Coach Carter

Yesterday morning, mid stretch I heard the words of my Yoga teacher "be honest with your body. Take yourself to what your body can do today, no more". I smiled, and reduced the pressure on myself to work deeper...my hips were very grateful! From a few conversations I have had with athletes in the past week, I was already intending to make my blogpost on 'being gentle and patient' - this experience reinforced it as a valuable topic to share.

In my experience, having a training plan can be a double edged sword. Of course, I will always advocate that anyone motivated to achieve a goal should a) have a plan and b) stick to it as much as possible (if the latter cannot be applied, a plan needs to be re-drafted NOT be 'caught up' on, more on that in a minute). However, for all the benefits it brings, one has to remember that no plan is perfect: the work of the coach is to generate the plan; the athlete applies the plan; the coach and athlete work together to analyse the plan; and refinements are made. A continuous feedback / feed forward loop. One to one coaching allows that; fixed plans don't (THAT is what people pay for when opting for a coach over what they get on training plans bought 'off the peg').

Invariably, things happen in life that mean the original plan needs to be re-worked: injury, illness, family commitments, work pressures. I spend about 3 hours annually drawing up a periodisation schedule for each of my athletes - I would say half of that is re-scheduling! The same is true with the constituent training blocks - thank goodness for Training Peaks as an online diary system, as it allows changes to plans on a day by day basis very easily. However, when an athlete's progress on the plan is delayed (injury, illness, work etc) it is not as simple as people might assume - we don't just 'cut and paste' to move things back. There has to be a consideration of how much time has been missed, the impact this has had, and the time between resuming full training and the goal event. Indeed, does the goal event itself have to be altered? Short breaks to training mean we can normally just slip things back a week with small tweaks to sessions to enable the athlete to pick up where they left. If the best part of a full training block is missed / interupted, its then we have to go back to the drawing board and change the periodisation.

Those are the mechanics: the black and white of it. Some athletes can see that perspective, and are very realistic about what has happened, and the consequences. This morning, I read a comment made by Thomas Voeckler on his busy winter with the media setting back his training plan. “I’m not panicking,” he said. “I’m starting from further behind than normal...my path has taught me that work always pays off.” There is a temptation that we are 'behind' where we 'should be'. But who is saying that? What is the comparison? What is the evidence for 'being behind'? Behind 'what' exactly? The worst thing an athlete can do is to try and play 'catch up'. Train harder to get back where they think they should be. Even taking just one week off means a re-think. If anything, it is better to go back two weeks - this takes in to allowance not only the time you have 'missed' but also the impact of the time off itself. This isn't through a fear of being 'detrained' (you would need more like 2 weeks off to really lose anything); its more to make sure you move through the progression of a training block. For example, a rider missing a week of their zone 3 work might be best going back to the 3 x 10 minute rides they did in the week before time off than to try and step back on to the original plan and now be completing 2 x 20 minute blocks. The key is - don't panic, don't force things.

I have explained previously on this blog that year on year progress is not linear, nor comparable. That is one danger of having the same race goals and season each year - it is inevitable that comparisons are made. "This time last year I was holding 230W in this block". On top of that, goals within the periodisation schedule get grasped on to - like hitting a power target is life or death. I'll let you in to a little secret....its not ;-) Coming back to my yoga example, subconsciously I was probably thinking "last week I was holding a deeper stretch, I must get there...I must make progress". I once did an Ashtanga yoga session - in fact my first taste of yoga. That was the first error, the second being doing the class one week before the National Track Champs! Being a competitive athlete, I was looking around and seeing 'un-athletic' people 'doing better' than me. I endeavoured to not be the worst in the group. What is sometimes called 'competitive yoga'. Looking back, I can see how the athletic ego was at work. I'm very different now, and know that I can only do what my body can do. The episode this week was a very subtle one, where I came back to the real reasons I do yoga extremely quickly. There is no competitiveness with others in my practice, but still at times I am learning to be more gentle with 'me'.

I would like all my athletes to develop this quality. When we fall behind where we would like to be, it is understandable to have to deal with that practically and emotionally. It may sound mellow dramatic, but there is in fact a need to 'grieve' the loss. Having to take 8 weeks off my plan in the 2005 season, the hardest thing was accepting I wasn't going to be ready for the National Champs, letting it go. Once I did, the pressure was off - and I was able to re-plan for the back end of the season. The new plan worked, in fact I reached my highest levels of performance in my career up to that point :-)

Some of my athletes have been hit by flu; by crashes; by work pressures. Holes have developed in their Training Peaks diaries where sessions have been missed. There is nothing we can do about lost training. Firstly, we have to let go of the missed work; secondly we have to accept where we are now. No amount of stressing or angst can change those two things. Pushing a heart rate above target in order to hit the original power is not going to make up for the 'holes'. In fact pushing is the WORST thing we can do...it can change the nature of the training stress and actually blunt our progress. Instead, think about self-care, treating ourselves like we would treat our best friends. Athletes aren't great at this - there is a semi-masochistic tendency in a lot of athletes. "If it isn't hard, its not doing me good". But, as hard as training can be sometimes (and needs to be sometimes), the bigger picture of training is how it should be bringing joy to our lives, not pain or angst. Learn to be more gentle.

I was discussing this on my ride today with Juliette. As I mentioned last week, she has recently been diagnosed with lympheodema. It has meant a lot of soul searching and patience on her part. And, whilst we have aims for each session and each training block, she has learnt through this experience that "if it isn't there, it isn't there". For her now, she splits her training into 3 chunks - the two runs per week (which help manage the swelling); the 2 long rides per week (where ride duration is the overload); and her 2 shorter rides (where we look to be making steps up, and ride intensity becomes the overload). She has found this approach to release some pressure - and I added that a lot of people could benefit from the same mentality for their training. There are a whole bunch of reasons why our bodies can produce a certain amount of watts on one day, and then less / more on another. Just like one swallow does not make a summer; neither can a rider's fitness and progress be defined by one week of training, let alone a single session! In my own training days, whilst 200W for mid zone 3 was always my objective measure of where my fitness was, on some days I would be seeing 195W for 155bpm, on other days 205W. The key is not berating yourself when you are 5W down (and actually, not thinking you have a breakthrough when you find another 5W!). Just like Rudyard Kipling teaches us, treat both imposters the same.

Finally this week, a big congratulations to Nathan for taking the first win of the season for Team PBscience! You can see details of the Rollapaluza roller racing evening hosted by our partners the Tristore (and indeed some great photos) by visiting the Rollapaluza website.