Coach Carter

I love the Spring. The air has a certain quality about it, as if there is a smell of promise. The sight of daffodils and cherry blossom get me excited about what comes next: glorious days of summer! Its hard to put a finger on it, but it feels like one day it is winter, and the next it feels like Spring - something in the air has changed. The fact we've just gone through the solstice and that the clocks go forward this weekend all add to that feeling.

The change of the season got me thinking about how we as humans and indeed athletes react to change, or even the thought of change. We tend not to like it as a species. Take a look at your last 5 years - how many habitual patterns can you see? We are creatures of comfort - and I certainly notice one consequence of routine and habitual lifestyle is to make time go quicker. I walked out of my Yoga class on Tuesday morning thinking "wow, where did that week go?"!

Why do we slip in to habits, why do we resist change? A lot of it comes down to fear, not knowing how the change in our lives will turn out means we hover on the edge of uncertainty. When I was making the decision to leave the University and set up PBscience, I could have hesitated but I chose to make the leap without knowing I would be safe in my landing...especially when you consider the shape of our economy, what a time to go self-employed! I don't want to given the impression I found it easy, or that there was no fear of the uncertainty. There was, a lot! But, I felt the fear and did it anyway (the title of a recommended book by the way). Courage is NOT about never feeling fear, its about feeling it 100% and stepping towards it.

I often talk my athletes through that when it comes to being a bit more 'risky' in their training and their racing. A common example is when we get so used to seeing a certain power output for a given race distance that we automatically tune in to that level every race. It can take a deliberate attempt to go outside our comfort zone of power to rid ourselves of the shackles: my athletes hate it when I suggest a race becomes our 'blow up experiment'. They hate it not because they blow up, but because it hurts more than usual - and it also tends to prove me right :-) In all the times I have run this race experiment through with people, I have only had one athlete really blow up (the 'I can't actually pedal my bike anymore' extent of fatigue where someone has poured concrete in to your quads!)...and the following week he went out a got a PB, quite simply because he went to the edge of what he could sustain - he learnt that feeling, and was able to visit it again but somewhat 'safer' - its a bit like peforming a re-boot and recalibrating what we think we can, and what we can't do.

Another sign of resistance to change is watching how people select their race programme each year. Of course, I know some people have favourite races, favourite courses or maybe their lifestyle means they HAVE to live in a set pattern. But I have observed times when this does not serve the athlete well. One athlete I worked with convinced themselves that they could not ride sporting courses, so type cast themselves as a drag strip, dual carriageway animal. Yes, they were very successful in that approach. But, having got to know there physiology, I could see a true opening for them to dominate other types of racing - the punchiness of their effort would have been great riding events on the Rudy Project time trial series for example. Take a look at your race programme for this season - how similar is it to last year? What could you do to be a little more adventurous? Being creatures of habit doesn't always serve us. It might keep us 'safe' but is sport about being 'safe' and competing INSIDE our limits?

Why do we hold back? The easy answer is fear - fear of failing, fear of what other people will say. Whilst I understand that fragility, we can use sport to make breakthroughs. It comes down to WHY we take part in sport. Our slogan at PBscience is "be the best YOU can be" - it asks our athletes to forget others, and to focus on making steps for themselves. When a new rider comes to work with me, I am proud by how much that tagline has reached out to them. To know that athletes want to work within that framework is what keeps me in coaching. Some of my best coaching moments are when I say to an athlete "I have an idea....there isn't much research to prove this works, but I have a hunch...." and they run with it. We set out to experiment with something new, and they totally invest in it. For example, I set Oli a rather 'out there' periodisation over the winter. This morning he submitted his training file with heart rate fitting a 50 mile TT, yet power at levels of his 10 mile races last year. Wow, those moments give me goose bumps and plenty to smile about. Likewise, Mike and I have been in email contact this morning regarding his latest training block - I've just floated a possible tweak we could make (based on a Helen Carter hunch again!) and he is game...I love it! Juliette is another example - I can throw all sorts of zany ideas at her and she loves it almost as much as I do.

One caveat with all this. I don't want to encourage throwing away established knowledge and being reckless. Any attempts to try something new must come from a solid underpinning of self awareness and history of prior knowledge. What do I mean by that? Well, its always worth spending time bedding down your training and racing behaviour over a few seasons and getting the 'expected' gains first. People like Mike and Juliette came to me from a history of marathon running: they know their bodies well, and have trained for many years. This allows me to experiment a little, because their bodies have already experienced a large amount of training performed in one way. Likewise, Oli being a coach himself means he understands where I am coming from - we can discuss the merits of the 'way out there' training approach and perform a "cost / benefit" analysis of types. I respect these people, willing to throw away the rule book and try something new. It is all about staying fresh, not being scared to change.