Effective Aerobic Body Strengthening Exercises

 The majority of training for an Ironman race consists of swimming, biking and running, aerobic exercises. You should not overlook strength training, however. Regularly lifting weights helps you build strength and also breaks up any monotony during your training period. You should incorporate at least two strength training session per week but no more than three. The objective is not to become bulky -- only to help develop your endurance.
Upper Body
To help supplement your upper body with the strength it needs for an Ironman, incorporate exercises that not only make you stronger, but that also mimic some of the repetitive movements your body makes while swimming and running. Besides traditional strength-development exercises, such as the bench press and lat pulldown, do training-specific exercises, such as front dumbbell raise, which helps increase the power in your freestyle swimming stroke. Dumbbell hammer curls and triceps extensions are other upper body strength exercises that keep your arm muscles from fatiguing too quickly while racing.
Lower Body
Focus most of your strength training workouts on your legs, as they do the majority of the work while biking and running. Ensure you work all the major leg muscle groups: quadriceps, hamstrings and calves. Basic strength exercises include leg extensions, lying leg curls, squats and calf raises. The leg press machine and hack squat are good alternatives to the traditional squat exercise, if you have knee problems and don't want to place too much stress on them.
Remember to train your core, as it is essential to good athletic performance. Your swimming and running performances, in particular, can improve significantly if you have a strong core. Make abdominal exercises, such as lying crunch, standing side bend, obliques cross-body crunch and kneeling cable crunch, a regular part of your workouts. There are many different abdominal exercises you can do, so be sure to consistently switch them up to keep your muscle from plateauing.
Weight & Repetition
Since the objective of Ironman strength training is to develop endurance and not to bulk up, avoid lifting extremely heavy weights. Focus rather on increasing the number of repetitions you do for each exercise. Aim to complete at least two sets of 15 repetitions for each exercise. Concentrate on using good form and don't rush your movements, even if the weight is light. As you progress during your training period, you can select certain strength training workouts as "heavy days," increasing the weight and decreasing the repetitions of your exercises. This helps keep your body from plateauing after consistently performing the same type of workout week after week.
Circuit Training
Using a circuit training approach to your Ironman strength training is a good way to complement the rest of your training. Though circuit training is anaerobic in nature, it maintains an aerobic element, which goes hand-in-hand with your swimming, biking and running. A circuit training workout consists of several exercises that are performed in rapid succession with little or no rest in between. Once you have completed the circuit, rest for three to five minutes, then repeat the circuit again. You can work your way up to three to five full circuits per workout.