PLAN TO SUCCEED

PLAN TO SUCCEED: An Evaluation of your Season Plan

They say that we Plan to Fail when we Fail to Plan. This is never more true than when we look at training for an event or competition. "Training," by its very definition, separates itself from "Exercise" because it is not a random assortment of activity, but rather a growing, evolving, dependant PLANNED series of exercise sessions geared towards a goal. While for many of us, our Yearly Training Plan (YTP) is in its peaking cycles in the Spring and Summer Race Seasons, however it is never too late, and very much encouraged, to be looking through your plan constantly and making adjustments as you go through it. Evaluating where you are relative to where you were and where you are going allows you to see with both Specific-Focus and Big-Picture-Perspective in order to get the most out of your training. It's easy to forget the plan and seize the sunshine-y afternoons and end up overtraining for your race. Without being a slave to your plan, it is important to have the discipline and perspective to keep yourself growing in the right directions.

And here are a few other things for you to consider:

As Stephen Covey Always Said: Begin with the End in Mind

• Establish LIFE GOALS before you even get to the training side of things. Life trumps training. Always. This is a luxury to race and train to a schedule. Being active SHOULD be a high priority, but training to a race may have to wait until life allows for that schedule. Big moves, special occasions, stressful weeks, travel, family holidays, etc should be first decided upon to make sure you let first things be first (another Stephen Covey idiom).
• Where are you headed? What are your Race and Fitness goals. Plan A races First (the most important ones), then B races (the important but not essential ones), C races (more with a goal of gaining experience, training, fun). Keep the priorities in that order, don't let a B or C race derail your training for your A race(s). Be careful about over-racing, each race will overextend you and may leave you out of any other quality training for days or weeks afterwards, but at the same time, if you find those events fun, then do what you love.
• Begin by planning out the end of your season. Start with your Peak A-Races and count backwards. How long(ish) should your taper be going into that race? 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 1 week? This depends on the length of the race, your personal fitness and recovery abilities, your health and the type of races you are doing. Repeat the same for your B-races (though the taper may not be as long depending on your goals)

Plan Big Weeks and Little Weeks

• Training Camps should be placed in, when appropriate, to offer large training stimuli without leaving you empty for too long afterwards. They offer a big boost in fitness and experience (see our TCR blog http://tcrsportlab.com/content.php?LoadPage=Articles#Breakthrough%20To%20The%20Best! about breakthrough workouts and camps) and are often fun escapes that offer some similar benefits to rest (the removal of non-training stresses of work, life demands, etc leads to better recovery)
• Plan Recovery weeks that coincide with other responsibilities in life. While a hard work week can sometimes be mitigated through training to sweep out the cobwebs, keeping yourself pragmatic about what can and will happen. Don't make unrealistic goals during known busy times.

Build Yourself up for Strength

• You need to increase your fitness gradually, and some more gradually than others depending on you being prone to injuries or experience in sport. Weeks should build up upon each other, months upon each other further, but only if you allow for your body to strengthen. STRESS-RECOVER-ADAPT.

Exercise Physiology boils down completely to that simple triduum of growth. You need a progressive overload of either volume or intensity, then time to recover from it in order to allow your body to adapt to that new capacity.

The Greek TETRA system has been around for millenia and worked in 4-week blocks: build volume or intensity over 3 weeks and then take a week to rest. This is still the most popular format for training plans, though depending on the type of stress, a 2:1 build, or even 1:1 may lead to better recovery. When in doubt: recover.

Test yourself regularly

• Every few cycles, it is a good idea to give yourself some kind of test. That may be an Event, a Lab Test, Field Test or workout that will help to demonstrate where you are at, how you've been recovering and where your fitness has come at that point.
• Test after a few days of rest, or it will give a false sense to fatigue.
• Don't test too often- it won't show benefits and will lead you to the same fate as over-racing.

Create FOCUS Blocks and Goals for Weeks

• In the same way that your weeks should have goals, various sets of weeks should too. For instance, the first 4-6 weeks of our Tx3 Triathlon team's training back in October was what we called "Transition Phase." Then we moved to "Preparation/Base Phase" for almost 4 months. You can name them what you wish, but some examples might be: Base Phase, Build Phase I, Build Phase II, Build Phase III, Intensity Phase, Race I, Race II, Taper. They can be anywhere from 1 week to 18 weeks in duration.
• Figure out the best times to work on Volume, on Intensity and Recovery
• Volume First, then Intensity, but training may not be a Triangle, it may involve some Ebb and Flow with a Hourglass shape (Volume early, some intensity and then back to some big volume - more for longer distances, experienced athletes and longer race seasons)
• Don't be afraid to have multiple "Peaks" in the season, not just a staircase approach to volume and intensity.

Set yourself up for success.

• Start simple. Think about a given week and how many hours you actually have to train, to work, to sleep, to do those other things important in life (I know, is there anything in life outside of training? See for yourself!).
• Recover. It's where 2 of the 3 in the 'stress-recover-adapt' mantra find their strength. You need this in order to move forward, within the year, within the month, within the week, within the day, within the workout. The body needs to recover in order to acheive Quality training.
• Be Realistic. While athletes certainly are SuperPeople, if you give yourself 10 workouts per week knowing you'll only be doing 6 of them, you are undermining your own goal-setting. Be as realistic as you can from here, the higher the buy-in and realistic nature of your plan, the better adherence you will have.
• Quality beats Quantity any day. A season based on 12 hours / week of good training will almost always lead to better gains than one on 23 hours/week of 'junk mileage' and 'going through the motions.'
• Be Dynamic. Don't get overly rigid. If your training plan doesn't change often, then you are likely not really paying attention to your body's adaptation. That being said, you also shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater with a few poor workouts. Keep to your principles and general Focus Goals, while adapting to the bumpy road to getting to that destination.
• Recover. Recover. Recover. Your body gets stronger outside of the workouts and in sleep. So integrate these pieces into your training. A lot.

You know where you are going (goal races, events and health & fitness) and need to be realistic and honest about where you are (your current fitness and available time). Your Plan is the map to take you from HERE to THERE.

Remember that training for a goal is meant to be fun. It provides an "END" for which you use training as your means. It's the motivation. But at it's fundamental element, an active lifestyle need not have the stress of a 'training plan' and the moment that the Plan owns You, rather than the other way around is the moment to get a new Plan, or reprioritize the pieces. Life comes first. If you can make training a part of your life, all the better.

Happy Training,

Coach John