Getting better at endurance sport is about consistency and a training plan is the best way to ensure consistency. Periodization is required to optimally stress and adapt your body. Training plans created by an experienced coach will find the sweet spot between too much stress (overtraining and fatigue) or too much rest (under-training and little progress). This provides for the correct amount of stress and adaptation to achieve consistent training.
But damn! There are a LOT of training plans out there! So how do you know what plan you is right for you? Below, I outline six considerations we recommend thinking about when you’re looking at the large assortments of plans out there.
1. What is the nature of your objective? Are you looking to do something you’ve never done before and want to do what you can to make sure you can complete that effort? Or are you pretty sure you can finish it, but really want to be FASTER? While many plans will get you some combination of both faster AND able to go longer, it can be good to think about what you want and get a plan that caters to that.
2. How much time do you have? We all have limited time and want to get the most out of our training hours. Professional athlete’s training time is limited by their bodies, and us normal folks’ time is limited by things like jobs, families, social lives, etc. If we acknowledge this and account for it well, we can go a long way to picking a plan that works for us. It’s key to not JUST think about training time. If you have a 60 minute window, and a 60 minute workout, are you going to have time? Maybe, but probably not. It takes time to get out of that prior engagement, change clothes, and get out the door. And then it takes time at the end of your workout to transition back to your next task. As a result, we highly recommend adding at least 30 minutes to each workout to allow for transition time.
3. How much have you been training? If you have 20 hours to train a week, but you’ve only been training 10 hours a week, you should definitely not get a 20 hour a week training plan. The human body has a progression of workload at which it works best. Everyone is different, but this optimal progression is usually somewhere in the 5-15% (going from 10 hours per week to 11 hours per week) increase per week range, not 100% (going from 10 hours per week to 20 hours per week). To start, we recommend looking back at your recent training and pinpointing the last week you felt pretty good, and using that week’s hours (or less) as your starting point for your training plan. Starting slow will go a long way to making sure you can hit all the workouts in the plan well. It’s much better to go a little easier, and hit the workouts comfortably than to push yourself over the edge.
Please Note: The number of hours included in a given training plan’s title, includes the time allocated for endurance training. We suggest that you anticipate additional time for skills and strength training. For example, if you only have 10 hours/week, and strength/skills are a weakness, then we highly recommend getting an 8-hour plan!
4. When do you buy a plan? This may depend on the length of your race/objective. The required training looks very different between getting ready for a 2-hour race than for an 18-hour overnight mountaineering objective. It’s best to look for plans that take this into account, especially if your race is longer than 4 hours. Generally, we recommend higher volume plans for longer races, BUT as we talked about in point number 3, your recent training history should be taken into account. If you know you have a big race coming up in the winter, and it’s fall now, then you should probably start building your volume up now! As a general rule, we recommend starting as early as possible. This gives you time to progress slowly enough to be sustainable and room to have setbacks and still achieve your goal.
In order to take these factors into account, we made new plans for this Fall/Winter. Our BUILD plans are aimed at getting someone back into shape, OR preparing for a very long winter objective. After a Fall BUILD plan you can either continue to build up to a large objective with a FINISH plan, or for shorter objectives, pick a FAST plan.
If your Summer of training has gone pretty well, and you know you’re going to have some shorter, faster objectives in the fall, then our Fall FAST plans are for you! Then you can roll into the winter ready for a FAST plan geared towards getting you ready to go at your best speed!
Please Note: We use a coaching software called Training Peaks for our coaches and athletes to communicate. If you have any questions about this software or would prefer a different delivery method of a plan, please email us at info@summitenduranceacademy.com.
