oriontrainingsystems.com
  • Home
  • About
  • Coaching
    • Program Fees
    • Downloadable Programs
  • Masters Athletes
  • Testimonials
  • Blog
  • FAQ
  • Contact

Consistency is Key

1/27/2018

0 Comments

 
When devising a training plan for the upcoming year, whether you do it yourself or have a coach outline it for you, consistency in your training is key. 
 
Skipping workouts, however infrequent it might seem, will hamper your progress and instill a sense of guilt. How many times do we think, "I should have done _____ today." Even if we don't have the time, the thought of a missed workout eats at us until our next opportunity to sweat. 
 
And if you do find yourself skipping workouts frequently, then it might be time to rethink your plan. Maybe you're scheduling too many hours or workouts during your week. When I ask my athletes to figure out how many hours, maximum, they have each week to train, I tell them to subtract 20-25% from that figure to come up with a realistic training budget. That 20-25% deduction allows for those "unforeseens" that take up our time but we can't really put our fingers on. For example, instead of doing my typical long ride today (4-ish hours), I instead rode 1:45 on the trainer and early in the morning because I needed to put a fresh coat of pain in the upstairs bedrooms and landing.  That's an all day project today and tomorrow.  And, that's OK.  We need to make adjustments as we go, right?  Because things don't stand still just because we want them to or ignore them.

Another area athletes can shore up is being completely reactive to workouts.  We all have training mates who are perpetually late to every single group workout or are scrambling up to the final second to get to the start line of a race before the gun goes off.  Why is that?  What habitual behaviors support this inherent chaotic existence?  Why, on bike test day, does an athlete turn on his/her Garmin and see the batter power is at 1%, thus rendering the power test ineffective because there's no data capturing?  And so it goes.  Be proactive with your training.  Get your bottles and nutrition ready the night before.  Lay your workout clothes out as well for those early-morning sessions, so all you have to do is roll out of bed and get yourself into the right frame of mind rather than figure it all out at that point.  Look at your own behaviors around your workouts and determine where you can improve your preparation.  This will lead to more focused execution and improved sessions.

 
The holidays are squarely in the rearview mirror now, and it's time to start focusing on the new season ahead. The more consistent you can be, and the more stress you can remove from your training schedule, the more progress you'll make and the more fun you'll have.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate

0 Comments

Puff the Magic Dragon, aka Chris Froome

1/21/2018

0 Comments

 
​The 'Chris Froome & Salbutamol' story will be front-and-center of both the cycling and anti-doping worlds for some time to come. I keep getting asked about various aspects of it, so am bringing those to bear here. Like it or not, this will be horse beaten well beyond the point of being dead. And both Froome and Team Sky have no one to blame but themselves.
0 Comments

Don't Fear Failure

1/14/2018

0 Comments

 
Last night, my cycling team had its annual kick-off at our sponsor shop, Republic Cycles, a great bike shop in Boulder and, more importantly, a great partner with the team.  I was one of the team founders 13+ years ago, and we've evolved into arguably the most well-rounded amateur team in Colorado.  So far, it's been a fun ride.

As a founder, I was asked to say a few words as we discussed the highlights of 2017's season of racing and now looked forward to 2018.  As I determined what perspective to bring to the 60-rider strong team, several things coalesced in my head, which I will go through here to frame it all up.

My family and I started 2018 with a vacation down in Costa Rica.  For about a decade, my wife and I have been looking for "our place", where we would want to retire once we got to that point in life.  While a fun, exciting, adventurous process, a little over a year ago our search took us to Nosara, Costa Rica.  We had visited other areas of the country, but once we started walking through the town and across the beach, we both knew our search was over.  Fast forward 13 months, and we're on the cusp of breaking ground on a home to be completed by around Halloween.

At first, we will vacation there 2-3 times a year.  My wife is a high school teacher, so we will head down as her vacation schedule allows.  When we're not using it ourselves, we will rent it out.  In a rough handful of years, we will start splitting our time, spending the colder months in Nosara and the warmer months here in Boulder.  Maybe we'll eventually live year-round in Nosara.  The beauty is that we'll figure it out as we go.

But, the punchline is that when we really started looking for "our place" about 5-6 years ago -- because at first it was just a concept we decided to start considering, discussing, and poking holes in to see how real the concept really was -- we went all-in.  In our early- to mid-40s, we decided to start living more for today and less for tomorrow.  We're alive today; we may not be tomorrow.  We've seen too many people focus on "tomorrow", only to miss out on a lot of living that needs to be done "today" -- either by design or by getting tripped up by booby traps Life can unknowingly toss in your way.  Lori and I are passionately protective about living for "today".  "Tomorrow" will take care of itself; it always does.

Then, driving to the meeting last night, a song on my iPad came on.  I have like 1,500 songs set to shuffle, and just let it play.  Music is an important part of Life to me.  "As the Crow Flies" by Newsted started playing and I was passively listening to it as I was trying to formulate what the heck I was going to say that would be meaningful to 60 adults at completely different points in their lives and, while on the same team, who extracted different importance and meaning from competitive cycling.  All of a sudden, a line in the song pulled me out of my fog -- "I'm not afraid to fail and I'm not afraid to fight."  Blammo.

I replayed the song to that particular lyric several more times as I completed the drive to Republic Cycles.  "As the Crow Flies" is an idiom, defining the shortest route between two points. The song is very much about seizing the moment, unapologetically so, and to never forsake your dreams.

In addressing the team, I brought all of the above perspectives to bear.  I stated that I'm newly 49 and about to hit the 180-turnaround in the TT of Life.  And, as I look to the 2018 season, I'm going to embrace "I'm not afraid to fail and I'm not afraid to fight" -- in approaching my own racing goals, in supporting my Masters squad mates in achieving their goals, and in supporting teammates I don't even race with in achieving theirs.  This is a mantra I will check in with.  Every. Single. Day. 

By embracing failure, we more quickly get to success.  Of this I am certain.  If we fear failure, we hedge.  We hold back.  We avoid losing ourselves in the pursuit because in doing so we fully expose ourselves to potential negative repercussions -- imagined and real, from inside ourselves and from others.  It is easier to hedge and fail because then we have myriad excuses on which to draw to explain away the shortcoming.  Scarier is full investment and failure because then there are no excuses behind which to hide.  We are fully exposed to whatever the outcome and whatever the feedback -- good, bad and ugly.  But, this is the way it has to be.

Because I do go all-in.  Being less than your best or trying less than you otherwise could to achieve personal excellence -- in anything -- makes no sense to me.  It doesn't compute.  So, I challenged each and every teammate to embrace "I'm not afraid to fail and I'm not afraid to fight" however they interpret this and decide to apply it -- to themselves, to the rest of us.

It hit home.  When the meeting was over and it was social time, I received a lot of compliments, hugs and handshakes for words well said.  I'm just glad it resonated.

Happy Training,
Coach Nate
0 Comments

    Archives

    March 2022
    April 2021
    February 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

© 2015 Orion Training Systems, All Rights Reserved