Exploring the ‘right’ training approach towards triathlon

By Sigurd Neubauer Fitness & Sport Triathlon April 17, 2025

A year into triathlon, it has become clear that in order to find success in the endeavor, one must carve out precious time to incorporate daily exercises into an already fully-packed week. But like any lifestyle choices, one must find a sustainable approach to not only accelerate progress within multisport but also to stick with it over the long-term. Finding the right coach is an important first step but examining the correct training methodology is equally important as people inevitably enter multisport from different vantage points.

In a wide-ranging conversation with triathlon entrepreneur Henry R. Shoemaker of the Syndicate Endurance Team (S.E.T), Maryland’s top triathlon club, we discuss training methodology for both adults and youngsters.

What is the S.E.T.  training methodology for both adults and youngsters?

Coaching youth athletes is very different than adults as one might imagine, which is why the training methodologies vary dramatically.  Many parents hear the phrase “youth triathlon” and conjure thoughts of adult athletes crumbling to the ground at the Kona finish line.  U.S.A. Triathlon has done a great job of setting guidelines for youth Race Directors that keep race distances fun and manageable.  Most youth races start in the 7–8-year-old division with a 50-meter pool swim, 2-mile bike, and half mile run.  Shorter distance isn’t the only distinguishing factor in youth training. 

Our youth athletes are not just small adults.  Their physiology is significantly different from adults.  Unlike adults whose ability to produce top end speeds starts to slow with the aging process, and their ability to absorb endurance training goes up, youth athletes are still developing their high-end engine well into college and beyond.  Youth athletes tolerate lots of short duration, high intensity training very well. 

Adults, on the other hand, are pretty much the opposite:  Our youth team pillars are safety, fun, healthy habits, and skills development.  Once we educate our youth athletes on the safety protocols necessary to have 60 athletes K-12 in the water and on bike and run course together, we spend a lot of time on fun, team bonding, and ensuring the athletes want to come back week after week.  That means plenty of skill development masquerading as fun drills, and lots of team lunches, dinners, snowballs, ice cream, and water balloon fights.  

One of my favorite stories to exhibit what I think matters in youth sports is our youth team’s first trip to the U.S.A.T. Youth and Junior National Championship last season.  Four of those athletes were in the 13-14 age group, and they all four placed very well with one of them reaching the podium.  The other three congratulated their buddy and the thought of the podium spot disappeared in only a few minutes.  What remained was a group of buddies out in the lake they had just raced in, on each other’s shoulders playing chicken.  In the years to come they may or may not remember their teammate on the podium or realize what a remarkable accomplishment this was for a first-year triathlete.  But believe me, they will remember how much fun they had traveling with the team.  Some of those athletes may go on to race triathlons in college, and that’s great, but more importantly we want them to remember how much fun working hard and being healthy can be if you surround yourself with other like-minded people.

Adult training 

When we started our adult team, it was largely friends of ours and other youth team parents who saw the fun the youth team was having and wanted to capture some of those same travel adventures the kids were having for ourselves.  We started planning a trip to Ironman Louisville 70.3 and some other races and before we knew it we had a full-fledged team of 30 adult athletes including an Ironman Pro, an up-and-coming elite, some very accomplished age groupers, some local legends, and a crew that loves to have fun.

In terms of adult training methodologies, my coaching philosophy and the philosophy of any coach that I hire is to meet athletes where they are: I’m very leery of coaches that have “a methodology,” speak in absolutes, or have a one size fits all approach.  It’s remarkable how the human body is designed with such precision across the spectrum but reacts so uniquely to certain stimuli at the individual level.

I’m very lucky to have attracted coaches with extensive scientific training and backgrounds as clinicians or researchers. The S.E.T. coaching staff are all voracious learners who are constantly consuming information on sport and coaching, to learn where we can incorporate new concepts and techniques. 

However, our framework is tried and true training methodologies that train all the energy systems necessary to complete whatever event, discipline, and distance our athletes are targeting.  We have an extensive athlete intake process that helps us understand the athletes’ background, baseline, training availability, and goals.  It’s our job to mold the necessary training protocols into the athlete’s schedule, and not the other way around.

The number one limiter of success in adult athletes isn’t being unprepared or undertraining like most people think.  It’s injury, typically coming from overtraining.  That’s where hiring a coach is one of the soundest investments you’ll ever make towards sustainability and success in endurance sports.  To put it in the Matrix movie terms, what if I told you that you could train less and accomplish more?  Many of our athletes are extremely accomplished and busy professionals who happen to have this very difficult triathlon hobby.  They don’t all have 20 hours a week to train.  Of course, that also means we as coaches have to guide the athlete in the goal setting process to ensure the athlete’s goals are achievable. 

We can actually help most athletes achieve most goals on a long enough time horizon so there are a lot of conversations about how much time athletes can give in a specific training block, and how much time they can give over a one- or two-year window. 

In the end, I always come back to my one saying, consistency is king and queen of endurance sports.  Show up most of the time and do most of the work (as prescribed) and success will come.  This leads me to another of my favorite maxims, “people who don’t quit are very hard to beat.”

Highlights from the S.E.T. 2024/25 season 

In terms of podium accomplishments, our tiny team of 30 adults that sort of formed hodge podge mid-season had way more than our fair share of success, probably beyond anything Casey Shoemaker, my wife and S.E.T. co-founder, or I could have imagined when we started this thing.  

Our Adult team had a couple top 15-20 pro swims on the Ironman Pro tour and qualified for the Xterra Off Road Triathlon World Championship. We had the number two male athlete out of water at Eagleman 70.3 who also qualified (and raced) for the Ironman World Championship at Kona in his very first full distance race at Lake Placid.  We sent two athletes to the Age Group World Championships in Australia for Team U.S.A., and numerous team members qualified for the U.S.A. Triathlon National Championship. Those accolades belong to the athletes and their coaches, and we were glad to support them all.  One of the things that makes S.E.T. unique is that in addition to providing coaching services, we also allow our athletes to bring their coaches with them if they choose to train and race with our team.

On the youth side, all coaching is done in house by S.E.T. coaches, and we also had some remarkable successes for our first season with a “Travel Team.” We had two youth athletes podium at the East Coast Triathlon Festival in Richmond Virginia against the stiffest youth competition in North America. We very frequently swept the entire age group and gender awards across all ages at local races, and the ‘icing on the cake’ was our podium finish at the Youth National Championship in our very first appearance.  Our biggest accomplishment was probably how valuable athletes, and their families felt like the experience was.  The overwhelming number of our new team members come from word-of-mouth referrals.  We’re very proud of those recommendations.