over again that incorporating shorter, more intense intervals into your workout can result not only in benefits in short term muscular power, but also in longer duration endurance ability as well. These findings are counter intuitive and still incite debate in online forums and email lists. The key to using these research findings to improve your fitness is to have a plan that tells you exactly how hard to go and for how long.  

Regular progression of these types of high intensity workouts incorporated into your season training plan will not only skyrocket your fitness to new levels, but also allow you to spend LESS time working out and MORE time with your friends and family, or if you desire even  at work. 

Many recreational athletes, when hearing this for the first time will immediately go out and try their own version of high intensity training, but many don't quite get it right. Time after time when these well-intentioned triathletes decide to change up their boring routine, they immediately go out and begin to do every workout as hard as they can.  They will ride their bike for 90 minutes...as fast as they can, or run their favorite 5k route as fast as possible, or swim 1000 yards...you guessed it...as fast as possible. 

While there is a time and a place for these types of time-trial style workouts, they are only addressing one physiologic aspect of muscle and cardiovascular fitness.  To achieve the most impressive and efficient benefits of high intensity training, one must understand just a little about how long each high intensity effort should last, how hard each effort should be,  how much rest between efforts, how many efforts to perform sequentially, how many total "sets" of these sequences to perform and how long to rest between each set. 

Like many triathletes, busy professionals and CEOs just don't know how to slow down. They try to cram everything into their day and then try to cram in endless hours of biking and running as well. By incorporating the simple principal of high intensity training along with a well-thought out plan of action, you too can enjoy rapid improvements in both your fitness and your race results.