Coach Carter

As a coach, I get to watch the whole range of emotions and behaviour evolve in my athlete group. One moment training diaries speak of great motivation and excitement; the next day that same person can be reporting incredible difficulty in hitting the training targets and not seeing the point of it all. The ebb and flow of our lives is a normal part of being human, but in some way sport manages to intensify it, like living your life under a microscope or in a pressure cooker.

I anticipate the athletes facing great challenge in sticking to their chosen path, but normally it comes in to the New Year – the dark months of January, post Christmas dip – very common. But this year, it seems to be happening now: understandable given the weather this past week, concerning because some people have only just got back on the training trail. My job as coach is to support them through the ‘troughs’ and get them back on to the ‘peak’ feelings as soon as I can.

No individual is the same: I get a wide range of responses to the same situation. Take this weekend – most of my athletes were driven indoors to train. Some of them looked at their training plan, saw 7 hours of endurance riding to do and just carried out the plan to the letter – the secret being (in my opinion) not giving yourself a chance to question whether to train. When I was competing, if I saw an impending bad weather I would set my bike up on the turbo the night before. The next day, I would set about my normal pre-training routine and rather than get dressed up in multiple layers for the cold, I would gather a towel, a fan, twice as many bottles of fluid and boot up my PC to watch a DVD. I just got on the turbo, rode the 3 hours and job was done. In some ways I would appreciate the benefits of turbo time – less likely to puncture, likely to stay warm, no incidents (although Nathan telling me that it is not possible to ride on rollers with your eyes closed gets me worried!).

Indeed, I learn a lot about my athletes in how they approach these obstacles. I had one athlete last winter who complained about having to turbo. He let the uncontrollable nature of the weather get to him – like it was nature having something against him personally! Whilst he struggle to clock 2 hours in 3 days, another of my athletes didn’t complain a jot about doing 10h in the same time period. Who had the better season? I’ll leave you to figure that one out I don’t condemn people that find it tough – but  its worth contemplating how many others are in the same boat. Knowing YOU are the one who can get on the turbo, or ride in the wind and rain, get up at 5am before working a full day: come the season, you have one up. I loved the stories of Daley Thompson training on Christmas Day because he felt it would give him an edge over other competitors.

There are other ways to motivate yourself, as athlete Mike illustrates here!

Its not even about who wants it the most – the athlete I mentioned earlier WAS deeply committed to his training. Maybe what was missing was a goal motivating enough to spur him on when things got tough. Its another reason I try to get people’s goals solidified as soon as possible in the year. I also believe that athletes who take time to understand the WHY behind training also get an edge. Knowing why keeping at pace with the training plan progression now holds you in such good stead – without sufficient base training, the rest of the plan becomes very fragile. Thankfully, my athletes benefit from having a coach who knows what sacrifices it takes to get the most out of yourself. Maybe I was fortunate to have the mentality I had towards training: but ultimately the athlete chooses if they want to do it or not – I can encourage, but I can’t do the work for them. “Choices have consequences”.

Even if the course of winter training looks to be running smoothly, it is still incredibly challenging to keep yourself on track and make sure you are ticking all the boxes in developing yourself as an athlete. I had chance to consider this last week when Dan and I were preparing another in the PBscience factsheet series. A few weeks back, Dan had come up with the topic of “Off season nutrition” as being a useful one for us to address. He sent me 3 papers which we were to discuss in our weekly professional development slot. That session didn’t take place because of the snow! But, we made sure that PBscience wasn’t derailed and talked about it over email and telephone. I made Dan laugh, as yet again I threw all my ideas in to a mindmap – he is not a fan of this way of brainstorming, but for me it helped me draw together all the challenges an athlete faces in fuelling winter training:

• Losing weight or increasing lean body mass
• Adequately fuelling the long winter rides
• Covering the aspects of metabolism that will later improvement performance
• Protecting the immune system to stay healthy and keep the consistency of training

Using an example may help illustrate this. Take “Joe Velo”, a rider who wants to focus time on a 100 mile trial next season. He knows the course is undulating, and we both believe he could benefit from losing weight over the winter. Last season did not go 100% to plan, as he spent a lot of time in the off season being ill with a chest infection. Two things immediately spring to mind – firstly, the weight loss will require him to be in calorie deficit. Using less carbohydrate in training might make his fat utilization more efficient, but it might compromise ride intensity and his immune system which we know to be weak. Losing weight might also lead to perturbations in his hormone concentrations: cortisol rising, maybe testosterone decreasing. The former might prevent good sleep patterns, and the latter may interfere with training adaptation. What do you prioritise? There isn’t one best answer to this – the coach / sport scientist has to weigh each factor up, and be very aware of how each might affect performance come the racing season. How important is losing 2 vs 4 kg on race time? Is it worth compromising the training effect vs the performance increments coming from weight loss? If the training effect is more beneficial, shouldn’t we protect the immune system so that consistency of training each week is secured? Our factsheet will give some practical advice, so PBscience athletes watch this space!

If I could sum up winter’s training, and the prevention of wheels (as well as heads!) falling off I would ask athletes to keep two key words in mind – the first is “consistency”. Water can erode very hard rocks, but it takes repeated action over and over. A moderate amount of training each week is better than hard training one week and being burnt out the next. Second word is “resolve” – training IS hard. But, its no harder for you than anyone else. If you have a goal that motivates you, this is probably quite straight forward. If you are finding the motivation lacking, take a look at your goal. You need something to fire you up, or this will be a VERY long winter!