Let Them Eat Cake: Problems with Traditional Training Plans

What is a Training Plan?

I frequently get requests to write training plans for triathlon, marathon, ironmans, etc. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it, " the e-mail reads. I, Stephen Taylor, *may* have a reputation for not liking to write training plans. The reason is that person is not exactly asking for what they need.

Traditional Calendar-Style Training Plan

One of the most common forms of "Coaching" is when a some "expert" writes you a schedule of workouts. This commonly takes the form of a calendar that says, 'do this workout on Monday, do this workout on Tuesday," and so on. It has the effect of reducing your anxiety in preparing for an event because someone who "in the know" is telling you what to do.

And, I would contend, it takes the very essence out of the most effective endurance training.

Problems with calendar-style training plans:

It is very rare that a coach is going to be able to exactly write a training plan that your life isn't going to somehow get in the way of. For example, "my coach wants me to do a 2 hour run on Wednesday, but I was up all night on call on Tuesday. What do I do?" The calendar approach doesn't give you any guidance into how to respond.

Sometimes a training plan is too hard or too easy. What if you have the ability to do extra, do you stop with the assigned workout? What if the training is too hard? Do you grind yourself down or fail trying to execute the plan? Lets say you are feeling great one day or feeling like crap the next...a calendar-style plan doesn't give any guidance on how to read your body, let alone adjust your workouts accordingly.

A training plan can be a one-way ticket to big problems. When it is too hard, an athlete can easily "dig oneself into a hole" towards injury or burnout. Compulsively following a pre-programmed plan, an athlete ignores the feedback your body is giving you. Even worse, when the first signs of an injury are evident, the "dilligent calendar-plan follower" keeps training until that injury gets much worse.

Finally, what happens when someone falls behind a written plan or they don't complete all the assigned workouts? They feel bad. I am here to tell you training rarely if ever goes according to plan, and stressing about your training plan adds nothing to the mix.

A mature athlete knows how to adjust their training and keep a positive, pragmatic point of view. And any coach who says they can tell you with certainty what workout to do 3 month from now--let alone 2 weeks--is exaggerating their expertise. Precisely adhering to a calendar is not what gets results, effective training and reading your body is the key.

In Summary:
Having all your workouts written out on a calendar is like trying to describe a delicious cake by reading the recipie on a dirty 3x5 note card. It may describe the ingredients that go into it, but it misses the very essence of what that thing is. While effective training planning will give you pretty good idea what the ingredients are, it is so much more than that.

Do not misinterpret that I am against written training plans. They can be tremendously instructive and motivating. But I have just as often seen people incorrectly utilize a plan or get themselves injured using one.