Not just triathlon: examples of combined sports for multi-discipline training

In recent years, a great many people have taken up sport, both at an amateur and at a competitive level. Among the many disciplines, combined sports have certainly attracted the most interest and participation.

What are combined sports?

Combined sports are multidisciplinary activities that can include two or more events: Triathlon (swimming, cycling, running), Duathlon (running, cycling, running), Cross training (a mix of weightlifting, aerobic activity and gymnastics), Aquabike (swimming, cycling or mountain biking) and so on.

Triathlon is certainly the combined sport you hear about most often; it in turn comes in several formats depending on the length of the course:

• Sprint (750 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run)
• Olympic
• Ironman

…and many more.

The order of the disciplines is, and always stays, the same, which is why many athletes can manage the different activities so as to reach the finish line in the best possible shape, avoiding burning through energy at the start or midway. Many times this sport is wrongly called "second-hand" because many of the athletes who practice it come from one of these disciplines, with a more specific technical background in one of the three. Coming from an aerobic discipline makes it easier to approach this sport but can also bring various difficulties. For a cyclist or runner, the hardest hurdle is certainly swimming, because the powerful muscle mass in the lower limbs and the smaller mass in the trunk and upper body hurt buoyancy and swimming itself. For a swimmer, the difficulties can be using a professional racing bike and the different, eccentric contraction of the lower limbs in running.

As with Triathlon, other sports such as Duathlon, Decathlon, Biathlon and Nordic Combined also pose difficulties for those coming from one specific sport; the winning move is to balance the various activities and try to stay strong for the whole race, thus avoiding rough patches caused by too big a gap in preparation between the different events.

Besides the disciplines just mentioned, often relegated to athletics for specialists, another sport widely practiced in fitness centers or at home is Cross Training. This sport too is made up of different activities that are combined to create a 360-degree workout. Cross training became famous worldwide thanks to CrossFit, but it has always been used by many coaches to train their athletes during the off-season, because it lets you train the four energy systems (anaerobic alactic – anaerobic lactic – aerobic glycolytic – aerobic lipolytic) in a balanced way that is specific to the activity practiced. In this sport the athlete is required to sustain an aerobic load for a certain length of time (running 5 km, cycling 10 km, rowing 2.5 km), to be able to lift and handle a given load (an 80 kg barbell, a 22.5 kg dumbbell or a 30 kg sandbag) and to perform specific gymnastics movements (pull-ups on the bar, dips on the rings, etc.).

Cross training is also particularly appreciated for how quick its workouts are. In 60 minutes you can warm up, train and cool down, getting great results both in terms of improved performance and aesthetically, thanks to the high intensity that defines its method, HIIT. On top of that, these workouts are very varied, which keeps the workout stimulating. You will never find the same sequence of exercises across training sessions, because the focus on the different movements is always different and the ways of performing them vary widely (AMRAP, EMOM, TABATA, FOR TIME).

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What are the benefits of combined sports?

Practicing a combined sport offers many advantages over a single specific one, because the body is trained in different ways, with varied movement patterns and different energy systems. Playing several sports also reduces the risk of injury: a study from Loyola University * showed that athletes specialized in one sport were 70% more likely to be injured than those playing multiple sports (*Specialization patterns across various youth sports and relationship to injury risk. Pasulka J, Jayanthi N, McCann A, Dugas LR, LaBella C.Phys Sportsmed. 2017 Sep).

For this very reason it is recommended, especially for children between 8 and 14 years old, to play different sports so as to internalize and manage the greatest possible number of movement patterns: this way the body will be able to handle different stimuli as effectively as possible. Practicing track and field, for example, gives the ability to run, jump and throw, as well as the intra- and intermuscular coordination that will benefit any specific sport taken up in the future.

Nutrition and combined sports

In combined sports, nutrition is often underestimated by newcomers because they look for faster times and better performance through forced training. By doing so, injuries arrive instead of results, because extreme training is combined with the wrong diet. In an endurance discipline like Triathlon, the first factors contributing to the onset of fatigue are dehydration and carbohydrate depletion, while gastrointestinal problems, hyperthermia and hyponatremia (blood sodium concentration below 130 mEq/l) can not only reduce performance but be potentially dangerous to health, especially in races lasting more than 4 hours. For this reason, Eathlon® is the solution for anyone who wants to achieve better performance in sport. Thanks to its balanced structure, Eathlon® lets you control insulin levels through an eating strategy balanced in macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein and fat) and helps keep muscle tone high and reduce body fat. In addition, proper nutrition lets you recover energy quickly and safely, thus avoiding injuries caused by overtraining. Thanks to the principles of the Mediterranean diet, Eathlon® counters the free radicals that form during training and races with the many antioxidants and minerals in the foods it suggests and with cooking methods that do not alter their biological value.

 

Author

MATTEO ZOFFOLI

Doctor of Sport Sciences, personal trainer, fitness instructor and professional athletic coach. He is a fitness consultant and an expert in functional training.