I believe that, in order for any challenge to be successful, you have to have some kind of plan. This should include the things that you need to do in order to reach your potential.
Reaching your potential does not mean being the best at everything. It means being the best that YOU can be. But you can’t just go out and be the best you can be AND meet your goals and objectives. Well, unless you set the bar so low that you can’t really describe your objective as a challenge (and there You need to train. How much training you need to do depends on how much of a challenge you have set yourself.
You might not achieve what you set out to achieve. Is that a failure? Does that mean that you have not reached your potential? I think that if you have given your best, then it cannot be a failure. Whatever you do, you have gone through a process and followed your plan. The outcome is the result of that process. If we succeeded at everything we did, we would not learn very much. But if we follow the process and do not get the result we wanted, we have learned a lot in the process. Those are lessons that you can take with you into your next challenge.
Success is about sticking to the process and not being afraid to fail at the end.
What is your goal?
This is an example of how I plan to complete a challenge. This is a real event which takes place on the 6th, 7th and 8th of July 2023. It is a three day ride between Cornwall and Somerset to raise funds for a Children’s Hospice South West.
The goal is what I want to achieve. I want to feel strong and comfortable over the duration of the ride.
This is the Specific part of a SMART target. You define what it is you want to do. In this challenge, I need to be able to ride a total of 225 miles over three consecutive days incorporating some big hills in the South West of England.
Is it Measurable? Yes – I need to be able to ride over 362km in 72 hours!
Is it Achievable? Yes – I have already done long days on the bike and significant distances. I have progressed to feeling relatively comfortable at riding 100km in a day when that distance would have been a huge challenge two years ago. I have ridden much further than that in a day, but not on back to back days where the ability to recover fast mentally and physically is very important.
Is it Realistic? Yes. For the same reasons – I have seen progression and, over time, have become more comfortable with riding longer distances regularly. There are practical steps that I can take to ensure that I can extend those differences over multiple days, so this is realistic.
What is the Time frame? The event is in early July, so that is my target date.
What will success look like?
I will successfully complete the distance in the time allowed.
I will be able to fuel myself and take on enough hydration to provide with enough energy and water to avoid dehydration or ‘bonking’. This is the cyclists equivalent of the marathoners ‘hitting the wall’. It is simply when your body is in energy deficit to the extent that it is unable to function without fuel. Think of trying to run your car without petrol. You will go nowhere! I need to ensure I am:
Recovering well enough overnight to be able to do it all again the next day without any major aches or pains.
Building the mental resilience to keep going when my mind starts telling me to stop.
Maintaining good aerobic fitness to keep me moving at a steady pace all day.
As well as good aerobic fitness, I need to be able to understand and use my energy systems wisely. This will enable me to manage things like climbing long climbs and steep climbs over the three days. I will write about energy systems separately because it is a really important element of understanding how we can train to maximise our energy and draw on the reserves only when we need them. This will keep me riding stronger for longer both physically and mentally.
The Plan
Now I know what I am doing, I can start to build a training plan to ensure that I can reach my goal. There are a couple of acronyms for this which set out the principles to consider when creating a training plan:
SPORT
SPORT stands for:
Specificity – building the strength and power in my legs and increasing my endurance capacity. This is what I specifically need to work on to achieve the goal. This can be done by building up the distances I ride and by some weight training specifically designed to target the muscles used in cycling.
Progression – increasing the intensity of the rides over time. This can be by gradually increasing the distances ridden each week and by gradually increasing the weights lifted over time. The word gradual is important here.
Overload – exposing my body to more stress than the usual progressive increase. This is more than a gradual increase. It should not be done in every session. I can do some intervals at a specific target power on the bike to push me out of my comfort zone which will force my body to adapt to using additional energy briefly, and recovering. For example, in the middle of a 3 hour steady paced endurance ride, I could do 30s at the hardest I can go x 6 with 5 minutes recovery when I am just pedalling easy between reps. This pushes me out of my comfort zone and beyond what I would normally do in a three hour endurance ride.
Reversibility – this is about recovery and making sure that you give your body sufficient time and nutrients for recovery and rest. If I don’t do this, my body won’t be able to adapt to the progressive or overloaded training. Adaption to training is what will make me stronger and more resilient. This is the hardest concept to understand when training. It’s not the smashing yourself into the ground in a work out that makes you fitter; it’s the adaption to the work AFTER recovery. If you don’t recover, you don’t adapt. But in reversibility, you need to know that too much rest or recover can lead to inadequate training and you might lose fitness or performance. The key is to make sure you are doing enough to trigger a stress response, but recovering enough to make an adaptation – and repeat!
Tedium – making sure that there is enough variation to keep me motivated and not getting bored. Being excited about the next training session is not a given. With a good and varied training plan and the proper application of these principles, I am usually keen to get back on the bike after a rest day and ready to go again!
FITT
This should be applied alongside the SPORT principles and means:
Frequency – how often do I need to train? I like to do five or six different training sessions per week. But I need to consider what these sessions should be so that I am not overtraining. This means trying to do a variety of sessions of different specificity.
Intensity – it is important to vary the intensity or the amount of effort involved in the training. It is not a good idea to do every sessions at the highest intensity or effort. For one thing, if you are building in some overload, you need to make sure that you are not going too hard to be able to go even harder from time to time. You also need to make sure that you are doing enough work to trigger a stress response in the body. And don’t forget your rest/recovery days!
Some high, moderate and low intensity training every week is best. I can measure this in terms of power in watts, or as a percentage of my maximum heart rate. For building aerobic fitness, I need to vary the intensity of the training, but a lot of the work will be done in my 50%-70% max heart rate zone.
For strength training, I can vary the weights, and/or change the number of reps.
Time – this needs to be different again, depending on the type of workout. It can be used to reduce recovery time in order to stress the body, or by doing more repetitions in a weight lifting session, for example.
Type – this is about what sort of exercise I should choose to get the right training response. The training response is the effect of the adaptation. For endurance, long steady rides are going to be a good staple. But some work on cadence and power will help with muscle strength and the connection between my muscles and brain – known as neuromuscular fitness. This improves the communication between the brain and the muscles and in repetitive movements it helps maintain good form and co-ordination over long time periods.
C O N S I S T E N C Y
This is not an acronym! For me, it is the cornerstone of my training. Without consistency, my plan will not work. This is the biggest commitment I can make to my training. To show up, on time, with motivation and the right attitude to complete my training session. If I do that, I am already successful.