Coach Carter

I have spoken a lot in the past about how much I prioritise communication. Since the New Year I have been encouraging my athletes to sign up for call time with me every week, and so far, I think both athlete and coach have found that a rewarding step: just 10 to 15 minutes each week in dialogue is so valuable to me because I can HEAR how an athlete is coping. And for the athlete, its a chance to feel supported and to discuss any issues cropping up. The more we speak, the more we are on top of the training plan....and the fewer surprises for both of us - I believe in "little and often".

Another way I communicate with my athletes is through their training diaries. The Training Peaks online diary system is fantastic for this: each time they log a workout, I get an email which not only includes their training data (and power output / heart rate file), but also their training diary comments. Across the athletes I coach, I get a variety of approaches – some give me a few words (“session was fine”); more verbose athletes give me a paragraph (or two). I always encourage people to do what feels best for them. Indeed, some days, there may not be any comments at all – normally because they haven’t had the time to write anything, or they may have felt the session was pretty eventless. On the whole though, I think those athletes that use more extensive journaling thoughts / feelings can access a lot more of my expertise and get more from me as their coach. If an athlete doesn’t say much in their diary (“session was fine”), I normally follow it up with an email asking “what does ‘fine’ mean?”...not to bring them to task, but more to understand how they felt – ‘fine’ can mean good to some, or just about satisfactory to others.

As a coach, its quite critical I know how the ride felt – of course, as a scientist I love seeing the stats on a ride: the average power, the heart rate, the way the two interact. And those stats tell me a lot of what I need to know about the progression of training. However, a rider returning 250W after a 2 hour ride can feel very different across two days – with no journal comments, I don’t know how it felt to hit 250W – easy, hard, too much? Context helps too – 250W rides are more stressful if I know of the insomnia the night before, the stomach bug, the cold. Diary comments also form the basis of my ‘tracking system’. I mentioned progression of training a moment ago – with no comments, its hard to look back over training history and note if / when the rate of training became sub-optimal, or in good old fashioned language “when did the wheels fall off”! Notes about not sleeping well, tiredness within rides, between rides, what else is going on in life, the first sensations of a ‘niggle’...when do these ‘tip’ into over-reaching, over-training, de-motivation, or injury? I would suggest that the information from our sub-conscious is often the info the coach needs to know more than data and stats! The information you don’t want to say out loud, or keep secret in fear of being stopped from training, targets being changed....THAT is what I need to know. Anything to help prevent those wheels falling off.

At the other end of the scale, training diary comments can also underline what was working well and when. Subjectivity adds to building the picture in scenarios like the taper, peaking, big volume training blocks.  And although I love reading a break-down of the ride, a commentary of what went well – I think even if no-one else reads your training diary, journaling reinforces the training and adds to motivation.

So, while everyone is inspired to be an even better version of themselves (come on, its only just turned into February, it can’t have worn off yet surely?) how about actioning these points:

• Write in your training diary every day, even when you are not training that day – how you feel on a rest day can often give clues about the balance of fitness / fatigue brought on by the training
• Detail any extraordinary factors outside of the training session – a late night, poor sleep, exceptional nutrition, life stresses
• How did you feel before, during and after the session? Did you prepare well, what would you have done better if you could run through that training day again?
• Do you feel you met the session goal? If yes, was it too easy? If no, what contributed to it? How do you feel about meeting it / not meeting it?
• How did the session compare to the last time you did something comparable (either recently or this time last year)? Benchmarking like this is a great way to underline the improvements being made.
• Flag up any aspects of the session you want the coach to home in on – like a particular climb you did. When looking over a 4 hour ride, its easy to miss detail. Remember, YOU were on the training ride, so draw out key moments and ask for an opinion.

Something I have noticed is the differing habits across my athletes regarding when they write their training diary. Some athletes write their diaries immediately post session, some later in the day. At the weekend, I was having coffee with one of my athletes Juliette - she told me how different her comments would be under these two scenarios. Its a balance - you need to write the diary while you still remember the session (i.e. the same day) but maybe with enough distance from it to evaluate the session objectively. I have a few athletes who load their training files and write their comments for each session at the end of the week. I'd prefer not to work in this way - from my end, it means firstly I have to analyse 5 or 6 files per athlete in one sitting (imagine me at the desk, finger tapping for 6 days with no files; 1 day under a mountain of data!); but more importantly, if I get files every day, I can help the athlete by feeding back and then feeding forward into the next session. Furthermore, leaving diary writing to the end of the week (although arguably more convenient) relies on an athlete's memory. I've been focusing my weekly reading time of late on the modelling of training, and in some papers addressing more the recovery aspects of life as an athlete, its interesting to read how critical training diaries are in monitoring training load. A great statistic the papers quote is how bad athletes are at quantifying training load: 24% overestimate, 17% underestimate! These results deteriorate as the time between the session and the recording increases.

So remember, the training diary is a learning tool for you, as much as it is a communication tool between athlete and the coach. I'm relying on some good training diary upkeep in the next fortnight as I leave half of my athletes back in the UK: in two days, I will be in Majorca, awaiting the arrival of the athletes on Saturday. I've decided to go over early this week to check out the weather, finalise the arrangements at the hotel, and organise the logistics of the camp. We've a great programme of talks and rides lined up this year, so I am very excited. On checking just now, the forecast is for temperatures of 15 to 16 degrees and sunshine - hopefully warm enough to get in to the mountains and enjoy some longer rides. I really sense my riders need some enjoyable miles - this winter has been extremely tough mentally with all the hours of training completed inside on the turbo: a mental release is needed. How do I know this? I've read it in their diaries of course ;-)