Today was my first day of Mark Allen Online. I have to say I am very pleased with the structure of the training program. I have been just doing what I thought I should do on a daily basis for the last year and a half with a general idea of what I should do. As a former competitive swimmer, with a coach giving me workouts to do for 17 years, I have to say I just love being able to just look at what I am supposed to do and then go do it. Hooray for having a plan developed by someone who knows what he is doing!
Don’t use the combo “coach/plan”. They’re two different words for a reason 
Don’t use the combo “coach/plan”. They’re two different words for a reason
I have trouble with that due to my multiple personality disorder.
Was this an OT post you just wrote? Maybe you should apologize to Slowman again…
I’m just saying I see the merits of a coach giving a plan. So I don’t think the two are truly mutually exclusive of one another.
Back on topic:
I agree with the motivational force of a having a good plan. I can get fired up to do a strenuous workout when it is part of a plan. I only focus on finishing today’s workout. I don’t push myself as hard when I just go for a workout and see what happens.
I wrote my own plan last year, read a lot of books, read a lot here and at gordoworld and talked to many people. I normally wrote 3 to 6 weeks at a time and made minor adjustments as I went along.
I made some mistakes and learned so much about training and racing that I’m going to do it again in '06. Next year’s plan will be a compilation of Jack Daniel’s running formula, Gale Bernhardt’s swimming plans and my own version of bike training.
My first and only coach didn’t give me a long term plan which I feel is very important to understanding the training. I didn’t know why there were easy weeks as well as hard weeks, I didn’t understand about periodization but followed what he said to do for the most part. Some times on the easy weeks I did some extra workouts, now I know why I shouldn’t have.
My point is that I feel someone should understand the long term plan to keep themselves on course. Looking at day to day plans didn’t make much sense to me even though I did the workouts, I didn’t trust the plan which helped drive me away from any one person making all of my plans for me.
The only way I could go back to a coach now is to have a very long discussion with him/her in detail about a plan reaching at least 6 months into the future so I can understand the focus. I have a great amount of respect for many of the coaches that post here and have used their ideas and found that most of them work well, but still, I make my own plans and I’m responsible if I get it wrong.
jaretj
I like the idea of personal responsibilty for your own plans, and I’ve always enjoyed making my own stuff sometimes. But I agree that it is great to have a coach and plans totally written out for you.
I think that the best coaching combines the two. What I like to receive, and hope I provide, is a level of give and take. It’s the coach’s responsibility to set up a structure, but also to adapt as the situation demands. I’m always after feedback (preferably on a weekly basis, and extra after key sessions).
If an athlete gives me feedback I can train them more effectively. If they don’t, I have no option but to stick to my original assessment of them. I tend to drop athletes who don’t provide me with the info I need.
This is probably why I don’t make my living as a coach.
caching is a relationship. I’ve had a lot of coaches - XC, swimming, club swimming - and the ones I liked best and did the best with were the ones who let me have some input and let me question their judgement. There has to be some give and take, not the Coach and The One Who Listens to the Coach.
exactly
.
I agree that when you don’t know what you are doing or you are frustrated with your results coaching and having a plan delivered for you can be a good thing, and make it “easier”/motivate you to do the work.
I would only caution you to not treat your training plan as gospel, rather as “suggested workouts”. Strict adherence to anyone’s training plan can get you overtrained, injured, or both. Remember, you’re the one doing the work and that you are the best judge of what you should do on a given day/week.
The first year I used a coach to go the IM distance I was horribly overtrained as a result of not knowing better. I did every single workout as gospel. I was sore and tired all of the time and not happy with my results. The next time I used a coach for same I took the workouts as suggestions and followed them as closely as my body would safely allow. I even insisted on 2 days off per week instead of just 1. Training was much more enjoyable and I was hours faster in the end.
This time around I don’t think I need a coach.
I’d suggest that you should have the kind of relationship with your coach where you can discuss these issues as they arise and the coach can react with an alternative.
I don’t agree, however that the athlete IS always the best judge of what they should do (though, as you suggest, the person who is doing the training certainly OUGHT to know best). I know many runners who simply wouldn’t mention a problem to their coach until their lower limb actually fell off or they ended up in hospital. Sometimes the primary role of the coach is to tell them to slow down, stop etc etc.
I don’t agree, however that the athlete IS always the best judge of what they should do (though, as you suggest, the person who is doing the training certainly OUGHT to know best). I know many runners who simply wouldn’t mention a problem to their coach until their lower limb actually fell off or they ended up in hospital. Sometimes the primary role of the coach is to tell them to slow down, stop etc etc. I guess we disagree. A coach 1000 miles away is not going to know how sore my quads are today before I start on my 3 hour ride. I DO, and have enough experience to know when its a good sore or a sore that demands a shorter, recovery ride. And I’m not about to lean on my coach so much as to email him with every little issue. Weekly, sure, daily, no.
I’d put forth that the amount of instruction vs consultation depends on what the athlete is ready for. Schwing has been around for a while and the consultative role is entirely appropriate.
Other folks who are just getting started and have little experience in tri training probably need more direction. Just like the “situational leadership” training we all had to take.
I think most folks would do best by just being quiet and doing what the coach says, how he says it, when he says it. The exception would be the experienced athlete.
I enjoy working with a plan that has variety and purpose (The superCoach one is pretty cool).
You may be right Kevin. It may have been my personal experience with a coach though. I had a coach first time around who didn’t want to hear anything remotely related to “am I supposed to be this sore?” He’d chide me for even suggesting that I may be overdoing it. The problem was that neither of us knew my abilities, and he trained me like he’d train himself, but I wasn’t a top pro. I didn’t know any better until I had a coach that really talked to me AND listened.
I’m not saying who that coach was but many of you know.
I tried to post this earlier, but the work connection crashed:
I certainly wasn’t suggesting that YOU personally don’t know what you’re doing. I certainly do, as I said, know athletes who don’t know their bodies, or (worse) who know them but refuse to pay attention.
As a coach, I’d try to forewarn athletes about points when they might become unusually fatigued and suggest WITHIN the programme that if they reach that point they should do an alternative session/have a rest day and re-jig the week, or better call/e-mail me and let me re-jig it for them.
What worries me most of all is that if the coaches out there are going what your’s did, and not what I’d do, then there are some pretty poor coaches out there.
I think it really depends on the athlete on any level. Some athletes don’t want to think and don’t want to know. Give me a workout, I’ll do it and be done with it. Others will question everything and give excellent feedback to the coach, whcih will help the coach modify the workouts appropriately. Still others will give bad feedback and try to convince the coach they they always need to go harder or easier, when that is exactly wrong. And then some know themselvels so well that they don’t need a coach at all, they can self coach.
The trick is to find the proper type of coach for you.
Styrrell
Has anyone here actually used the Mark Allen online program? I’m a bit skeptical about letting a computer plan and modify my program. Maybe I’m confused about what the actual program does, but I doubt Mark Allen is checking my progress for $27 a month. Maybe a better question to ask is, is it worth spending $27 a month on this or should I just pay up and get a real coach?