This article is a resource for Lifetime Athletes. It serves two purposes. First, it describes the rationale and methodology we use here at TLA to design our Training Tribe and sport-specific programming. This provides our team and community members with an in-depth understanding of the program design and implementation process. Second, it empowers you with the knowledge and tools you need to create and customize your own program should you desire that option.
I’m going to give you the big picture first. Then we’ll come back and cover each area in a comprehensive fashion.
The first key consideration is the sequence of vision-goal-plan-program. You can think of this as a continuum which flows horizontally or vertically using unidirectional arrows. Or you could envision a funnel which narrows and becomes more specific as it progresses. Let’s take a brief look at each portion of this progression.
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Vision: Where do you see yourself at some point in the future? In general terms, what would you like to see yourself doing, or being capable of doing? This can be anything you consider to be meaningful and important, such as being proficient or competitive in a sport or possessing a high fitness capacity with respect to strength, endurance, etc.
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Goal: What is a specific, objective, challenging, yet reasonable goal in pursuit of this vision? Can you identify a performance level or outcome that is a clear representation of your quest? This might be a time, placing, or measurable output…or even simply being able to participate or complete an event.
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Plan: Once you have your goal defined, it’s time for self-assessment. Where are you now in terms of conditioning, ability, etc. and where (what status) do you need to get to in order to accomplish the goal? What is a reasonable time frame to accomplish this objective? What are the Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) you should emphasize? You’ll need to determine the type of training which will serve your unique body the best, and the seasonal or cyclical model that will facilitate the targeted result.
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Program: What types of workouts will be best in your situation? How will you put them together? How will you coordinate this around your work schedule, nutritional needs, sleep requirements, likes/dislikes, and other lifestyle factors? How will you periodically test yourself, track progress, and make adjustments? Will you utilize a coach for some of this or just go solo? Getting this right helps to ensure that you get results, avoid injury, and enjoy the journey.
Going from thoughts to words to actions has been proven to correlate with positive results. Think about those questions we just asked. Write down your answers. Speak them aloud and share them with others. They become actionable items and you become accountable to yourself in this process. Here’s an example of a simple table that you can set up to organize your program design.
That’s a very general, yet concise picture of how the program design process works. In fact, it’s one that a client is currently working on. As you can see, it’s all about clarification. Once you have a clear picture of where you’re going, and how you’re going to get there…everything just falls into place. Training is way more than just moving a little in pursuit of better health. It beats randomly exercising in an unstructured manner. It’s a purpose-driven, results-oriented path to achievement. Now, let’s get into the specifics of planning and programming.
Refining the Plan: Whenever you have a clear vision, and a concise goal that you value…it’s a great idea to consider a Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD) plan. This is definitely the case when you’ve got your “thing” that you love to do and want to get better at it as well as keep being able to do it through your lifespan. An LTAD plan takes a horizon view and allows you to be confident that you’re doing the correct training over your lifetime. You’ll be able to collect many data points and analyze your results most effectively. Within your LTAD approach, you can look at the upcoming year and create an Annual Training Plan (ATP).
As you develop your ATP, you can decide how you want to divide your training over the year most effectively. This involves the use of cycles, blocks, and seasons. We’ll talk about these separately, but they can be combined in certain circumstances.
The application of cycles to a training plan is usually organized into macrocycles (a year or even several years), mesocycles (one or more months), and microcycles (one to several weeks or a specification of days such as 5-20). The theme of each cycle tends to become more specific in relation to length. For example, a macrocycle could be a year in which your intention is to improve running performance over the half-marathon distance. A corresponding mesocycle might look like a 2-month stretch during which you target a measurable increase in your velocity (pace) at lactate threshold. And you might have a microcycle that contains several key interval workouts or a time trial.
Blocks are what they sound like. They are chunks of time in which you emphasize a key parameter of performance or conditioning. If we stick with the running example previously mentioned, there might be a 3-month endurance block which keys on increasing the volume of Zone 2 training to raise the aerobic threshold. There might also be a sharpening, or speed-focused block, etc.
Seasons can mirror the time of year, such as spring, summer, fall, and winter. They can also adopt the classic and traditional sports seasonal model in which there is an off-season, a pre-season, a peak season, and a post-season. Off-season is when you establish consistency, build volume, and address deficiencies. During pre-season you increase intensity and specificity of training in relation to your sport. Peak season keeps you tuned up and adequately recovered between competitions or goal events. And post-season is a time for recuperation and light maintenance training.
There really are no rules pertaining to how you use these divisions within your ATP. Whenever you have a specific sport with a well-defined competitive or peak season, the seasonal model tends to fit very well.
We design our Training Tribe programming using a combination of these parameters. The T2 ATP is block-periodized with a unique balance among the 5 Capacities of Athleticism. We have a specific block for strength, power, speed, endurance, and agility, respectively. Each block utilizes a primary emphasis on its name yet still provides secondary exposure to the other capacities in varying format. This allows us to keep the durability and versatility required in the Lifetime Athlete ever-present. Then we layer monthly mesocycles and weekly microcyles into the mix. Each month features an introduction, accumulation, intensification, and consolidation sequence (representing each successive week). Members don’t have to sweat the details because that’s my job. They can just trust the system and know they are keeping themselves comprehensively fit, robust, and resilient.
That’s just one example among many of effective program design. Next we go into greater detail. The nitty gritty if you will. Workout structure, capacities, exercise selection, recovery, tracking, assessment, and adjustment are built into the system.
Workout structure is applied in several manners. We work from the “knowns.” By this I mean using the known or generally accepted principles of training for a specific sport or goal. Then we modify this based on what we know (strengths, weaknesses, preferences, etc.) about the athlete in question. We determine the types of workouts which will work best in these circumstances to elicit the desired response or adaptation in the trainee. From there we determine where these sessions will be placed and spaced in the program. You get your best outcomes when you match things up ideally. Workouts that work and that facilitate consistency and appropriate progression. This is a critical area where many self-coached athletes fail and drop out. They snag a program somewhere, or are issued it, but it doesn’t meet the requirements we just discussed. Square peg, round hole. Shoes that just don’t fit. That sort of thing.
We use a recognizable framework for practically every training session. It’s a 5-column table which depicts workout label and frequency, preparatory (activation and warmup) elements, primary (main) components, accessory (adjunctive) items, and specific instructions or tips. It’s color-coded, and easy to understand/follow. Tribe members and clients can open the App and pull this up on their phone as needed.
Date-Block-Month-Week
The capacities we target are in accordance with the athlete’s goals and abilities. This means the training session has a major focus on one of the metrics of strength, power, speed, agility, or endurance, with potentially a minor amount of one or two other elements. We think about energy systems (aerobic, anaerobic), rate of force development, movement quality/technique, and sports skills as indicated. Even though we customize the session, we usually build in some ranges or variances to allow for “on the day optimization” of the workout.
Exercise selection is one of the hallmarks of training for the Lifetime Athlete. We know what we are trying to accomplish. Yet there are many choices for exercise and training mode from which we select when working with a maturing individual who has multiple orthopedic issues and wide-ranging motor skill levels. Combining sound biomechanical and physiologic wisdom with a bit of creativity allows us to attain the objectives of the session without significant compromise. We always strive to make the training most effective while avoiding injury risk.
Recovery is critical in the program of the Lifetime Athlete. It’s more than just the passage of time, it’s a process. Recovery is when we actually make the gains or adaptations from the stressor or stimulus of training. However, in program design, the most important thing we do is determine dosage and spacing of key workouts. Regarding dosage, we want those changemaker or key (SOS = Something of Substance) workouts to be strong enough to force adaptation in the trainee, yet not so powerful that they overload and break down the athlete. This isn’t that difficult to do. You just have to make progression relatively gradual (understanding the acute to chronic workload ratio) and keep the session at an absorbable level. Then, we determine how many lighter training days need to follow the key workout until the athlete is ready to “go big” again.
Put simply, smart training is the key to recovery. That stated, sleep and nutrition are also critical. And there are numerous supplemental practices relating to heat and cold exposure, tissue work, etc. that can be useful. We can monitor things like resting heart rate (RHR), heart rate variability (HRV) and other metrics if the athlete likes to use wearable technology and data analysis. But I also find that a simple self-assessment performed upon awakening is incredibly useful.
When you wake up, in the first minute or two as you get out of bed, rate how you feel using a simple stoplight analogy. Green is great, energetic, refreshed. Yellow is average, normal, decent. Red is awful, crappy, crummy. On a green day you are well-recovered and you can do any type of training you have scheduled. A yellow day indicates that you should proceed with caution. Sometimes the fog wears off and you can proceed as planned. Other times you need to downregulate if that doesn’t occur. And red means something went wrong. You overdid it in training, ate and slept poorly, are fighting off pathogens, or are in a toilet bowl of stress. That’s a day to significantly change the plan or even eliminate training if things are bad enough. But usually, with all this thoughtful program design, red days are exceedingly rare for Lifetime Athletes. There are more sophisticated devices and algorithms for this sort of thing, but they are no more effective. Many athletes like to add a conditionally formatted column to their training log spreadsheet (we have a free one for all clients) that allows for easy management of this stoplight recovery rating.
Speaking of that last statement, there are many ways you can record and track workout data. Our TLA Training Log (again, free and easy to use) allows you to quickly note the date, workout performed, key details, comments, and overall RPE assessment. No fancy bells and whistles, takes just a moment to use and provides access to the information that really matters. You/we can add what we want or need, but you don’t have to sort through anything you consider not valuable.
Once you’ve got some training going down, assessment becomes almost a no-brainer. Just ask yourself – and answer – a few simple questions.
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Are you making progress? Do you see workout performance improving? Are your key performance indicators (KPI’s) going in the right direction?
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Are you recovering well? Do you generally feel pretty good and not too sore or tired?
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Are you enjoying the process? Is it working well for your lifestyle and not only making you fit but happy?
When your answer is “Hell Yess!!” to these questions, program design is on point. But if we need to make adjustments, that’s very easy to do. We adjust the workouts to make sure they are even more specific to the goal/you (via better exercise selection) and we make sure the recovery window (days between bigger sessions) is correct. Workload, or impact of a session, is depicted by its duration, intensity, and density (amount of intra-workout rest periods). We make sure that is absorbable. And overall volume in any given week or month is kept sensible. As I often say, “This is science but it ain’t rocket science.”
Training can be a very enjoyable habit when it’s designed correctly. But, even though it’s considered a very positive habit, it can occasionally become a little addictive. It’s always good to remind ourselves we are training in pursuit of a goal, a performance, or an objective. We don’t want to become slaves to the training routine itself. This requires a specific mindset.
You probably know a dude who shows up every day at the gym, always does the same thing, never misses or modifies anything in his workout, and the like. For years. Yet he never achieves much in terms of body composition, conditioning, or performance. Consistency is great, but program design and adjustment not so much. If they gave out medals for just showing up, this guy would take it every time. Last time I checked, they hand out the prizes to the winners. Champions who harness all the mojo we’ve been discussing and take it to the max. Nobody wants, or needs to, be that guy.
The purpose of today’s missive was to not only give you some things to think about with respect to your training. I intended to provide you with some specific structure that you can utilize immediately to get more out of your training. If you would like my assistance in designing your personal, comprehensive training program, just sign up for a Personal Coaching Consultation or two. As always, thank you very much for joining me today!