Hands up if you have ever sat down with a calendar and a spreadsheet and built yourself the world’s best color-coded training plan. Me too. I used to love imagining just how fit I was going to get. Now keep your hands up if you were able to stick to it for any more than a few weeks. Me neither.
It is an easy trap to fall into, especially at the major reset points of the year, such as the new year. You decide this is going to be the year. The year you get fit and become a mountain biking god/goddess. You have the entire year laid out and scheduled up the wazoo. Then reality bites and life happens, and because your perfectly color-coded spreadsheet schedule is in ruins, you lurch the opposite direction and throw the whole thing in the bin. Been there, done that.
Think Smaller, Think Seasonally
Unless you are a full-time athlete channelling everything into that one big event (e.g., the Olympics or World Champs), chances are you do not need an annual training plan. Indeed, even for such athletes, the ‘plans’ are more guidelines or waypoints, with everything subject to change. If nothing else, 2020 has proven that things can change quickly and that we need to be flexible and responsive.
When working with the individuals I coach, including top level athletes, I like to plan in seasonal blocks rather than think in terms of one big annual plan. Depending on where you live, life in winter can be significantly different to life in summer, so it makes sense to start with the seasons when planning your year, even if your plan is simply to improve your fitness and riding skills.
Work Backwards
Let us say that, come summer, you want to be at peak-radness for your biking. Think about what that will look like in terms of the fitness, skills, etc, that you will require. There will be physical skills, such as strength and endurance, that you may need to build (think durability and repeatability – terms we will revisit in the future). There will be riding skills to learn and develop too. Confidence and mindset – they are important. Plus, of course, there may be changes to equipment and components on your bike.
Each of these factors can be assigned to a season. Being strong on the bike is an incredibly important part of mountain biking, both in terms of holding a stable and controlled position on the bike, but also being able to absorb some of the forces coming at you via the bike from the terrain below. Strength, power, and mobility, all take a lot of time to develop, however, so it makes sense to not only begin working on these as soon as you can in your year, but to spend time working on these physical traits during the time of year that you will be on the bike far less - if at all - winter. Winter can often be the best time to get your bike fully serviced, or to get those upgrades fitted (your local bike shop will appreciate you not waiting until the first of the warm weather like everyone else).
With a winter’s worth of strength training under your belt, and perhaps with some early fitness beginning to build from some winter cross-training, you can use the warmer temperatures and increased daylight hours to get back on the bike and to start riding, slowly building that bike-specific fitness. Spring will also be the time that many skills clinics will come back online after a winter hiatus, giving you to opportunity to get some skills and confidence coaching.
The 3Ss - Structure, Systems, Schedules
Perhaps one of the most common errors I see as a nutritionist and coach, is when individuals rely too heavily on a schedule to build new habits. Don’t get me wrong, scheduling is a very important aspect of it all. But simply scheduling the likes of your training into a diary is not a guarantee you will be able to keep that schedule, especially without some good structures and systems in place first.
Structures are the things and environments around us (including our social environments). Structures can be hard or physical in nature. For example, if you want to ride mountain bikes, but you have neither a bike, nor mountains, then structurally, you have a problem! Structures can also be soft or social in nature. Let us say you have a great bike, and a great local area to ride in, but your partner and friends just are not interested in riding bikes. This can make it difficult, socially, to get out and do it (unless you really like riding by yourself).
If you have expressly moved to an area that is outdoorsy, where everyone rides, and that has a good trail network, and you have built up a social network of family and friends who all share your passion on this area, then congratulations, you have structurally made it easier to get motivated and take action to stick to a schedule (plan)! Breaking your year down into the seasons (each of which impact your environment and structural ability to ride your bike), and by mapping out when you can ride and when you can’t (maybe due to the weather being too cold or too hot, work constraints, family vacation times, and so on), are all examples of building structure before just scheduling “ride my bike” in your diary.
What (or who) needs to be around you in order to support your goals? Which structures in your life work against your goals? How can you make your life’s structures easier for yourself?
Work to remove structures which hinder you and build structures which help.
Systems are the processes, practices, rituals, and habits we use to make things happen. Having a set day that you do your food shopping so that you have good food in the house, is a system. Having an evening ritual of getting your gym gear ready so it is one less barrier to going to the gym in the morning, is a system. Having the local bike shop message you a reminder that your bike is due for a service is a system.
What processes and practices need to be in place for you to be effective in developing your riding skills and fitness?
Beware the Tyranny of the 7-Day Week
Thinking seasonally, and putting good structures and systems in place, a plan virtually builds itself. The final step is to then schedule everything in. Beware, however, of trying to cram everything into repeating 7-day cycles. Work. Kids. The school run. Life admin. Maybe sleep. The list of things people attempt to cram into each week seems to keep growing year upon year, only succeeding in fragmenting their energy and focus.
When it comes to building your physical fitness in particular, there is no hard and fast biological reason for using 7-days as the repeating short cycle. Indeed, you may even be better served, physiologically, spreading your training across 10, 12, or even 14 days. In a particular 14-day training block, you might fit in two rides one week, and three the next, for a total of 5 rides in that period. Or you might spend two weeks in the gym with a little bit of fitness work, then two weeks doing mostly fitness with a little bit of strength work.
The Final S
We have covered seasonal, structures, systems, and schedules. But there is one more S (for now) support. That’s right, getting support via a knowledgeable coach. Figuring out which strategy is ultimately the best for you is a specialist skill set. Like hiring a coach to improve your mountain biking skills, if you are serious about putting together a plan to improve your riding fitness, then find a qualified and experienced coach who can support you in this area, saving you a lot of time building those perfect color-coded spreadsheets.