during those 3 days a week, 2 days a week etc what kind of lifting do you do? Do you do a full body lift each time since you aren't lifting as much?

Weight training for endurance athletes is very important. Not only will it make you a stronger athlete, but you will tremendously reduce your chance of injury during training. The type of weight training endurance athletes should be doing as always been misconstrued. Most people think "light weight and lots of reps". This will do nothing for your strength. It is an oxymoron to think of doing strength training and then lifting light weights. There always has to be a progression throughout the year when looking at your off season, pre-season, and in-season schedule. Off season weight training is 3-4x/week and you are working more on building muscle (8-12 reps), strength (5-8 reps), and increasing your power (3-5 reps). Pre-season should be 2-3x/week and should focus more on strength (8-12 reps). In-season should be 1-2x/week and the focus here is maintenance
(12-15 reps).

Whatever the recommended reps suggest, your form and technique should be precise. I always tell my clients to pick a weight that you will have perfect technique during the set. If you are struggling to get the last 4 reps, and your form suffers, then the weight is too heavy.

Endurance strength and conditioning is all about training specific movement patterns. The workouts should be full body routines that specifically assist the sport you are training for. You should have a purpose for every exercise you do in the gym. Doing "arms" is a waist of time for endurance athletes, unless you are doing them just to have "nice arms".

Here is an example of a type of workout for an off-season day (this all depends on the level of the athlete):

Dynamic/Active warm-up: 8 minutes
Single Leg balance work: 2 minutes
Rotator Cuff Pre-hab: 4 minutes

Core Work
Front Plank: 3 x 25 seconds
Controlled Med. Ball Crunch: 2 x 10
Side Plank: 3/side x 20 seconds

Strength Work
Single Leg Squat: 3 x 6/leg pair with
Chin-ups: 3 x 8

Stability Ball Leg Curls: 3 x 6 pair with
Perfect Push-up: 3 x 10

Standing Shoulder Press: 2 x 10

Post-Lift Conditioning
Medicine Ball Slams: 5 x 20, rest 40 seconds in between

Post-Workout Foam Roll/Stretch

The set-up of the workout doesn't really change with the season we are in, just the sets and reps and the volume and intensity. Usually in-season, it depends on how the athlete is feeling and if they have any nagging injuries. In-season will be a very efficient workout that will take no more than 45 minutes.

If you have any questions, please let me know. Hope this helps!

Right - all this "back and bi's one day and chest and tri's another" - is for hard core strength athletes - not endurance athletes.

I'm also of the opinion that, in your case (I'm assuming you're pretty strong, since you have a lot of weightlifting experience) you're wasting your time lifting at all IF you're trying to be as fast a triathlete as possible. If it's more important for you to be a buff triathlete, or a "well rounded" athlete - lift away - but don't kid yourself - lifting won't make you faster. Even if you're not a real big guy, the muscle you DO have is attuned to the power-oriented training it's had in the gym - not the slow-twitch function required in this sport.

Triathlon training plans that call for weightlifting aren't written for people who are already strong weightlifters - they're written for typical puny endurance athletes, IMO.

Good luck!

In season weight training doesn't necassarily mean going into the gym and "hitting the weights". I personally want to get super fast at triathlons, but I also want to stay injury free. So, at least once every 10 days, I am in the gym doing my maintenance work and pre-hab exercises so I can stay healthy and stay away from nagging injuries. I used to lift all the time and now 95% of my training time is spent to triathlon training, but that other 5% is in the gym working on maintaining my strength.

I agree with the above comments except for the fact that you can not increase your speed with gym work. Now, of course you have to spend lots of time in the water, on the bike, and running. You have to do tempo and interval days to get faster, I know this. But in the off-season, if you want to increase your power on the bike for example, you can do that by doing the correct things in the gym. If you increase your overall strength, then you will be more powerful on the bike, especially in the hills. I am not saying to "get bigger" in the off season, but to get stronger and increase your power output. The strength and conditioning aspect of triathlons is underated, because there does need to be time spent in the gym to be a better triathlete. When you are a better overall athlete, you will increase your speed, no matter what discipline you are doing.

This is a good topic to talk about, since many people have questions about it.