weight training? (Page 2)

I am glad that you are so ready to jump on a debate, but I didn't tell what type of weight program I was doing so criticizing it you are ignorantly taking a low shot.  You are the one making broad assumptions.  

All I said is that after being a champion athlete in sports that both require fast twitched muscle fibers and explosive power (i.e. wrestling) as well as the opposite end of the spectrum in a sport that uses slow twitched muscle fibers at a sustained effort over time (i.e. distance running) that I made a resolve to make weights training a consistent part of my work outs.  

I don't feel that I can keep taking short cuts at my age.  I hear people on these boards talk about "swim fitness", "bike fitness", "run fitness".  That is all find and dandy for them, but not for me.  As a young stapling man I did that.  I focused on one discipline.  Every time I raced my goal was to PR, and for many many years I did.   I went through injuries and setbacks but every time I found a way to rise above it come back and PR again.  Well....11 years ago I stopped breaking PR's.  I trained more and more specific training and trained harder and harder, but was past my glory days and could no longer PR.  So I changed my focus.  I was no longer racing to break PR's, I was racing because if I had a race to prepare for I knew I would keep working out, and I knew if I kept working out that I would stay in shape, and I knew if I stayed in shape that life would be more fun and I would be happier.

So... I lost my competitive edge, but the ironic thing is that  once I started focusing on functional training in all areas of my fitness rather than focusing on doing things that would be specific to one event in one sport so that I could improve in that area even if meant that I back slide in other area, my running times improved dramatically.  An example of this is that from 2008-2010 I trained for and ran over a dozen 5K's with the goal of running in the 17 minutes range.  I was as close as one second in two different races as well as one second for a 10K split, but never made it.  Zoom forward 5 years and in 2015 I had no focus on 5K's, ran less than half  the run volume as I was doing for the three years when I was trying to get back the the 17's, I did no running speed work, etc.  I however was in the 17's in every 5K I ran (before the car accident that landed me in the ER anyways).  So...although unintentional, my change in focus from a one event specialist to "total fitness" has not only made me more fit in areas out side of running, but also lead to faster run times than I was ever able to reach when I was a one track guy.

 Why?  Well... while compartmentalizing into swim fitness, bike fitness, run fitness is a good way to make sure you are balancing your training, they are really just different activities that contribute to your total fitness and any weakness in your total fit is going to reflect badly in all three legs of a triathlon.  Likewise any improvements in your total fitness are going to reflect positively in all three legs of your triathlon.  

I will leave the dichotomy to others to figure out how to best increase their total fitness.  I know what have been doing to achieve better overall fitness and have a plan to use weights this spring to build on what I did last year.  Yes, it makes a difference what type of weight training you are doing but I am not here to tell everyone what type of weight program they should or shouldn't follow.  I am just here to say that I had the same question about weight training several months back and while I did just find for many years without weight training and know others can I too looked at what  areas I could most improve with my limited time and resources and decided that this spring it was going to be through weight training.  The answer may be different for others and yes even the type of training for those that do go the weights direction will be different, but I am trusting that people on this forum are smart enough to figure that out on their own.

I know you're trying to help the op, but all that really still says is yes to weight training. The weight program itself wasn't criticized, but the response was. Trying to find more info on what was done. People are certainly  going to have different things to work on, as myself and others in this thread have said. Your own answer said this too, which is why I've said & asked what I did. Because this seems pretty well agreed upon, it would be helpful to know more about the method (or methods) of identifying issues and what was done to address them. People with similar issues may respond to similar methods of addressing them. Then by putting up this information others may also offer even better methods of addressing these to be used going forward. There are several people active in this thread who would be good for that. A couple examples would be TriMyBest and bcagle may both put in lifts and various types of work to address things. More still have suggestions within existing activities. Like the multiple posts on dolphin kicking for core work.

Not such a simple question after all Matthew!

A simple answer might be, if you enjoy it then do it! (just don't injury yourself)

A few here have mentioned the idea of overall strength and also the limits/needs of age.  I am personally nearing 40 and have started going to a gym that focuses on all-over strength.  Not necessarily heavy muscle-building and certainly not focused on the needs of triathletes.   Since I have been going (3x/week since November) I am SO MUCH better able to train!  I can run and ride (I have personally given up swimming) better, which to me means with less residual pain/issues/fatigue than I ever did before.   I may not be not faster (I think those days are gone) but I am also not slower.  I haven't been biking as much in the winter, but in that I know I am stronger when I take my fat bike out.     I simply could not just add more miles running and replace my gym time with a run.  I just couldn't do it.  So the strength training improves my overall fitness and endurance so that I CAN do more running and biking.  

I suffered from hip pain for several months last year, even after taking long breaks from running.   That started to go away pretty quickly after I started at the new gym and I realized is now completely gone.  

Also, I look a heckuva lot better      

I've seen the advice of "you need to run/swim/bike to get better at run/swim/bike", to the exclusion of all else .  I agree that adding more time on the road is ideal, to a point,  but I think there's way more to it.  I feel the same about yoga. Adding a single yoga workout/week helps me stay injury free so that I can keep running.  Simply replacing my hour of yoga with a run would cause me to backslide as a runner.  That's just me.  I have found a post-run routine that is about 15 minutes which has actually virtually erased all previously common running "niggles".   

I just wish someone had suggested these things to me many, many years ago.