Planning Is Fun
and...No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy
Around 20 years ago, I took on the USA Cycling Elite Coach certification. I had done the Club coach exam, which consisted of a manual you had to read and an easy test that followed the manual exactly. For $100, you’d get to call yourself a cycling coach. The next level of certification required that we attend a weekend event at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado. It was good, educational, and challenging to pass. It was more expensive, and this time, you had to invest more time, too. I waited a full year before signing up for the next certification. The Elite level was a 5-day commitment, was really expensive, and the word was that not too many people passed the test.
A beautiful spring weekend in Colorado Springs saw around 20 of us shuffle into a classroom, and sit down to three heavy lectures in a row on programming, nutrition, and anatomy. We took a lunch break for an hour, and when we returned to the room, the whiteboard held just a few words.
“34 year-old male. No major injuries. Currently trains 9 hours per week. Seven B/C level local races early season, Leadville 100 MTB midsummer, two long course race weekends in Florida in November. Works 40 hours. Home gym. Married. 2 kids.”
As we got situated in our seats, our instructor came in and simply said, “Please write out a year-long training plan for this athlete. You have 90 minutes. Two of you will be asked to present your plans at that time.”
I had already coached for several years at that point. I had taken a dozen certifications. But never before was I actually called to create a program, on demand, for a sport I don’t really participate in, in a room full of the best coaches in the sport. I probably should have been terrified, but I was psyched. Something about planning training really spoke to me. I loved the idea of plotting the progress. I loved the problem-solving. I especially loved dreaming of what the result might be.
It was a super-inspiring exercise, and although I didn’t get to present my plan, I felt like a great coach for those 90 minutes. I planned builds, interval progressions, recovery weeks, and race pace goals. I planned family time, food intake, and more.
The tough part of this whole process is this: the dreaming is easy. Adding a few percentages here and there is simple on a spreadsheet. The program, even a long and complicated one, takes only a short time to design.
The doing of the training, it turns out, can be downright impossible. In fact, many of my favorite quotes have to do with the doing being harder than the planning. The lesson, of course, is to plan “in pencil” and have a clear idea what to do if “this” or “that” happens.
And that was the big lesson in that classroom at the OTC: With each presentation, the instructor would comment, “Do you really think he can do those miles the day after an Interval Session?” “Would he need some family time in there somewhere?” “Could you do that workout?”
Here are four big mistakes we make in programming that are sure to derail our progress.
Formulas Are Not Our Friends
A lot of programming these days is done via a training app or spreadsheet. In order to simplify programming, coaches very often will use simple mathematical formulas to predict progression. The problem with this is that there is more to improving qualities of fitness than simply adding load or duration every seven days or whatever.
When we’re in the gym, we need to consider whether the progression makes sense that day, or not. True progress looks like a rising sawblade with ups and downs, and not a laser line of improvement.
The formula is a tool, but it is just one of them. Other tools to apply daily include assessing readiness to train, nutritional status, injuries or soreness, and overall psych.
Following The Program Exactly Is Usually A Bad Idea
I think the biggest blunder many motivated athletes can make is to build a sense of pride around always executing the plan as written. Most training plans are written months and months in advance, and we need to be aware that specific numbers and percentages and time goals are little more than guesses… Especially six months in advance! In almost every sport, we have a set of programming guidelines for advancing certain qualities of fitness.
For example, we might want to add one percent more load to a heavy lift every workout for an entire training cycle. Many athletes may be able to do this, but if an athlete gets sick, ends up, missing a workout, feels a slight twinge of injury—or what have you, that one percent might not be possible. If the spreadsheet says you have to do limit bouldering on Tuesday and your kid is home sick from school, you're going to have to turn your brain on and figure out what to do rather than force the issue on the bouldering.
I am all for fierce dedication to improvement, but unless you can be flexible and keep your fierce dedication to yourself, it's really just about ego.
Forgetting If-Then Rules
When we set out to do any journey, we all have a set of if-then rules—whether we know it or not. If we are driving a long distance, these rules might be:
“If I get drowsy, I’ll stop for a rest.”
“If the fuel drops below ¼ tank, I’ll stop for gas.”
“If there is construction on my route, I’ll look for an alternate.”
These all seem simple and obvious, but what if you were obsessed with that drive? What if doing that drive was what you woke up thinking about and went to bed dreaming of? What if, in the heat of the journey, you ignored your drowsiness because you wanted badly to get to your destination? Ignored the fuel light and watched the distance-to-empty number drop into the single digits? Went past the “road closed” sign?
This is similar to what we do in the gym, when desire, shame, and ego come into play. To help you along the way, it might be wise to actually write down some if-thens in the front cover of your training log.
Examples include:
“If I feel any sign of injury, I will immediately stop the session.”
“If my readiness is not at least an 8 of 10, I will not do a limit-level session.”
“My goal is capacity this month, so a reduction in intensity is OK as long as I aim for volume.”
“If the Moon Board is too busy, I will boulder in the main gym instead.”
If we carefully set these rules, and dedicate ourselves to following them despite our emotion at the time, our training ends up more effective in the long run.
Not Striking While The Iron Is Hot
Sometimes you are feeling really good and the training is clearly working. Although I am generally a very conservative coach, I do believe that if you're feeling great, it's time to make something happen. The other side to the formula rule above, you can occasionally do much more than the formula suggests, and feel great doing it.
I am not recommending going to the death in the gym—this gets to happen once every three months or so—rather, I am advocating for going 10-20% more than you’d planned on a day you feel great. We are biological organisms, not variables in a math problem.
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I remember Dr. Phil once commented how strange it was that young people would spend months and months planning their weddings but almost never thought about planning their marriage. The inability to look at the reality of what you’d planned is a common error in almost any endeavor, and getting past the dream and “into the trenches” is key to progress.
Pretending that somehow “this time is different” and I am going to try even harder than before is the behavior of a child. The reality is this: you are you. You’re going to try roughly as hard as you did last time, but maybe not quite as well since you’re now older, more tired, and busier. Know this, and address the training realistically. Know that the plan changes once you’ve been punched in the face, and stay the course…even if it’s not the course you’d dreamed up.