Ben Greenfield demonstrates four lifts for triathlon training: barbell squats, deadlifts (6-10 reps), hang cleans, and power clean-and-jerks. He covers technique cues like lifting with your knees, keeping the bar close to your shins on deadlifts, and leading with your butt to build power for cycling and running.
Barbell squat; deadlift; hang clean; power clean and jerk.
Approximately 6–10 repetitions.
Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. In the recent article in Lava magazine, I talk about how I did kind of an alternate training method for Ironman. I used a lot of power lifting, a lot of bigger lifts in the weight room, and I wanted to show you four of kind of the key ones that were part of my program. These weren't the only lifts I did, but these were some of the basic lifts that really helped build a strong foundation of power and strength for doing things like cycling and running. So the first is a squat. Pretty straightforward. You can lift a lot more weight if you use a barbell because it's going to be easier to film without a rack. I'm going to do this without a rack, but if you'd like to flip the camera around and show that rack right there. This type of apparatus here allows you to actually rack the barbell and will allow you to lift heavier weights. But because it's not really conducive to filming, I'm just going to toss this barbell on my back and show you how we do this. Anytime you're messing around with a barbell, make sure that you lift with your knees, not with your back. Okay? What we're going to do is throw the barbell on the back. When you're doing your barbell squat, basically you want your feet about shoulder width apart. Lead with your butt, Try and keep your knees behind your toes. Simply squat low and stand. It helps to lower yourself a little more slowly and then stand quickly. So barbell squat was number one. The second lift that I did quite a bit of is a deadlift. For a deadlift, you want to make sure that you get that bar nice and close to your shins. You grip outside your feet, stick your butt out, get low, and simply lift. You're going to want to use a fairly heavy weight and do anywhere from six to 10 repetitions of an exercise like a deadlift. The next exercise that I did is called a clean, and I like to do a method of a clean called a hang clean, which means that you do it from a hanging position.
Like so, where the barbell is just slightly below the knees. From this position, I get ready to unleash a lot of force from my hamstrings, and I simply lift and catch. So one more time for the clean. It's here.
Lift and catch. And then the last exercise that I did quite a bit of was a power clean and jerk, which means that you lift the weight from the floor and then you press it overhead as you split your legs apart. So this is the last exercise. You start here from that deadlift position, but you lift all the way to your shoulders and then you lift the weight overhead like this.
You return the weight to the starting position down here. That's one rep.
That'S two reps, so on and so forth. So those are the type of power and strength exercises that you can actually use to improve economy and efficiency for cycling and running, rather than doing a lot of machines, cables, elastic bands, etc. So I hope that helps you. This is Ben Greenfield signing out.
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