“He who fails to plan, is planning to fail” – Winston Churchill.
While the stakes are not as high as World War Two, I’m certain you are willing to go to war to reach your cycling goals!
Covered in this blog:
- What is an Annual Training Plan?
- Top 10 reasons you need an Annual Training Plan
- How to setup your Annual Training Plan
What is an Annual Training Plan?
Having an Annual Training Plan (ATP), is where it all starts. An ATP is where you link up one season to the next, prioritize the goals you have set, and start to identify exactly what you need to do to be successful. Without an ATP, most athletes tend to slip into training more sporadically, without a meaningful direction, and with a lot of bias. In short, athletes who plan their year fully, tend to see significant more improvements.
Here are my top ten reasons you need an annual training plan.
1. Bridging the gap between where you are now and where you need to be
If you’ve accurately set your goals, you should also know exactly what you need to achieve in order to meet the demands of said goal (usually an event). These smaller goals, sometimes called process goals, will be your guide to what you really need to be working on in training.
Your ATP is your guide between the start and finish of your season. Within that year, you will be training to tick off each process goal. Looking at your training on this scale will help you visualise what you need to do, and stop you leaving anything too late.
2. Strengthening your weaknesses
You should have also been able to identify which of the process goals you are weakest at. Typically, while you are at the beginning of your ATP, you will spend a large chunk of your training time strengthening your weaknesses, with only minimal work maintaining your strengths. Once you get closer to your event, or goal, you will switch more to strengthening your strengths.
3. Strengthening your strengths
As mentioned above, typically, you will strengthen your strengths closer to your event. Mainly this is because you are already strong in your strong area (duh!) and therefore you might have limited potential to improve. Working on where you will see the biggest return is a smart use of your precious training time.
4. Avoiding sporadic training
By being this specific and this targeted with your training, you will be maximising the potential from your training time, thus avoiding sporadic training.
Using testing is a great way to help keep focused. Each process goal can have its own test. Take the test before starting training in that area, then test at regular intervals until you’ve met the demand and are ready to move to another process goal.
5. Increased likelihood of improvement
Of course, there’s no guarantee that your training will work. However, training in this manner reduces the risk of over-focusing on one area.
A perfect example is of the athlete who spends great quantities of time trying to improve their Functional Threshold Power (FTP), but neglects other areas. That athlete isn’t what I like to call “complete” and they might struggle to meet their goals if, for example, their goals are longer than an hour in duration…
6. Removing your training bias
Alongside keeping you focused on the bigger picture, your ATP will help you remove the bias from your training.
Your ATP will help you focus on the steps you need to reach your goals, rather than the steps you want to take.
7. Keeping you complete
When you start to look at the big picture, especially the smaller process goals, you start to realise that to successfully achieve your goals, you need to be a “complete” cyclist.
You might need to test out a new piece of equipment, something that is more aerodynamic, or something that will help you deal with more rugged terrain. You might need to lose a bit of weight. You might even need time to arrange and test your support team.
8. Periodizing your training
I’ve loosely touched on this already, but to define this further, consider your off-the-bike strength and conditioning training. If you were to periodise this correctly around your bike training, you would almost certainly improve far greater.
Your ATP helps you put all your planning and hard work in training together, making the most of every session as it progresses towards your goals.
9. Periodizing your nutrition
For much of the same reason above, periodising your nutrition will help you realise even greater cycling performance improvements.
Matching your nutrition habits with how you are training is a great way to improve in certain areas. Dropping more carbohydrates from your diet when you are training at lower intensity might give your fat oxidation a boost. Similarly, eating more carbohydrates when you move to more intense training might provide your body with more fuel, thus increasing performance there too.
10. Actually achieving your goals…
The actual likelihood of you being successful at your target event or goal is far greater with when using an Annual Training Plan than without. If you’re interested, this actually goes up an even greater amount when you work with a coach.
No brainer really…
How to setup your annual training plan
I’ve obviously sold you on the idea of creating a more inclusive ATP, now you need to actually set one up. Follow these simple steps to set up your Annual Training Plan.
- Pick your overall goals, targets, or objectives
- Pick from your list of goals which ones you want to do best and categorise them as A, B, or C
- A is highest priority
- B is medium priority
- C is lowest priority
- Research the demands of your “A” event(s) – find out what you need to be capable of to succeed
- Then you should see what training you will need to do to be able to meet these demands
- Focus on strengthening your weaknesses at first
- Identify when to switch more to strengthening your strengths
- Remember to focus holistically on becoming a “complete” cyclist
- Identify how will you monitor your progression and what testing you might use
