Planning the Program

Week three

Unfortunately I was away for this week’s tute, which meant I had to miss out on more fun basketball activities.  However I was on a 3 day surfing/bonding trip with my netball squad.  We went down to Broulee and had surfing lessons and personal training each day with a trainer friend of mine.  All our food was cooked for us (healthy AND delicious) and there were shenanigans all round ! 

The topic this week was planning programs.  This is a bit of contradictory concept for me, being the disorganised person that I am, I usually struggle to not only make plans but follow through with them except, interestingly enough, when it comes to coaching or teaching.  I used to coach girls basketball and I currently teach swimming lessons and I have always taken the time to plan for those sessions.

I think I do this so meticulously because I have had coaches in the past who have just turned up to training and said ‘oh just shoot around for a bit’ or ‘who wants to play games?’.  Being the ferocious competitor that I am (and always have been, sometimes to my own detriment) I do not like to lose, and have always taken training seriously, firmly believing that the harder you train the more competitive you can become.  This meant that having coaches not be prepared to train was a point of much frustration and I promised that I would never do that to a squad.  I think that if they can take the time to show up ready to work hard each week then I should be able to take the time to prepare a session for them.

Once I began my degree at uni I realised just how in depth planning can really go.  I never went into all the detail of the macro and micro cycles when I was coaching but I certainly do wish that I knew then what I know now.  As they say, hindsight vision is often 20/20.  I can see now just how much careful planning must go into the training schedules of even moderate athletes to ensure time for adaptation and recovery.

I was catting to a friend of mine who is training for a marathon.  I asked if I could borrow her macro cycle for it to have a look at how much hard work goes into the prep for a marathon.

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1	Rest	5km	CT	5km	Rest	6.5km	5km (EZ)
2	Rest	5km	CT	5km	CT or Rest	8.1km	5km(EZ)
3	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	10km	5km(EZ)
4	Rest	6.5km	Rest	6.5km	CT or Rest	6.5km	5km(EZ)
5	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	10km	5km(EZ)
6	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	12.9km	5km(EZ)
7	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	16km	5km(EZ)
8	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	12.9km	5km(EZ)
9	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	19.3km	Rest
10	6.5km (EZ)	6.5km	Rest	6.5km	CT or Rest	16.1km	5km(EZ)
11	Rest	6.5km	CT	8.1km	CT or Rest	22.5km	5km(EZ)
12	Rest	8.1km	CT	8.1km	CT or Rest	16.1km	5km(EZ)
13	Rest	6.5km	CT	8.1km	CT or Rest	25.8km	5km(EZ)
14	Rest	6.5km	CT	8.1km	CT or Rest	19.3km	5km(EZ)
15	Rest	6.5km	CT	8.1km	CT or Rest	29km	Rest
16	5km (EZ)	8.1km	Rest	10km	CT or Rest	19.3km	5km(EZ)
17	Rest	6.5km	CT	10km	CT or Rest	32.1km	5km(EZ)
18	Rest	6.5km	CT	6.5km	CT or Rest	19.3km	5km(EZ)
19	Rest	5km	20mins	5km	CT or Rest	12.9km	5km(EZ)
20	Rest	3.2km	20mins	Rest	20mins	Carb Load	Race Day

I found this fascinating because the marathon is actually 42km.  So when training for it you never actually run the distance of the race. I looked into this and it seems to be because it takes so long to recover from running a marathon (some runners show the same level of distress in their bodies after a marathon tht heart attack patients do) that running the full distance before race day would actually end up being detrimental to the cause.  This is definitely a good example of why knowing what you’re doing is important !

Over and Out !