Why you need a season plan?
Reach Your Goals Faster
Avoid Injury and Burn Out
Execute proper periodization
Season Planning!
A successful race season starts in the pre-season. Why? It is imperative that some planning is done to ensure success come race season. A well thought out plan will improve athlete motivation, decrease the risk of burnout and injury as well as provide regular checkpoints/benchmarks throughout the season to ensure you achieve your goals.
The first question you need to ask yourself is what you want to get out of the season. What are your goals? Are they event or result related? Fitness related? Take some time to think about this to ensure you enter the next stage of this process fully aware of what will make 2023 a success for YOU! This process needs to be done by you, for you!
With a clear goal in mind, it is time to establish how you can measure the success of this goal. It is very difficult to improve things you cannot measure accurately. Physiological fitness can be tracked via power testing. Skills can be tested with timed sections of trail and objective pass/fail (can you ride a section or not). You can have the best plan out there but without regular checkpoints, it is impossible to know if you are on track and if your plan is working! Note: racing can be a form of testing if you evaluate properly. Be sure to compare your own performance to yourself and not others. Competition can change from week to week and year of year, meaning you need to compare your race speed to your own personal riding! Comparing to others can lead to athletes feeling a false sense of progress or failure. Both are not good for progressing in the sport!
With goals established and a mode of measurement, we can begin to create a season plan. We want to ensure all the necessary steps are taken along the way to achieve your goals. This is where a coach can be very helpful. It is time for some reverse road mapping to be done. This means working backwards from the end goal to the current date/starting point and deciding what are manageable benchmarks to achieve over a time frame to ensure success for the goal. For example, trying to qualify for an event may require multiple key performances throughout the season. This will mean road mapping several fitness peaks and managing fatigue throughout a larger calendar. Many athletes' goals may be centred around skills and fitness. Working backwards, we can break skills and fitness plateaus down into bite-sized pieces to reduce the risk of injury and accelerate development.
Pre Season Checklist
A goal that inspires YOU
Manageable checkpoints from point A to point B with a time frame
Stimulus to achieve checkpoints
Your commitment to yourself and the PLAN
Your goals may seem ambitious and far off but with the right plan in place you can achieve them!
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