Scheduling

People daydream about all sorts of things.  Cars, sex, money, and bike porn.  It was about 4:15 yesterday (at work) when I had this moment of clarity.  I was dreaming of scheduling or more specifically, “the best training program ever made”.

Working with myself and two other athletes gives me a lot of feedback on how to make a good program. The one analogy that I like is “Two steps forward  and one step back”.  Basically each week helps take you a little further.  It’s very common for people to do the opposite of this.

There are things each year that everyone training for a specific goal should have: Strength (gym work, core, technique and basic abilities), Aerobic (the bulk of endurance training) and Race Specfic Training (track work, high intensity building).

Further each of these topics can be broken down in to sub categories which I believe fall into three groups: endurance, power and speed.  In my opinion training should build in this direction as well.  Endurance than power and then speed.

Endurance lays the base for which you can start hammering out faster sets.  Power creates a strong explosive self which than translates into quicker movements.  Lastly, speed is what you need on race day to produce your goal time.  Each of these relies on the other to build a stronger body.

Getting back to the main 3: strength, aerobic and RST, they also depend on one another.  Each of these depend on the time of year and where you set your goals.  Starting your strength training makes sense to do early in the season.  RST is obviously built into where your races are.  Aerobic is scattered throughout.

So in my day dream I decided to take a few minutes to write down a generalized schedule of what I would do for an entire year.  I looked at each of the 3 main groups and broke then down into how many weeks should one designate to each.

Strength I gave 14 weeks (8 endurance, 4 power and 2 speed).  Almost 3 months of the year would be used to build your body into a bull like machine.

Aerobic I gave 28 weeks (16 endurance, 8 power and 4 speed).  This as I said is the bulk of endurance type training.  Having a strong base in this will make you a better athlete year round.

RST I chose 8 weeks (4 endurance, 2 power and 2 speed).  This is one that I would tinker with.  When racing comes adjustments will need to be made to what an athlete needs to get better.

I totaled this up an guess what?  50 weeks.  Add in 2 weeks vacation and you’ve got yourself a year.

Now the hard part is knowing/guessing when to train and for how long.  This is the most frustrating thing when you get it wrong but the best feeling when you get it right!

I’m going to continue to add to this, breaking each sub category further into what workouts will help make you better.  If anyone has suggestions or questions please leave a comment.