If there is a date on the calendar, something changes about the way training feels. The first 10K, a charity walk, a wedding, a hiking holiday… it sits on the fridge under a magnet, ticking away, and the nearer it gets, the more pressure you feel. Working online, a coach can take that pressure and make a plan from it, incorporating the sort of things that matter: how you plan to get around on event day, the gear you’ll have, old niggles, and the fact that life will happen and throw its spanners in the works.
Start with your current fitness and constraints
In the first week or two, a good coach wants to know where you are right now, not where you were in high school or that little burst of fitness you had last December. Online personal training Australia can make this initial assessment more practical by allowing your coach to understand your current fitness, available equipment, schedule, and specific goals before building your programme. So that can be a video of a few bodyweight squats next to the lounge room coffee table, or taking note of whether a particular activity causes your knees to start barking up the stairs, or seeing how your calves feel at the end of a 20-minute walk around the block.
It’s also an opportunity to go through any previous injuries or issues (www.niams.nih.gov/health-topics). Maybe you’ve never done a race like the City2Surf before and you think you’re pretty fit – but you haven’t done much running down hills on tired legs.
Or perhaps you and your partner are planning a walking trip in Tasmania, and you’re both fit enough to do the daily strolls – but neither of you has had a day where you’ve been carrying a pack and noticed how much it weighs on your shoulders. That’s the kind of thing that can change your starting point and inform the plan you make together.
They’ll also consider practicalities. Can you really do overhead presses in that small room if the dumbbells are going to be close to a ceiling fan or a light fitting? With two adjustable dumbbells, a resistance band hooked to a door hinge, and a little bit of clear space besides the bed, you can still get a lot of strength work done.
Build the plan backwards from event day
When you have six to eight weeks, the event date is the date that doesn’t move. The rest of the plan can shift around that to allow for longer walks, a few runs, a bit of strength work, and a lighter couple of days before the big day. For a wedding, for instance, it may be important to be in tip-top shape and feel fresh in the final week, rather than coming home from the wedding with the quads shot from an over-zealous leg day.
If it’s a running event, it helps to do some of your sessions along the same types of routes you’ll use on the day. So if you usually run along a route with a cracked footpath, a long concrete ramp of a bridge, and lots of traffic-light crossings, those are things you want to factor in.
You might do a slower run on the river path one day and a couple of short hill efforts on a nearby rise another day, rather than just doing your runs on the treadmill. This way, you’re keeping your plan grounded in reality, meaning the shoes you wear at the front door and the conditions you’ll face on event day.
Add strength that supports your focus
Online Personal Training Australia with the team at Peter Nguyen Fitness can work great for goals with deadlines, provided there is enough information upfront to enable adjustments early, rather than sending out a cookie-cutter plan and hoping it will suit everyone.
Protect recovery and adapt when plans change
Recovery often gets overlooked when you’re approaching an event. Especially when you’ve finished a lovely long walk or run faster than you thought you would. Then you wake up the next morning with ankles that feel like they’ve been tied up in plastic wrap when you’re putting your socks on, or your Achilles is feeling a little tight, or the back of your shoulder hurts when you lift your laptop bag.
A good plan will leave space to make adjustments. Sleep, fluids, eating, and getting enough protein will help you to be able to train again later in the week. This doesn’t mean you need to have perfect nutrition. Perhaps it means having a sandwich packed before an afternoon walk, fruit available instead of vending machine treats, or planning your dinner before an evening strength session.
Decide what to drop when things go wrong
There will be times when you miss training. When you’ve come down with a chest infection (click here for more), work has suddenly demanded a trip to a nearby city, you’ve had to pick up a child from school, or the weather has turned and you’ve just ended up walking through a sea of mud. Trying to fit in all the missed runs in the week leading up to an event is a tried-and-true method for arriving at an event with shin splints.
The coach needs to know what’s ok to drop and what isn’t. Most likely, the most important thing is to get in the longest walk in the week leading up to the event, maybe one easy run and one shorter strength session. The rest can wait. The plan should still be helpful after a few entries have been scratched out in red pen.
Ask practical questions beforehand
If your goal has a set date, ask potential coaches how they plan to deal with the following:
- How will the plan change if you have a recurrence of an old injury, such as an ankle problem, following a session of hills?
- Does the programme take into account the terrain, distance, or demands of your event?
- What will you need from me if I miss a week, or I have a bad night’s sleep?
- How easily can exercises be altered if you have limited equipment?
- What should the final days before the event look like?
Take the date of your event, the details of your current weekly exercise routine, and notes on any problems or past injuries to the initial conversation.
