How best to offer more individualised coaching in a group setting?

Triathlon Forum
1

Looking for wisdom please from those who have coached or trained in group settings. Further below is a longer description of the situation. The short version is that my tri club operates as a squad (around 25 members), with weekly group swim, bike, run and S&C sessions; and a group weekly training plan on TrainingPeaks. Things are good generally - but we’re trying to improve and evolve - in particular we are investigating ways to offer more individualised coaching within the group structure / environment.

Longer Version with More Context

We have a ‘head coach’, another coach who is paid to take one of the swim sessions and a volunteer coach who co-coaches a couple of sessions.

In return for a monthly fee, each week members have access to:

  • 3 coached swim sessions (1-2 coaches on deck for each)
  • 2 prescribed bike interval sessions (can be done on Zwift in a meet-up or alone at a different time)
  • 1 coached face-to-face run interval session
  • weekend uncoached group ride
  • other uncoached sessions for the week prescribed in trainingpeaks

The training prescription is the same for all members (not individualised, other than obviously people do sessions at intensities relative to their capabilities) and follows a generic periodisation through the year (general to specific).

People end up in pretty good shape for races if they follow the plan, and the group environment is highly valued by members. But there are some aspects of the group approach which perhaps aren’t optimal. It doesn’t take account of the timing of individual members’ ‘A’ races (so there’s no concept of a specific, individual race build/taper). It doesn’t factor in individual strengths and weaknesses (so no single sport blocks, or similar). There’s no feedback on workouts and subsequent adjustment to rest of week if needed (similarly for times where life gets in the way).

The head coach responds well to requests for ad hoc training advice but broadly if athletes want to individualise their plans that’s something they need to take on themselves. More experienced athletes who lean towards self-coaching are comfortable with this but others are left wondering. A minority of members hire a separate coach to help them individualise things.

Worth stressing, our head coach isn’t paid to coach 25 athletes 1:1. And historically, they haven’t been keen to individually coach members of the squad (worried about potential for perception of favouritism towards 1:1 coached athletes). But recently said they could take on up to 5 athletes 1:1 (as well as coaching the group). Of course, people look for different things in a coach and so simply offering up our head coach for 1:1 coaching isn’t a panacea.

So, those of you who have coached or trained in group settings, what wisdom, ideas, advice can you offer? How could we adjust our club model to improve the service for member athletes whilst retaining the popular group training environment aspects? What are the potential pitfalls or trade-offs to consider?

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

1 Like
2

One option might be to designate a few “team” races per year that the group can train and peak towards. Obviously 1:1 coaching solves your problem, but if the coach doesn’t have the desire to take on that many individual athletes then the group race approach sort of gets you halfway? It’s obviously not ideal and requires some coordination, but if your group is that large I’m guessing compromise is already something everyone is accustomed to.

1 Like
3

We do already target certain races and otherwise a few people often end up at the same race, so we could work with race groups. Thanks for the suggestion.

1 Like
5

I think you need to make sure there are clear explanations of what the program is and isn’t. I think you can “individualized” the workouts within the group session workouts to a degree, by sorta having an A/B/C set within each workout that sorta fits more accurately where you are at as an athlete at that point. That wouldn’t really be that much more on the coach. If your doing pool 100’s, A does 12, B does 9, C does 6, etc. Everyone warms up together, then the group breaks up and does the set that most aligns with where they are. Strong runner may benefit from doing 2 more hill reps than the 1st timer so he does the longest distance offered for that run that day, and then that strong runner may only swim 6 sets of 100’s in the pool vs the A group of athletes swimming 12 sets of 100’s. That way they can sorta train sorta to their strength and weaknesses accordingly, and again that wouldn’t be that much more to ask from the coach.

I go back to the knowing the expectations when you mention no feedback or adjustments to the plan. Are you having members pay for group training cus those additions start to venture more into individual coaching parameters. I don’t think it would be too much to expect coaching during the workouts, but assuming he’s going to give feedback every week to every person post workout is probaly a bridge too far in the expectations of group training.

Go back to what is the goal of the program and what your paying to coach within said goal. It kinda sounds like he’s meeting the group workouts objective, and anytime it starts to venture into “individual” training advice he’s leaving it more broadly because that’s not always that easy in this circumstance because said coach is only seeing said athlete what half the workouts. So I think an “compromise” is simply to have a broader range within each workout, to sorta allow some individualization and also some athlete accountability to potentially work harder to move from the C group to the B group workout etc. I don’t think that would be too much to ask, in a 25 person setting, that would be fair/easy thing to do I would think (obviously your not going to have 15 different groups, but a few group options for each session could work for coach and athletes).

6

Thanks for engaging on this.

This happens to some degree already and we’ve asked coach to do a little more of that. No pushback that that falls within the scope of current role.

Indeed - there is coaching during workouts but no feedback as not paid for that within current brief. It’s been the group approach to date because that’s what it’s been. It seems there’s some demand from members for more individualisation (but within the group environment which is highly valued), hence the question about options/ideas for how best to achieve that.

Assume all things are possible in future (albeit not all members want / can afford to pay more, so needs to be ‘optional extras’ model … and needs to be a reasonable ask for current coach … or could involve another coach (which may or may not be wise)).

So if you were tasked with offering more individualised, optional add-on services (within the group environment) how would you do it?

Thanks again.

7

I think the reality is that it’s very hard to blend group workout dynamics with “add on” individualization in that scenario. It’s why I go back to what is the goal/expectation of the program. It sounds like every objective is being hit, but when it gets to add-on’s suddenly the members are a little put off if the coach sorta doesn’t answer.

I did a group setting just like you talk about, and I simply added individual coaching (at a discounted rate since it’s a mix of group sessions + access to that number of athletes). I did this when I coached a college triathlon team of over 70 athletes (club level, not being paid by the uni to be the coach), and I did this when I coached a group 8 brand new newb women only group. And the thing was, if you came to a group session, you’d never know who was paying for the individual coaching, cus I coached all athletes equally in the group sessions (I actually would go out of my way not to over engage my “coached” athletes in the group setting). The “individual” clients got my feedback with workouts through TP commments or text communications, and an actual individualized plan for their specifics (IE they knew which group set to do for each coached workout). And again I essentially gave them a “group rate discount” since most of the workouts were already sorta planned, all I had to do was sorta individulize it for number of sets.

So keep it simple, give them 2 options and go back to the goal/expectation of each group for what your providing. Of course it by almost default will get messy when you add that many people into a group + individual coaching dynamic with suddenly people becoming favorites and the “group rate” people suddenly feel shafted. Simplier will be better.

What is being offered with this even to the people who can’t afford individual coaching is a pretty damn sweet setup. To get that many coached workouts and essentially a stock plan, that’s pretty good.

2 Likes