My number 1 rule for all self-coached athletes
Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments
One success factor that I have observed from all of my training partners, elite age group athletes and professionals is Consistency. It is what they do day in day out, week after week and then eventually year after year that separates them from their competition more than any other factor.
It is not one workout that has made any of these athletes successful but it is the workouts that they do every single week that make them fitter, faster and stronger. By observing this and witnessing it first hand in my own personal development as an age group athlete, it is my number 1 rule for all self coached (and my own coached) athletes.
Triathlon as a sport is relatively young but participation levels are growing exponentially. The vast majority of this growing population are typically working full time and are balancing training with managing a family.
This makes consistency all the more challenging, but I am going to share with you some of my top tips on making sure that you are able to remain consistent and keep a happy family.
Build a repeatable week
My absolute number 1 tip for maintaining consistency across a season and then eventually over a period of years is building a week that can be repeated over and over again. The most important part to building this repeatable week is that training is added to it last.
Here is my step by step guide to building such week:
Select a calendar that you will use most (Google, Training Peaks, Pen & Paper)
Add in your work hours including your commute to and from the place of work
Add in your dedicated family time (a non-negotiable)
Add in certain times that you may do other day to day activities that keep the house and family ticking
The remaining “workable” time slots that you have left are the times that you can dedicate to training on a regular basis (some weeks could be slightly more or less)
“Workable” meaning that you do not compromise sleep, recovery, family and work
You now have an idea of the amount of training time that you can dedicate to your goals that can cover a period of weeks, months and even years.
The CTL line below (blue line) indicates that the athlete is making progress as it rises slightly each week after a period of illness. This is a good example of a repeatable week being implemented and as a result fitness being increased week upon week.
Remove poor choices
To support building a repeatable week and maintaining consistency, you need to remove yourself from distractions and poor choices. Depending on how serious you are about achieving your goals, this will either be a temporary position or a lifestyle change.
Some of the most common poor choices or distractions that I see in age group athletes:
Compromising sleep
Poor nutrition choices
Consistent social events during the weekends impacting on the weeks training
Racing too often
Training too hard
Not trusting the process and changing between protocols
Taking on additional pressures or commitments
Not testing regularly to see if the training response is working
Build a team
At times triathlon can be a lonely sport due to the individual needs of the athlete. If you are a coached athlete, then you have the luxury of someone keeping check on you and holding the mirror of accountability up.
If you are a self coached athlete, the next best option to this is to form a mini training group. That group should be small and of similar ability but with different strengths, weaknesses and experiences. Here’s why I believe building a team is important:
Accountability - find a group who are going to be as committed as you are. On the days that you don’t feel like training, the group accountability will keep you honest and turning up to the session.
Shared knowledge - Each person that you train with provide you with an opportunity to learn. It is important that the group has a mixture of abilities and training ideals for this to really improve your knowledge. There would be little point in training with a group of individuals who all think the same and have the same strengths and weaknesses.
Session goals are more important that individual - Every member of the team will have a different goal or expected outcome for the session. If you are hitting them goals as a group, the whole team is improving. If you are hitting the goals by smashing the other members of that group then you are having a negative impact on the groups progression.
Set Goals
An easy way to stay motivated is to set small, medium and long term goals. These will provide you with the motivation to remain consistent during the long training blocks of basic but repeatable actions.
Quite often, the basic work is dismissed as the “boring” or “supporting” work but in my opinion it should be titled the critical work. This type of work you should be able to do in good volume, over and over again that allows for the “key sessions” to take place.
An athlete who recently joined me has taken his FTP numbers up from 283 to 301 in a matter of 6 weeks. There was no secret to the work that we have been doing, or he has been doing. We have simply been hitting the sessions consistently and he now has the understanding that the early season easy work is the foundation for the harder efforts.
The athlete has been injury free, making progress weekly, enjoying his training and can see improvements through numbers and feel. This type of progress has been the result of having a repeatable week, sticking to it and being patient.
The FTP or testing weeks are just small goals during a training block that keep him motivated. Over the course of a season these turn to B races and then eventually A races with performance goals.
To summarise:
Consistency is King or Queen
Build a repeatable week
Hit your goals day after day, week after week
Seek small gains rather than hero sessions
Build a team to develop, learn and grow
Set goals that keep you motivated and improve your commitment to the repeatable week
Change the word boring to critical