Game planning for a successful year

With a new year quickly approaching, plans are being made for fun parties, copious amounts of sweets, amazing dinners, time with family and friends, as well as where we want the new year to lead us.  With the winding down of the holidays comes the realization that you binge watched your favorite shows and ate an entire pumpkin pie in one sitting — which has led to your jeans now fitting like a pair of yoga pants or your once comfortable shirt now fitting like a smedium.  What’s next?  The new year and what we, at Science of Speed, dread the most:, New Year’s Resolutions.  This year we want to help you be successful with these key factors to consider as you decide what goals to set..

Track Record

Look at past years three years and make an honest assessment of what you have or have not completed.  Don’t base this solely off of one year alone.  What were your major goals in the last three years? Have you completed them? Whether you have or have not, use the next tip below to gauge if the reason behind your success or lack thereof.

Make it Quantifiable

Creating a goal that can be tracked is very important.  Saying “I want to exercise more” is very vague and leaves you with an easy out when it is cold, your bed feels very comfortable or you had a rough day at work.  Don’t just use your words, use your numbers. Changing this simple statement to something more defined like, “I am going to exercise three days a week for 30 minutes” or, “I will do my first 5k run in May.”  The other addition you will notice with statement is that it is not a desire –“I want.”  We have solidified the desire with the simple words, “I am going to,” and, “will.”

Incremental adjustments

Many goals that we set are not the kind that can be resolved overnight.  If your goal is long term and will take a fair amount of time to meet,have mini goals or benchmarks along the way that you will strive for.  For example:  if you want to lose 15 lbs, you know that you will not or should not lose this in one week. So, set a goal that you will lose 1lb a week,that you will weigh 8 lbs less by March 1st, and that by May 1st you will have met your goal..

Why?

One of the most important parts of setting a goal is understanding the motivations behind it. Internal drive can be a large determiner  of yours success.  By nature, people want to be liked and want to please others. We often do things that we do not enjoy or even want to do to gain approval.  Now is not the time to make your goals based on what others want for you.  Consider if your goal for the New Year is truly a personal desire, or if it  might be something that has been brought on by someone else.Ultimately, it is you that will put in the work and make the sacrifices. Make it it something you want!

If your New Year’s resolution involves getting fit, taking on an athletic event, improving your performance in your favorite endurance sport, or simply beginning to uncover the athlete that lives within you, we’d love to help you on your journey. Check out our coaching packages and training plans. Not ready to commit? Get inspired and get acquainted with our philosophy, by following us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

Each day, we wake up to a new opportunity.  With every sunrise, we have the chance to make the day what we, as individuals, are willing to create.  Much of our daily accomplishments are based off of our mood, task lists, emotions, friends and family, and our motivation.  As athletes, our drive is based off of our event or personal goals, competitive nature and what our training plan or coach has on tap for us that day.  Too often I see athletes view their training plan as something on their “to do” list and not as a means of improving fitness and health.  I challenge you to increase your self awareness in two key areas each morning and, with each workout, look for the increases in your performances and overall feel. We will focus on the hardest thing first and begin with the mental and emotional side of training. I had a very close friend and mentor who was known for saying, “It is 90% mental and 10% physical.”  I could not agree more with this, and see it over and over in field tests, races and workouts for many athletes (Yep, your power meters don’t lie!) 

Before each workout, take an inventory of where you are at mentally and emotionally.  What are the status of your levels of stress, anxiety, anger or fear? You might be able to catch this early and alter your mood to improve your workout.  If you are not able to reverse your mood, it is important to determine what the workout is, the level of stress this will place on mental and emotional state and what your ability is to complete the task.  At this point, a decision should be made on what you will do.  For some, a workout is a stress relief. For others, it is a stressor. Our physical self awareness is a more tangible assessment and often easier to quantify.  Training is a delicate balance of “over reaching” and recovering.  When this falls out of balance is when we become susceptible to illness and injury.  By creating a daily physical assessment of your body regarding injury or pains, as well as a state of fatigue, you can determine what may alter the final outcome of your workout. Many athletes go with the old High School football mentality of, “push through the pain.”  Occasionally, this is the option to take. However, if the problem is addressed early and adequately, the issue can be more often than not resolved before it becomes a problem and derails your training — or before it risks your long term health and functionality. Now that you have assessed this data, what do you do with it?  Here are some rules of thumb to consider and then modify for your needs. Remember, everyone functions differently.

• I’m feeling mentally and emotionally off
  • Get into your warm up and see if your mood is altered
    • If you see an improvement in your mood and you are reinvigorated, then go on with workout
    • If not, consider modifying what your workout is
  • Take a moment to get to a quiet place, sit down and take several deep breaths to clear your head.
  • Stretch. Yes, this is physical, but it can help you to relax as well.
• I’m feeling physically off.
  • Do you have a physical injury?
    • See a doctor.
    • Rest.
  • Are muscles tight?
    • Stretch a bit.
    • Warm up and see if they begin to loosen.
  • Have you been sick?
    • Rest or take an easy recovery ride/walk dependent upon severity.

Taking stock of this information is not self-sabotaging — it can help you to stabilize your training. It is a way to learn how to take what your body will give you each day and nothing more.  Ultimately, this can help reduce the risk of injury, improve the quality of key workouts and events, and improve your long term health. Look inward, listen to your body, and increase your longevity in sport!   If you are unsure of how to best assess your levels of fitness and fatigue consider a Science of Speed coach. Our coaches have years of experience working with all levels of athletes and can help you learn what you are capable of!  Learn more about our coaching options.

Science of Speed loves seeing posts from our athletes on social media. We’re excited that you want to share the story of your training! Want to connect with other SoS athletes and make sure we see your updates? It’s easy! Simply use and search for our hashtags. Whether you’re snapping a selfie post-ride, posting a picture of the medal you earned this weekend, or tweeting about your training schedule, we invite you to use the following tags.

#SoSAthlete #SoSinAction #SoSSelfie #AthleteInAllOfUs

Not familiar with hashtags? You can use them on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Hashtags are a word or phrase preceded by a hash or pound sign (#) and used to identify messages on a specific topic. If you click on a hashtag on social media, you will be able to see more posts about the same thing. Think of it as a way to categorize and organize updates! The SoS team can’t wait to see your posts and engage with our athletes online. If you use our hashtags, we may feature your posts on our social media channels. If you aren’t following us already, Science of Speed would love to connect with you on social media.

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“Jake Bit The Dog” or “The Dog Bit Jake” 

These four very simple words result in two very different outcomes in Jake’s life just by switching the order that they are in.  Much like Jake’s outcome is dependent upon the order of four words, an endurance training plan also uses fairly simple key elements that are dependent upon the layout to create drastically different outcomes.   A monkey can build a program.  There is not much to taking workouts, putting them on a calendar and saying (or signing in the case of a monkey) “do X, Y & Z”.  The knowledge comes into play when the goal is to make a training plan work to it’s optimal potential.  At this point, there is great thought and consideration of an athlete’s goals, rate of recovery, life experiences, past training and mental fortitude to make the simple elements of training most effective for the time that you have available to train. Let’s be honest!  Time is a precious commodity that we can never get back and unfortunately, we cannot create more of!  If you are a weekend warrior striving for your own personal bests or looking to win championships, the prioritization of workouts is paramount in increasing effectiveness of training. So what does that mean for you? Bite the dog, don’t let the dog bite you! Utilize the resources available to you to make the most of your training time and be sure that your training plan design and layout is best suited for your specific needs and the demands of your event(s).  Here are several factors to think about when considering your training plan layout:

• What is your event?
  • It might sound silly, but events can have different demands on your body and you need to prepare for what will come at you on race day.  A course with long climbs requires a much different approach than something with short hard accelerations and a marathon is much different than a 5k.
• What time do you have available?
  • Don’t live in a fantasy land and say you can train 20 hrs a week when you work 60 hrs a week have a family and many other obligations. This will only set you up for frustration and failure.
• What are your strengths?
  • Many static plans will not take into consideration what you are strong at or weak at so you might be wasting time doing technique drills when they are not something you need to improve.
• What are your goals?
  • Seriously!  Set them and write them down, tell your friends and don’t be shy.  Accountability is good when things get difficult and a reminder on a piece of paper, on your phone backdrop or written on the bathroom mirror can be a helpful reminder.
• Write the training plan!
  • As we said earlier a monkey can put workouts on a schedule.  Taking all of these factors into consideration though helps in creating efficiency in your training and helps to lead to better results.

Are you unsure of what to do and are looking for options to increase your training accuracy consider a custom endurance training plan or a static training plan.

Due to the repetitive nature of our sports, endurance athletes are particularly vulnerable to cramping. Regardless of an athlete’s experience or level of fitness cramping can be an issue. Today we’ll take a look at some of the more common causes and cures for muscle cramping. Causes: There are several causes for muscle cramps, but the most common are exertion cramps. These are due to a combination of dehydration, heat stress and low levels of electrolytes. They begin as spasms and then spread throughout the muscle. As you become increasingly dehydrated over the course of an event or workout the connective tissues can adhere and inhibit muscle contraction or release. Once the cramping begins it spreads from one muscle to another. Less common are muscle fatigue cramps. As your muscles work, they contract and release over and over. Eventually, the muscles can fatigue to the point that they simply lock in a contraction and are unable to release. These cramps are more common amongst novice athletes but they can hit seasoned competitors as well. Usually they occur early in the season when you’re just getting back into training and aren’t yet up to the workload. If this is the case, simply back off the intensity and build a base fitness that you can expand on over the course of the year. Prevention: It’s hard to point to one factor as being responsible for muscle cramps so the best approach is to stay on top of all of the contributing factors. So let’s take a look at what you can do to prevent cramping. Nutrition: Electrolytes and water are essential for muscle contraction as you burn through them during work it becomes increasingly difficult for muscles to fire over and over again unless you continue to replenish both. Heat contributes by increasing fluid loss through perspiration and exhalation. Maintaining a steady intake of fluids/electrolytes while consuming calories goes a long way to prevent cramping. On particularly hot days dumping water on yourself helps lower your core temperature and slows fluid loss. However, if water is limited, it’s always better to drink it. Post Event/Exercise: The importance of fluid intake doesn’t end once your done. After exercise is when you can actually bring your fluid, electrolyte and carbohydrate levels back to where they were before you started.  Stretching helps fatigued muscles to relax and restores them to their natural length. Ignoring tight muscles will not only lead to cramping later on but injury. Incorporating a 15min stretch to your post workout routine can do wonders to help you recover. Don’t know where to begin? Take a look at this great routine we created just for you! Massage helps flush the waste that accumulates in muscles and releases tight muscles that can be difficult to address with stretching alone. Both pre and post event massage can have tremendous benefits to athletes of all levels (Trevor Marshall is an AMAZING therapist over at Englebrecht Chiropractic). If all else fails and cramping continues to be a problem a Nutritional Blood Analysis can help determine if you are abnormally low in an essential nutrient. Even if you eat a well balanced diet, take all the right supplements and stay well hydrated, it’s still possible to miss something. After trying everything you can imagine one of our own athletes still had problems with cramping, it wasn’t until he had a blood test that it was revealed he was exceptionally low in a particular nutrient. If you suspect you might be deficient, it is much better to get tested before trying to treat yourself as that can create problems as well if you take too much of a particular vitamin or mineral.   What about you? What kind of methods do you use to for cramping? Pickle Juice? Apple Cider Vinegar? Mustard Packs? Tell us about it!

Rainy days are one of the hardest things to get out for and get a workout in.  So, let us help you with your rainy day.  Here is a trainer workout that will test you and help to improve your fitness. Preface:  We don’t believe in “entertainment workouts” but we do believe in accomplishing something in a workout.  So we add our physiology expertise to our workouts to make something that will benefit you in a minimal amount of time and give you something to focus on (the effort) other than a wall.

Workout

Warmup: 10 minutes

5 minutes (RPE: 5/10)

30 Second – Fast Pedal 110+Rpm (hips should not rock or bounce in saddle)

30 Second – Fast Pedal 110+Rpm (hips should not rock or bounce in saddle)2 minutes (RPE: 5/10)

1 minute (RPE: 4-5/10)Intervals: 4 x 8 minute threshold w/4 minutes Rest Between Intervals Cool down: 5-10minutes as needed Threshold Intervals – These are an 8/10 in intensity and should be right at that point where you begin to notice a burning sensation in your legs.  If you are doing these on a trainer use speed as a gauge for intensity as well as perceived exertion.  Speed on a trainer should be consistent per effort just like a power meter.   Did you find this workout beneficial or are you looking for expert guidance with your coaching?  We can help you achieve your goals and FAST! LEARN MORE

Sometimes getting out the door can be 90% of the battle!  Coach Brady experienced that this evening.  There is a benefit once you do though!