With the new year right around the corner, it also means that race season is quickly approaching. I have been contacted by multiple athletes over the past month regarding if they should be coached this next year or not. Here are the things that a coach can help with and why you need to find the best fit for you!

Finding the Right Fit
 When seeking out a coach, it should resemble a job interview. Each coach has a different twist on how they interact, coach, plan, break down movements, etc. Due to all of these perspectives, each coach is going to have a different philosophy and create a unique culture of training that is a reflection of them as a coach. Just as in your job interview, you need to ensure that the fit is right so both parties can be happy and operate to their potential. Coaches may differ in:
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Philosophy of training (long and slow, short and fast, etc)
Generic vs Custom (is your plan prepared by the month, or catered to your schedule?)
Utilization of Data (do you go off of pace, or are you using Power and Heart Rate)
Periodization vs General Fitness (are you building and peaking, or do you want to keep base fitness?)
Goal Setting
Sports Psychology 
Authoritative/Submissive/Cooperative (does your coach tell you, work with you, or give in to your demands?)
ETC ETC ETC. 

 You will begin to realize that while coaches are offering you the same end result, how you get there could be different and that process may affect your motivation along the way. 

What a Coach can Help With. 
 When getting a coach there is an obvious thing that you’re taking away right off the bat. This is going to be your training plan. Now how that plan looks may differ, but every coach I know gives training plans. This training plan will lay out all the workouts needed to achieve your goals in an effective manner. 
  After the training plan though, your coaches worth really starts to show through. I can only speak for myself here but these are some of the areas that athletes have noted growth in. Using your coach as a resource in terms of equipment optimization to ensure that you didn’t just buy a $5,000 bike and actually get slower. Also, when working with a coach you should have a solid goal setting process in place where your coach is able to break down the outcome oriented objective into small attainable pieces to help you throughout the process. To ensure goals are being met, your coach should be breaking down and analyzing your workouts through the data you are uploading. By tracking the data, your coach is ensuring your build and specific training for specific goals you’ve laid out. 
  While there are many areas a coach can help with, all of the areas above are catered around your physical performance. Another great tool though that a coach can bring is the ability to help with your sports psychology. Are you visualizing your event and working on relaxation or motivational cues? Do you know where your optimal level of performance is (stress levels?) Are you consciously aware of these things in training and past race performances? Are you continually building your mental toughness and “flow” state for future performances? Again, when being coached, this is a great tool that you can draw on and discuss with a coach. 

Cost of a Coach
This is something that many athletes struggle with. However, one of my athletes, Peter Post, said it best. Athletes will spend $8,000 on the newest training equipment and gain 30 seconds over a 40km TT. However, they will bat an eye at using a coaching service that could save them 3-5 minutes over a 40km TT and cost them $2k-3k/year. To put this into context, let me break down an effective Time Trial bike with money left for coaching. 

Option A:
$8,000 bike because its cool and you train with friends and by yourself doing what you’ve always done
Result A: FTP (power figure) stays the same (250 for this example) and rider goes from 1 hour 40km TT to 59:20 TT


Option B:
Cervelo P2 used ($1800)
Aero Helmet ($250)
Deep Front wheel and training wheel with disc cover ($1500)
Race tires ($120)
Race tubes ($20)
Front end brake to clean up front end ($300)
Power Meter ($1000)
Race skinsuit ($250)
Coaching for 1 year ($2400 < Dalzell Coaching LLC cost)
Result B: FTP jumps from 250 to 310 over the year. Rider goes from 1 hour 40km TT to 55 min 40km TT and wins Cat ¾ state time trial championship
+ Saves money


Option C: 
Keep your same bike
Upgrade Race tires + Tubes ($140)
Power Meter ($1000)
Pay Coaching for 1 year ($2400)
Result C: Increase FTP by 60 watts and crush all your friends at your training rides, be competitive in races. 
+ save $4,440

Conclusion
  A coach is going to take you to that next level and push you beyond your current levels of fitness. While the training plan is great for accountability and not having to spend hours creating it yourself, a coach is much more than that. You are going to gain insight into the sport that makes you much more effective with your time and helps you achieve your goals that were only ever dreams before. While the new $8000 bike is fantastic to look at, you are still going to have to pedal it. Forget the high end bike for now, invest in your own engine instead.

Peaking for your Race
  Over the past 6 weeks we have discussed how to ride safely on roads when first starting out, how to build fitness, setting goals, setting training zones, periodization, and specific training. It is a lot to take in, but it is also the recipe for success. However, have you ever tried a recipe that was just lacking that extra kick of taste? That is what the peak is for your race.  Don’t put together the entire recipe and forget that little extra kick… learn how to peak at the right time. 

Taper
  This is a word that a ton of athletes like to use when preparing for races. You may hear it in the terms of a 3 week taper, 2 week taper, 10 day taper, or 1 week taper. For athletes that understand how to taper correctly, it can be a very effective tool for optimal performance. However, for a majority of athletes they tend to think of this as just “rest” and often become stale in the process. The goal of any taper is to keep fitness high, but limit fatigue that was placed on the body. This is done through a calculated manner which is discussed below. 

Limit Fatigue
  If you have been following the blog series all the way through, then you are well aware of training zones, TSS, and the stress on the body that training creates. The taper is when you put all this data together to ensure a peak in “freshness” and overall fitness. It needs to be stated that Dr. Coggan came up with this method of tracking data and I will do my best to describe it in an effective manner. 

  With every workout you do, your body takes on additional stress which results in both fitness gains and fatigue accumulation. The goal of training in the build period (periodization) is to build fitness. This will without a doubt create fatigue that starts to accumulate. As your fitness gets higher and higher, you are becoming more and more fatigued with each workout. When you enter the taper phase, your goal is to reduce all of the fatigue while still maintaining your high level of fitness that you achieved. This often means that you are still working out (not resting) but rather training at a low level which allows the body to recover but also maintain that work you put in. This is where many amateurs mess up. If you rest too much you become stale (too much freshness) but if you don’t rest enough you go into a race without being 100%. (see picture for taper, yellow line is freshness)

How Much Rest Should I have
  This really depends on the duration of the race and the demands of the race. Just like all the other data points, there is a number associated to freshness. 0 would be neither fresh nor fatigued. -25 would be a fatigue level that would be expected during a build. +25 would indicate an individual is very fresh and has reduced overall training load.  When racing, each distance has different levels that are associated with optimal success, but you would like to see an “A” race, regardless of distance, somewhere in the +10 to +25 range.  Anything over +25 and you start to get close to being “stale”. Again, look at the picture above and note fatigue during the build and the freshness going into race (IMTX).

Why Data is Great
  I realize I stress data a lot and that is because it makes training very objective. Yes there are days when subjective feelings should be noted and you may not train off numbers. In fact, there should be days like this. However, when training for a serious event and trying to peak performance, data points create a process driven training plan that can take a lot of the guessing and stress out of it. Training becomes very easy when you start to trust the numbers and know that I have to hit 100 TSS today and I have to be at +20 freshness going into my race. All of your worrying about taper, training correctly, specifics, etc, is taken out of the equation. For someone who used to constantly worry about if I was doing enough, it has made training much more enjoyable and concrete. I urge you all to start digging into the data world if you aren’t already there. You’ll be amazed at how straight forward and effective it can be!

Subjective Disclaimer and Conclusion
 After all that talk about data, you still need to be in tune with your body. This is where the art of coaching comes in and something that I really can’t put into words. The principles and theories are out there for us to use, but the art of coaching will always remain as individuals have different life circumstances and demands. This is the beauty of it all and why I’ve fallen in love with this career. At the end of the day, you can understand all of the data I’ve provided and theories on training, but you still have to make it work for you. That is why athletics will always remain great and a true challenge. How do you mix the theories into your life. That is the million dollar question!

Specific Training = Success
 In blog #4, I outlined periodization and when you should be doing unfocused (non-specific) and focused (specific) training for your goals. It is important to understand there are periods of the season for both and that prolonged periods of time spent specifically training can result in overtraining or burnout. The purpose though of this blog will be to focus on specific training and what it means for each discipline. 
​
Aerobic Exercise and its Many Forms
Aerobic exercise (exercise with oxygen) is what most of us think about when we think of endurance events. The biggest limiter for athletes in any endurance setting is their aerobic engine which consists of a base, threshold, and capacity (V02). The higher or more miles an individual has in their aerobic base, the better overall fitness, the higher the threshold means the athlete is getting faster, and the higher the capacity means the higher the ceiling for success (speed and fitness). All of these things work together but yet different races have different specific demands. This can get confusing but I’ll do my best to break it down here. 
If we go back to our zones that I discussed in blog 4, we can see what percentage of lactate threshold (1 hour max power output) is associated with which specific training:
Z1: Recovery 0-60%
Z2: Aerobic Endurance 60-75%
Z3: Tempo 75-90%
Z4: Threshold 90-105%
Z5: Aerobic Capacity (V02) 105-120%
Z6: Anaerobic Capacity 120-150%
Z7: Neuromuscular 150%+

So lets break down specific training in the form of Ironman training. Ironman is interesting because it will actually utilize Z2/3/4/5 in its training to maximize the aerobic engine, but actual race day demands should all be in the z2/3 range. So here is how training would look for that in a specific manner. 
#1 The biggest limiter to speed for the Ironman athlete is their threshold levels. The higher the threshold level of an athlete, the more watts they can put out in Z2/3 specific race day performance. The more watts they put out, the faster they go. So the strategy from the start for Ironman racing is to build their z4 levels as high as possible before race day. 
#2 While building z4 numbers are a focus, we still need to remember that specific training results in optimal performance. Again, for Ironman this means Z2/3.  So while we have been working on their Z4 for overall ability, the last 2-3 months of specific training needs to have a heavy dose of Z2/3 in order to prep the body for these long rides in the aerobic endurance/tempo zones. 
#3 these long rides are doable for an athlete from an aerobic standpoint and energy production platform, but their muscles may not be used to 4.5 hours in the saddle of consistent work. This is why specific work is critical for both aerobic development but also muscular recruitment and conditioning. 

To summarize everything from an aerobic engine standpoint. you can have a phenomenal engine in place, but if you aren’t being specific in the lead up to the event, you are risking a poor performance due to limited abilities to recruit the same demand on muscles as your aerobic engine can produce. 

​Anaerobic Exercise
Anaerobic Exercise (exercise without oxygen) is z6 in the scale above. This type of exercise is tricky because it can be beneficial to help pull the string upwards for aerobic capacity, but a ton of anaerobic training isn’t going to help increase your specific ability to work at aerobic levels. Anaerobic training for the Ironman athlete above could pop up for quick bursts to help round out the athletes form, but it shouldn’t be the main focus of his/her training plan. That wouldn’t be specific to the demands of the race. 
Where anaerobic does get very specific though is in the example of a cyclist. Most cyclists have to have a well-rounded aerobic and anaerobic engine for race day performance. Many races come down to the last 5 minutes of the race and more specifically to the last minute. With your anaerobic engine being responsible for efforts ranging from 15-90 seconds in length, a specific training program focused on these efforts will go a long way in helping a cyclist perform well in the final key moments of a race. 

In training for a cyclist, anaerobic training may look something like this:
Warm up spin
90 minutes at z2/3 with 4x3 minutes of z4 mixed in
then 
5x30 sec hard attacks (z6+)
2 minute recovery between. 
This would be a set that would resemble the first part of a race with short bursts of threshold followed by the final part of the race with the hard attacks leading up to the sprint. 

Conclusion
It is critical that you as an athlete understand that training isn’t all the same all the time. Things need to be focused in different manners to create a well-rounded athlete that is capable of the demands needed for optimal performance. It is a good idea to think about the race or events that you are targeting and break down what specific demands are needed to perform well. Once you understand the requirements of the race, then it is just about putting together a training program that maximizes the athletes ability to handle all situations they may find themselves in. Again, you can’t be specific year-round, but you should be very specific in those 2-3 months leading up to the event. By having a solid plan in place, you are maximizing your opportunity to have the race day that you want and deserve.

Introduction
  You hear stories of athletes training 20 hours a week for an Ironman and logging 10,000 miles a year on the bike. This is great for some athletes, but in analyzing all of my athletes data and files, I have realized that these huge hours are not needed for many typical athletes looking to make progress and improvements. This blog is meant to show you why data is so important to track and how it can make your training time both effective and efficient. 
Note: To become a world class athlete you will need to put in many long hours, but to become an elite-amateur I don’t feel that these hours are necessary. 

What Type of Data Should I Track?
 The data that is most valuable for a coach are the metrics of watts (power), heart rate, run pace, or calories. Depending on your goals and what you are trying to accomplish will determine what metric should be used for your training. The metrics that you want to stay away from on the bike are mph and miles ridden. The reason we want to stay away from speed on the bike and overall miles is because they are subjective and influenced by other factors outside of your control. From a coaching perspective, I may hear someone tell me they rode 23 mph for a ride and they are ecstatic about it. I am not here to discredit their ride at all. Riding 23 mph on a bike is very exciting. However, what I am wondering is what does 23 mph even mean? Was there a tailwind, was it a group ride, was it rolling hills, did they do a mountain descent, was it all uphill? Do you see how speed is subjective and doesn’t actually tell us what your body was going through for that effort? 23 mph has no implications on how much you stressed your engine. 

For example: Lets look at what 23 mph looks like from different perspectives
23 mph in a group ride = 200 watts
23 mph with a strong tail wind = 175 watts
23 mph on a descent = 0 watts
23 mph on a  mountain climb = 450 watts

Huge difference in training days for all four of these examples.. don’t use mph for tracking purposes. 

How to Properly Track Data
  You need to find the metric that is reflective of your work. The best two modes are heart rate or power which I listed above. Once you have determined which one you will use, you then need to test your training zones which I discussed in the previous blog (click here to read). Now is when the magic starts to happen. Everyone has their own zones that are catered to them and thanks to the brilliant minds of Dr. Andy Coggan and Hunter Allen, we have a way to track overall workload in a non-subjective manner for effective training. 
 This non-subjective manner is called Training Stress Score (TSS). What this metric does is takes your duration of activity and and multiplies it by your intensity (which zone you are working in) to give you an overall stress score for your workout. The calculation is more detailed than that, but for our purposes we will just think of duration and intensity to give us an overall stress score. In theory, a score of 100 would be your overall 1 hour maximum effort based on your training zones. If you rode at zone 2 for 1 hour you would be looking at a TSS of somewhere around 40-50 TSS. You can start to see that by tracking this number you will start to gauge how hard rides were in comparison. 
This is a much better way to track your fitness than by mph. Imagine if you rode with a tailwind at 23 mph in zone 2 for 1 hour and had a TSS of 45 but the next day you rode into a headwind for 1 hour at 16 mph but because you were in z3 you had a TSS of 70.  If you only tracked by mph you would feel day 1 was far better than day 2. However, by tracking the actual stress to your body, Day 2 far outweighs Day 1. 


Building Your Fitness with Data
  Once you start to compile multiple days of data (TSS),  you begin to see that you can track TSS on a weekly or monthly scale. Now instead of of saying I want to ride 200 miles this week (what does that really even mean?), you might say I want to register 600 TSS this week. If we go back to blog number 2 of this series (click here), you will see that the 10% rule should be used for safe and effective building. So if last week was 600 TSS, then this week should be 660 TSS. Now you are programing an effective program that is going to make progress because you are measuring stress to the engine (body), not some theoretical concept that more miles is more stress. I hope you can see how we are starting to loop all of the blogs together now to create a much bigger picture. To loop periodization and specificity back in, you know that you will have  portions of the year were TSS grows much higher and then you will have specific times where TSS is mostly all one type of zone for race day specifics.  This is fun right :) ?!

Being Efficient and Effective for Time Crunched Athletes
  So this brings us back to the purpose of this blog, how can you utilize this information for the athlete that is time crunched. In my coaching endeavors I have found great improvements to be made in 6-12 hours/week by athletes ranging from 1st time finishers to elite-amateur’s. The reason is simple, because we tracked the stress to their bodies and followed the efficient methods laid out in blog 2 for building fitness. I tracked their TSS and gradually built their engines to a point that maximized their time, and then once the athlete was used to this training load, we began to get very specific (training zones) to their race demands and goals. By periodizing their season and knowing how long you can get specific, we were able to maximize their results and peaks for race season on only 6-12 hours a week. Here are some examples of results that can take place within this time frame
Cyclist: From an FTP of 320-380 in 14 months
Cyclist: From an FTP of 290-345 in 7 months
Cyclist: From an FTP of 170-215 in 5 months
Runner: From running a 2:04 half marathon to running a 3:40 marathon in 15 months
Swimmer: From swimming a 28 min 1500 to swimming a 22 min 1500 in 6 months


Note: To reach the top levels of their sport the next step would be to take these athletes higher in volume, but that wasn’t needed to obtain these goals and results. 


Conclusion
  Its all about tracking the right metrics and having the correct tools for progress. I urge you all to stop measuring subjective data and thinking it is the difference between a strong athlete and beginner. True progress happens when you track your workload and constantly monitor it for progress and performance. I hope that this showed some of those looking to improve their abilities a new way to think about tracking progress. To become as efficient and effective as possible with your time, this tactic needs to be utilized in your scheduling of workouts.