Notes : On My Mind

I’ve been enjoying writing lately, so if you enjoy reading then that’s a pretty good match.

Here’s some more things that are on my mind currently.

Doing The Work

An oldie but a goldie. You can’t fake getting the work done. There’s a lot of individual needs when it comes to programming an athlete for their goals. Length of race, goal time, experience, ability across each discipline, time available to train …just to name a few. But the goal is the goal and that requires a certain level of training. The coaching then becomes coaching the athlete through that training. Not diluting it. Holding firm to do the work needed so the athlete can be confident they are ready.

Less Talk : More Do

A little bit along the lines of the above but as a coach I’m leaning more into “less talk” believe it or not. As a coach that loves communication there has to be a level of “just do it”. Whether the run is on the treadie or the road, the bike is done in the hills or the flats, the nutrition is 80g/hr or 100g/hr. It’s all noise that can dilute us from “doing” our training. In fact, this is something that’s a challenge for me more than maybe you as I can be someone that wants to over-communicate more than under.

Objective : Subjective

As a coach that strives to always challenge myself to continue to evolve I am moving a little to prioritise my mornings to be objective first and then subjective next. This means looking files across all athletes first and be filled with facts before I read subjective thoughts from athletes that may put a post-activity comment in. At this stage it’s working well.

I Was Surprised

I had a chat with an athlete last week where I spoke about how I can get a little obsessive over programs as I am designing them and have to make sure I just pull the trigger in the end and manage any small errors in the process over the following days. The athlete was a little bit amazed that I dont use libraries of past workouts which is what surprised me. I just have a few basics tucked away to add if needed but every week is new. The saying goes that the athlete never swims through the same river twice as you are a different athlete and the river is also never the same. As a result, they were motivated by the fact of how much care actually goes into the program.

August Training

With July behind us training looks a little less “base” like and now has a truer “build” feel to it. Less Vo2 and more threshold, tempo and aerobic work. This moves us a little bit away from polarising easy and hard and takes us into a pyramidal training intensity distribution across all intensity domains. Sessions will progress with minutes at intensity and that can also be identified by the planned TSS. Incremental building but signaling to our bodies that we are going towards race season and we will be asking it to adapt.