When Your Gut and Your Program Disagree
One of the absolute joys of my life is being able to say I've competed in the Stawell Gift. I didn't run my first until I was 42, but the few I ran remain among the absolute highlights of my running life. One year, about two months out from Stawell, I badly sprained my ankle attempting what would have been my highest ever box jump.
Not exactly ideal timing!
With roughly eight weeks to get myself right, I became pretty much obsessed with the recovery process. I slept, iced, rehabbed and did whatever I could to give myself a chance of making it to the start line. By about three weeks out I was back running at a decent speed, but there was still plenty of work to do.
My coach wanted me concentrating on regaining my maximum velocity. I was worried about my block starts. I'd missed a substantial amount of training, hadn't done much work out of the blocks and knew how important the start would be over 120 metres. I understood what my coach was trying to achieve, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to spend more time on my starts. With Stawell getting closer, was I right to question the program, or was I getting too caught up in what I thought I needed?
It's a situation I've found myself on the other side of on more than a few occasions since becoming a coach. One of the things I enjoy about coaching Masters athletes is the experience they bring with them. Many have been involved in sport for decades, worked with different coaches and tried all sorts of training methods. They've learnt a lot along the way, particularly about their own bodies, and generally have some pretty firm opinions about what works for them.
Occasionally, that experience leads an athlete to second-guess something I've programmed. They might substitute an exercise because they've had success with another one in the past, change the order of a gym session or decide a different approach would be more beneficial. Often they've given it some thought, and I can understand why they've made the change. There's nothing particularly unusual about an experienced athlete having their own ideas about training.
What isn't always apparent, though, is why a particular exercise or session was selected in the first place. When I'm putting a program together, I'm considering the athlete's current capabilities, training history, injury background, recovery and competition schedule. I'm looking at the work they've already completed, what lies ahead and which physical qualities need the most attention at that particular time. Sometimes the reasoning behind a decision has more to do with what's happening elsewhere in the program than with the exercise itself.
Take an athlete who decides to replace a squat with a leg press because both develop lower-body strength. There's certainly some overlap, but the exercises also place different demands on the body. Depending on what I'm trying to achieve, the substitution may be perfectly reasonable or it might change an important aspect of the session. Even moving a gym session to another day can have consequences if it leaves an athlete fatigued for an important track, swimming or sporting session. None of these changes is necessarily disastrous, but their implications aren't always obvious when you're looking at one session in isolation.
Of course, there are plenty of occasions when I expect athletes to make adjustments to their training. No program, however carefully planned, can anticipate exactly how someone will feel on a particular day. Poor sleep, work pressures, lingering soreness or the first signs of an injury can all influence how an athlete responds to training. This is especially relevant when coaching Masters athletes, many of whom are juggling their sporting ambitions with busy lives outside training.
If a prescribed weight feels unusually heavy, reducing it may be appropriate. If running mechanics are deteriorating, there may be little value in pushing through the remaining repetitions. And if something is causing pain, I'd much rather an athlete stop or modify the exercise than persist simply because it appears in their program. These are judgements I want athletes to be comfortable making, particularly when they're training remotely. Their observations and feedback are an important part of how I manage their training.
I suspect where we can come unstuck is when our preferences start influencing those decisions without us fully recognising it. I've certainly got exercises and training methods I enjoy more than others, and I imagine most athletes are much the same. We naturally gravitate towards things we're good at, things we enjoy and methods that have worked for us previously. But training needs change, sometimes quite considerably, depending on where we are in our preparation. An exercise that served us well last season might not be the most useful choice right now.
There's also something worth considering about why we engage a coach in the first place. Most of the Masters athletes I work with are quite capable of putting together their own training sessions. Some have an excellent understanding of training principles and exercise physiology. Yet knowing a great deal about training doesn't necessarily make it easy to assess our own needs objectively, particularly when we're emotionally invested in achieving a particular result.
Having someone else consider the bigger picture is one of the benefits of coaching. That doesn't mean the coach is always right, and I certainly don't expect athletes to accept everything I program without question. I've changed plenty of sessions following conversations with athletes, sometimes because they've suggested an alternative I hadn't considered or told me something about how they're responding that wasn't apparent from their training records.
I enjoy those conversations. They help me understand the athlete better and give me an opportunity to explain the thinking behind the program. If someone feels a different exercise or session would be more useful, I'd much rather we discuss it than have them quietly make substantial changes. Particularly with online coaching, the more I understand about what an athlete is actually doing and how they're responding, the better equipped I am to make decisions about their training.
Looking back at those final weeks before Stawell, I can understand why my coach wanted to concentrate on getting my maximum speed back. At the time, though, all I could think about was how little work I'd done out of the blocks. With the race getting closer, that was becoming a real concern. I'm still not convinced my thinking was wrong, but I do wonder whether I was simply too close to the problem. I'd spent weeks worrying about whether I'd even make it to Stawell, and now that I was running again, I was desperate to make up for lost time. Perhaps that pressure was influencing my judgement more than I realised.
Comments