What sort of issues came up last season?
Clearly, injuries are a thing. If your training or schedule resulted in overuse injuries, you over-used something. This might seem flippant or overly simple, but it’s what happened. Your planning for the next season should address this. Most overuse injuries are due to doing too much volume, not too much intensity, so anything that hurt you should be addressed in your planning.
For example, I used to suffer from medial elbow pain that was exacerbated by (and probably caused exclusively by) pull-ups. At the time, I did pull-ups for 100+ reps a week across three or four sessions. Despite my pain and the knowledge that it was caused by the pulls, I just couldn’t make myself drop them—I thought they were essential to my training.
They were not. After nearly a year off of climbing and lots of pain, I realized I’d have to rebuild carefully. I went close to 8 years with no pull-ups, and when I brought them back it was with purpose. For climbing, I realized, I didn’t need to be able to do 15, I just needed to be able to pull hard once in a while. Now I do sets of two, twice a week, and am just as strong as I was 25 years ago. Also...when I feel like testing, I find I can still crank out 10-15 of them anytime.
Other issues can be scheduling problems. If you found sticking to the plan last year was a chore, moving your days around might be helpful. If you constantly change the plan, push training back, you might look at whether this training really is that important after all. The problem is this: badly executed training depresses our motivation, kills the effectiveness of the program, and creates a cascade of quitting going forward.
It’s much better to under-schedule and then add “bonus training” than to miss out on planned sessions.
Other issues can be phase lengths, weather problems, session logistics in the gym, commute times, and more. Think about what sucked in your plan last year, and address it ahead of time.
What do I want next year / season to look like?
