Olympic champion Alistair Brownlee made triathlon’s ‘most dramatic change’, says top coach
Ben Bright has had big hand in 11 Olympic medals as senior figure for GB triathlon, after ‘years coming to terms’ with own Games blow
The coach who oversaw Alistair Brownlee’s twin-Olympic triumphs said the maverick Briton transformed conventional wisdom over training for elite triathlon.
As an emerging competitor, Brownlee, who retired last week, ignored established weekly 22-25 hour “race intensity” programmes in favour of including “a lot of low-intensity volume” over 30-35 hours of training.
“When I first went to Great Britain, people were telling him he was doing too much,” said Ben Bright, who became GB performance coach in 2005.
“As an athlete, I trained for 22-25 hours and when I coached [2006 world champion] Tim Don, we did a similar amount.
“But Alistair was right, he had a polarised approach, with a lot of his training at a low-intensity and a small amount at a very high intensity.
“That is the most dramatic change that has happened [during my coaching career]. For long-term development, you need to accumulate a large volume of training, so the cardiovascular system becomes more efficient.”
