A look at Focused Training Periods.

There were several posts written around the new year about setting up your training plan. The one thing that I wanted to stress to athletes at that time was that it is important to not only have outcome-based-goals, but to include some process-based-goals.

Recently, Nikki and I were in a meeting with some of the other personal trainers at Fitness Plus discussing goal setting. We were all brainstorming and discussing the idea of setting “SMART” goals for our personal training businesses, but it got me thinking again about goal setting for triathletes. If you are a goal oriented person and regularly review your annual training plan, then you may find an article titled “Reaching your Goals” on Inc.com informative.

How does this apply to triathletes?

If you are like some, then you may have spent a lot of time setting up your 2007 season – only to have it posted on your fridge as a decoration. The training plan should not be a nice piece of paper, it should be a guide or road map to your season.

The one thing that I believe is very helpful is to include “focused training periods” into your annual road map. (I have written about this previously – here.) There are several things that I like about focused training periods:

1. They help create smaller periods of time that allow an athlete to remember what is important NOW.

2. An athlete will have less of the “ahh, I still got 8 months before the race” mentality. The smaller periods can help improve your motivation.

3. It gives an athlete an excellent way to boost their ability in a specific sport or improve their weaknesses.

How about an example:

If you go over to my personal blog and read my post on the value of a basic week, you can view my (older version) annual training plan for 2007. What you’ll see is that I had a focused training period starting in November and ending on January 28th. That training period included three 4 week cycles primarily structured to get me swimming more (and more and more). That period ended and lead into an 8 week period focused on cycling.

One benefit that a coach or mentor can play is helping you define what those training periods should be focused on. For instance, I initially had a 4 week run and then a 4 week cycling focus. But after getting some guidance from Dean Hewson (who did Runovia and MedEx Mountaineer last year) I decided to put in an 8 week cycling focus and keep running frequency as a secondary goal.

Find ways to keep your focused periods focused!

I hate to swim a lot. A little here and there is manageable, but I have never been an athlete that likes to swim 20,000 yards a week. Knowing this about myself, I decided to find a way to keep myself accountable in January. So I signed up for the January Swim Challenge on slowtwich.com. Did it work? It did this month as I swam 147% of my stated goal by the end of the month. I know for a fact that had I not put in a swimming focused training period I would not have swam as much I did. I also know that if I didn’t set a few specific goals for that period I may not have been as motivated.

Staying Consistent.

The other thing that I like about focused training periods and breaking up the year into smaller pieces, is that it helps keep athletes consistent. The various characteristics that surround your focused period, such as: more motivation, smaller and specific goals, near term accomplishments – keep people consistent in their training. I personally feel that consistency is the “golden ticket” when it comes to improving as a triathlete. This is true especially for the time challenged person.

So what should your focused training period be focused on right now? Well I can’t give a blanket recommendation as we all need to improve on different things. I’m going to work on my cycling, I joined a “Run 28 times in Feb Challenge at slowtwitch” and I plan on getting my stroke analyzed by a coach. If you need some help or motivation, maybe you can get some ideas by reading my analysis titled “How to pass the suck threshold in triathlon” that I wrote the other day. (It’s amazing to see what it takes to pass the kicking ass threshold!)
Otherwise, we’re always here to help. (I think I need to get in another run……)

Gary Ditsch