3 Reasons Why—When Should I Start with Coaching?
When is the right time to start with a coach? The short answer is now. Even if you’re still unclear of what your primary races will be for your next season, training for endurance sports takes time. Even if you’re already training, the sooner you get started with a coach, the sooner you can build that relationship and fine tune and improve your training. Here are 3 reasons why you should start with a coach as soon as possible:
Adaptation takes time. Typically, we see significant shifts start to happen around 6 months into a training plan. What might that look like? One of the biggest things I see is that the baseline is improved. The days when things don’t feel as good become more consistent, which leads to a higher performance on the good, or even okay, days. And who doesn’t want to go faster for less effort? Again, even if you’ve trained or worked with a coach before, it’s important for both parties to learn what works and the best ways to communicate and fine-tune the plan.
Your Goals will Focus Your Training. If you hire a coach a month or two before your major event it’s not enough time to really shape the training with an end goal in mind. It’s enough time to make some tweaks and hopefully elicit a positive performance. But it’s a lot to ask of even the best coaches to get a lot of response from an athlete after only a couple of months.
It’s a Partnership. As previously stated, coaching is building a relationship between athlete and coach. That includes basic nuts and bolts of maximizing schedule, dialing in HR zones (with or without a Lactate Threshold test), and reviewing training history. The more time you have with a coach, the more the coach will be able to adapt your plan to get the most out of your performance.
Let us know if you have questions, and if you want to get started, fill out the athlete intake form: HERE
