SwimBikeRunStLouis

Bricks

"Brick workout" are words we often hear in the multisport world.  To those who have been a part of the scene for a while, this training method has probably been firmly incorporated into their regimens.  For others who may be new to duathlon or triathlon, I will try to de-mystify the term and show you how to advance your training with a sport-specific technique.

Multi-sport by its very definition is more than one activity brought together and performed in sequence.  Most often these individual sports are practiced separately and raced jointly.  A brick stacks one upon the other in training, as with a swim-bike workout or a bike-run session.  Those are the two most common permutations for triathletes.

There is benefit derived from this type of training aside from the obvious time saving factor of combining workouts.  The specificity of training theorem states that in order to perform an activity well, you need to practice that activity.  Sounds overly-simplistic doesn't it?

In triathlons you make two distinct transitions from one muscle group to another as you change activities.  The body requires an adaptation period allowing blood flow to shift from the upper body to the legs, as in the swim to bike transition, or from quadriceps to hamstrings as with the bike to run phase.  When you do bricks, you are acclimatizing your system to those specific stresses.

Bricks can be easy or race pace.  They can be long-slow-distance or sprint.    Some athletes even practice their transition-area skills during these workouts.  It's  not advisable to stack in every session.  There is still much to be gained with segregated  workouts.  Additionally, the generally prevailing training wisdom about easing into and slowly building up still applies if newly adding them to your routine.

In summary, bricks not only allow us to practice individual sport skills but rehearse the change from one to another as well.  If bricks aren't currently a weekly part of your conditioning program,  you may be missing a key part of your multisport foundation.

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