Off Season Home Work Assignment
The seasons are changing signaling the end of another year of competition. Hopefully you have taken a little away from training to refresh your mind and body for the important work ahead in the off-season. The next phase of training will involve strength training and other specific cross training activities to begin preparing for next season. While events are still fresh in your mind it’s a good time to look back on the season and decide what you need to focus on for the next year.
I like to start with a comprehensive review of the season from the rider’s perspective. In the Fall I send out a Goals and Achievement workbook to all my riders as a homework assignment. Over the course of the season we have communicated regularly and I have a pretty good idea how their season went but I do not have their training diaries in hand nor the time to read them all in detail. The workbooks give each rider a chance to make a personal assessment of their successes in training and preparation and as well as competition. Once completed, I review the information and we work together to make a plan to keep their development moving forward.
This is important work for every rider, especially those of you who are self-coached. Before you can hope to make quality decisions about your future you need understand how well your training plan has worked to this point. There are a lot of ways to go about this process and some very important areas you need to cover as you write down you impressions of the past year. Start with the ones listed below and I bet you will come up with some of your own.
The logical place to start is with the goals you had at the beginning of the season. These will have served as the basis for the plan you have been following. Now is the time to take a final look back and grade you progress on the list of goals you have in place. Which ones did you accomplish and which are still pending? Were your goals realistic and attainable for the most part? What did you specifically do to reach each of them? This will help you make good decisions about setting goals for the next season.
Next make a final complete accounting of your racing schedule and results. List all the events you did, including training and practice races and group them by venue. Road, MTB, Track, Cyclocross. Once you have done this add up the total days of racing for the year. This data is compared to the previous seasons and helps you set goals for increasing your volume for the next.
List ALL your results, not just the good ones. It is important that you learn to value all of your effort, even if some of it fell short of your expectations. It is important to realize that ALL of your racing activity played an important role in your development. Remember to look at your training and competition with progress and improvement in mind and try not to focus just on the results.
Take a look at all the background preparation and support you had during the season. Things like performance testing, equipment changes, sponsorship support and nutritional guidance or hiring a coach. Make a list of these things and include comments as to their effectiveness on your overall success. All of these things require time, money and commitment and you need to know the exact benefit of each so you can make good use of them again in future planning.
Next you need to rate your current level of progress and development ALL aspects of your cycling performance including tactics and strategy. I use a 1-7 grading system. 1 represents your level of competency or fitness at the beginning of the season and the 7 represents top competitive form or competency in that area. This will allow you to grade improvements and make plans to train and develop in the areas that still need noticeable improvement. The process of becoming a complete bike rider is a long-term project and there is always something to learn.
List your best and worst performances and the reasons for both. This is an especially valuable exercise because it teaches to your look at your competition objectively and without a lot of personal criticism or emotional baggage. The goal is to learn from your experience and integrate these lessons into your preparation and racing.
The last part of your homework assignment requires that you spend some time thinking about what it will take to improve in some areas and hold on to the gains in others. This is where you will begin crafting your plan for progress and improvement that starts with your off-season preparation and training. It is important to look at ALL factors that effect your training and development.
Examine needs like time, money, equipment, family support, travel requirements, team and sponsor obligations. There are a lot of pieces in the puzzle that makes up your success as a bike rider. Before you can make a good plan to move forward you need to know what all these pieces are and how they fit together.