Dirty Inspirations

A coach-athlete relationship is critical in that your coach now and then reflects pieces of yourself back at you. You need to feel comfortable within that intimate process. I’ve worked with many adults who have been scarred for life from bad youth coaching experiences. They were not able to realize in adulthood that the inappropriate comments made to them as children were the coach’s interpretation of them and not necessarily reality. So they carried the scars with them through their adult athletic life, or worse, didn’t have an adult athletic life.

Endurance sports are a lifestyle that brings joy and pleasure to people’s lives in so many ways. Hiring a coach should in no way end that feeling you have for your sport. Your coach should enhance your training process by challenging you to bring even more of yourself to your sport—in a caring, human way.

Yet in this age of virtual coaching and dime-a-dozen certifications handed out to fitness professionals, selecting a coach can be as challenging as financing a home in the San Francisco Bay area. When considering acquiring a coach, it is first helpful to address what you want out of your coaching relationship.

*        What are your goals for your sport and what do you wish to learn from your coach?

*        Is there any ancillary training knowledge you wish to gain from this person?

*        How involved do you want your coach to be in your training, your everyday life? Do you only want a guided training program or additional hands-on or phone time with your coach?

*        How are you best motivated by others?

*        What personality style do you think would work for you? Write down qualities in a coach that would be favorable to you.

*        What is the background of the coach (race experience, education, etc.)?

*        Has the coach participated extensively in the sport in which you are to be coached? Is this important to you?

*        Are you interested in working with someone new to coaching or do you want your coach to have more time in the sport?

*        What level of athletes has he worked with? Having worked with elite athletes doesn’t necessarily make someone a solid coach. Many coaches who prefer to work solely with elites have poor people skills in coaching middle- to back-of-the-pack athletes. Coaching athletes of different ability levels requires a variety of skills because the mindset of each is unique.

*        What is your budget? There are many inexpensive generic training programs you can purchase on the internet, but they will be just that—a generic training program. If you desire a customized program and human interaction, you’ll have to pay a bit more.

With your answers to the above in mind, research available coaches and interview those who appear to fit the bill. Be proactive in the interview process, and use the above questions to guide you.

Next week I’ll present some important additional qualities I believe your coach should embody. Stay Tuned!

Training effectively in any endurance sport can be a complicated process. Just because you are an accomplished person in your life, career, and family, as well as a solid athlete doesn’t mean that you should know how best to fit your sport into your life in the most efficient manner. Some people will read books to garnish information to put together a program. But most will start that process with good intentions and then walk away due to decreased time or interest in the process.

If you are passionate about your sport but you are not passionate about figuring out how to do your sport—you’re in good company. No one said you had to be an expert at creating the perfect training program. But what you do owe yourself is a means of generating the best program for you. If a haphazard program is causing you to be over- or undertrained, injured, or underperforming, and you don’t have the time or interest in gaining the knowledge to create that optimal program, enlist a coach.

Many people who come to me for coaching already train in some manner, but they may not train properly for their ability level and time constraints. They may be reinforcing bad habits, training at ineffective intensity levels, or most likely they are the on-again, off-again athlete who has difficulty remaining consistent. These are very human issues and ones that can be easily rectified with a bit of guidance.

Next week I’ll discuss how to select the perfect coach for you. Stay tuned!

Part of planning a race season involves revisiting your athletic goals for the year. You may decide to stick to shorter events for the whole season or your whole career and continue to refine your speed and skill base. Or you may decide to hit your goal of finishing a shorter race early season, then plan to take on a longer distance event in the fall with an ultimate goal of doing an ultra distance event next season. In any case, planning your season starts with looking at your long-range goals, then sitting down and making a race wish list.

Your wish list will include the dates, names, and distances of all events you are interested in participating. If you are a triathlete, for example—in addition to triathlons—I recommend adding 10Ks, century rides, a backpacking trip with the family—anything that requires time, is physical in nature, or may affect your consistent training program. All of these activities will affect how you race and should be reviewed in total

Then categorize each event on your wish list into the following:

A races. These are the most important to you in reference to performance. You want to get a personal best or have a peak performance. Usually an athlete will have one to three A races a season. These are the ones you want to prime for.

B races. These are important but not enough to generate a complete taper for or plan your season around. You want to be relatively rested for a B race, but not necessarily in peak form. B races are excellent events to use as benchmark events—to test your fitness, try a new fuel plan, new bike, or race pace.

C races. These are events you want to do for fun, camaraderie, and as a diversion to training, but you are willing to train through them if needed to shoot for a better performance at an A or B race.

Now take a look at whether the events in total complement your ultimate goal of doing well at your A races. This means that you have weeks before your A races to generate some solid cycles of training and to be best set up for an effective taper.

Can you race too much? Yes. There is a school of thought that regular A races are just the kind of training you need in order to hit peak form. I disagree. Events are an excellent means to test your fitness in a strong physical, mental, and emotional effort, but in order to race really well in at least a few events each season, you need some recovery time prior to each race.

If you push hard in an A race, you need some recovery time post-race as well. Recovery time ranges from a few days to a week or more (for longer events) when you are diminishing the volume and intensity of your training in order to prepare for or recover from an event. If you do this too frequently—even twice per month consistently—you will lose some fitness.

If you are willing to train through (sticking to your build cycles pre- and post-race) someof your B and C races in order to keep a positive training progression, you may not lose fitness but you might be adding too much stress to your training regime.

Some like to race frequently because they enjoy the ambiance of an event, the or the racing community, and it gives them motivation to push hard. Those are excellent reasons for putting your money down. But if you desire one or two peak performances in your season, you are better off choosing a couple of A races in each season, then throwing in B and C events with some other form of training events added for spice.