STRIVE FOR FLEXIBILITY

As we start the year, traditionally we begin building plans for the season and races ahead. I used always to make the point that top-level athletes would know almost four years before the Olympic Games the very minute that they need to peak for. Their start time would be etched in stone, and training would aim to enable peak-performance at that moment in time. This demonstrates a beautiful but somewhat brutal reality of high-performance sport. You only get one chance.

Admittedly, 2020 ruined that example! Olympic athletes suddenly had to delay things by a year and merge the next four-year cycle into a three-year build for Paris. Their known knowns suddenly became unknown. As amateurs, we may well have dreams and ambitions which are some way ahead of us in the future, but we usually have a plan for the races, events and adventures that we will be entering. 2020 demonstrated that we had to have flexibility in programs to adapt to the situation around us.

Let me first raise the point about self-interest: as a coach, of course,

I’m going to say you need an adaptable training programme (coach). However, ignoring that personal gain, why do I believe flexibility is critical to any highperformance athlete? What can amateur athletes learn about flexibility and how to apply it to a training programme?

HOW 2020 HAS TAUGHT US TO BE FLEXIBLE IN OUR TRAINING

Although an Olympic athlete knows when they need to be ready to perform down to the minute, they would never depict the exact path they will take to get there. No one can, no coach or training plan will ever plot the precise route. Their journey culminates in successful and unsuccessful training sessions, and it is a story of good and poor decisions: one individual to them.

To be successful training had to be specific to the athlete. This means allowing for their physiology, genetics, psychology, personality and several other factors. It always surprises me when you have systems that work a process to mould an athlete rather than moulding the process for the athlete. Take, for example, a selection process, military training, crews

or team-sports, etc. These are all examples of how one method is fixed for several different athletes. They have set standards and pass or fail points that ensure that only the best get through. In theory. But what happens if an athlete is the best but takes longer to recover? Sebastian Kienle, an IRONMAN World champion said he sometimes takes two or even three rest days in a row. I’m not sure there are (m)any training plans which support that approach. So if that isn’t in a training plan but the world’s best use that principle, then what is right? How does Kienle choose to take an extra day of rest (or two) knowing that it will work well for him?

This is where flexibility is critical. Race days are usually fixed, but the path to get there is very different. For the best results, there is one path for every different athlete trying to get there. To enable the best outcome for any particular athlete, they must push at times appropriate for them, and they must rest at the times that are not. Therefore, athletes must begin to build that self-awareness into their performance skills.

There are two parts to this: firstly they must be able to listen to what their body is telling them and secondly, they have to trust themselves to make that informed decision. If we get an injury or a niggle, most of the time, after an honest reflection, we know that that session or rep was a bridge too far. Deep down, after something happens, we know we were running the edge, and our gamble was the wrong one. We also realise that that one ride probably wasn’t worth the risk compared to several days or weeks out of training.

Imagine if you could be so tuned in that you realised this before the incident rather than afterwards.

Things like HRV, mood, reflectionsubjective scores and diaries help athletes objectify or understand when they should push on and maybe back off. When these scores are coupled with athletic maturity and more of a heads-up approach to training, we can use this information to make good decisions to understand those plans’ consequences. Remember, there is always more than one way to the same goal.

For many athletes, the first step is to pay attention to what the expert is telling them. For everyone, that expert is their body. Coaches have a knack of tapping into an athlete’s signals to make decisions around training and motivation with the athlete, but the athlete has the opportunity of being the expert. Remember Kienle said he would take an extra couple of days of rest? That was because he could feel he needed it. Many people may focus on the fact he trained so hard that he required three-days of resting.

I’d sooner point out that he was so in tune with himself that he could train so hard and know how much recovery he needed. Too many athletes are caught up in bragging rights, kudos or “ride on’s” and hate to take a step back in case they lose their leaderboard position, an all green week on Training Peaks or their peers will drag them out for one short “easy spin”. They are distracted.

Goal setting is a topic that is regularly covered by media at around this time of year. I’d like to avoid the term “goal”. Milestones or objectives are better. To achieve high performance down to the minute on race day, a flexible plan and a flexible athlete allows deviations, from a plan to achieve the same effect. This is different from avoiding the sessions you don’t like doing! A milestone still exists: if you want to break 20 mins for a 10 mile TT or win a bunch sprint, you must first break 25 minutes or hit a set target power. These milestones still must be valid for the performance to be realised.

Regularly, I’ll hear athletes say that they “have” to do a ride in the morning. Or they have a session they have “got to do”. The truth is that none of the sessions must

be done. And certainly not always in that order. The athlete remains fixed and sees ticking off sessions as the milestones, rather than the performance achievements. Perhaps at times, there is a combination of sessions that need to be done. E.g. for a stage race, the athlete needs to get used to sitting on a saddle for multiple days on end! However, if an athlete remains part of the planning process, understands the milestone and knows where they are trying to get to, then with flexibility and self-awareness, they are more likely to achieve success.

It begs the question, that if organisations (governing bodies, the military, or companies) have fixed processes, how many better athletes or people are they missing out on because there is no adaptability to the selection process?

If we have learned anything from 2020, it’s that things can change: athletes who could adapt fared better than those who did not. Those athletes who had a greater goal, a willingness to change a plan and a decent selfawareness, were able to pivot their training and rebuild for the next goal. Those who need to tick boxes or turn sessions on training Peaks green suddenly found themselves lost.

With 2021 looming and some event organisers pulling the plug on musical festivals or performances, travel still being questioned, other race organisers are pushing on to ensure there will be a competition (for example the London Marathon in October). Even now, we do not know what will happen this season.

We can only do what we know. Set ourselves goals and milestones to ensure that we can keep building our performance up and plan on how to pivot into racing main events in 2021 when they are confirmed. We can create a clear structure for what the few weeks leading up to it will be like, we can plan how that may look, but don’t need to worry about when the event is until we are sure it will take place! Then we can focus, not on the event, but the milestones and the objectives along the way and the main event can change as much as it needs to, we still know what the next step of the journey will look like and react to our body’s response to those steps.

In a year where even now nothing is certain, we aren’t sure when races will start and when we need to deliver the best versions of ourselves, we should be working on training our flexibility, adaptability and self-awareness. If we can do that, we will undoubtedly become better, more consistent athletes in 2021 and beyond.