Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Simple Steps for Planning Your Season

Here's an article I wrote for TrainingPeaks on how to plan your season, simply and effectively. I think you'll find it helpful if you're looking to find that breakthrough.

Admit it. You’ve seen patterns in your training and racing, and how the results are affected. There’s a time of year you find yourself “killing it” in training and races. There are other parts of the year where you struggle, battle plateaus, mentally struggle, and can’t seem to find the magic on race day that you found in other times of the year.

Phases and Concepts

It’s time to review your planning for those seasons, (or lack of planning), and try to learn from the patterns and plan your training so you can avoid the roller coaster. Ideally, a season shouldn’t have many up and downs, but sometimes a step back at the right time, both mentally and physically, can prevent big peaks and valleys. I prefer to use three phases when planning: Transition (period of recovery between seasons), General Preparation, and Specific Preparation. These will be discussed in more detail below.
In addition to planning out your season in phases, you need to look at a two key concepts that we know about training- variance and specificity. Both are necessary in order to plan your season effectively.
You can read the rest of the article here. I hope you enjoy it!

Coach Vance

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