Good Practice for Good Training

Sometimes following a training plan can feel like a process of just going through the motions. After IMUK, I ticked over with some open water swimming and some bike rides, strictly sticking to the aspects of training that I enjoy. No stopwatch or routine in place, it wasn’t really training per se. The fact it was exercise was a knock on affect of me enjoying myself.

When I decided to get back into training and fire up a plan again with my coach Paul Savage, it gave me back some structure & purpose to my training. The plan is 6 days a week of training, amounting to around 10 or 12 hours per week. It’s not just the training that dictates the week, but the things I need to do around this to steer clear of the ‘going through the motions’ mindset. Eating well, keeping up my stretching and yoga and also recovery to make sure I can train again the next day. It’s all about the good practices around the training that culminate into an overall good week of training, not just getting a sweat on.

IMTalk presenter Bevan James Eyles wrote a similar piece here in reference to ‘Action Triggers’, where he mentions the temptations that can affect this good practice. It’s not really about having a set of rules to live by or a regimented way of doings things as people eat, train & sleep at different times of the day and week. I have slowly found out what works for me and more importantly what doesn’t. When I have a storming training session that I feel great about, I’ll remember the good things that I did before that session and save them as a reminder for everything that I did around not only the physical training session.

I remember reading a piece on Jonny Wilkinson where he won’t walk away from a training session until he has achieved his goals. The last set of kicks he does in training needs to be the best, so he can walk away with the last feeling he had being great. You can’t end your session on a bad one or that feeling will stick with you until the next session, starting on the back foot before practice has even begun.

For me, a training plan is essential as it keeps me disciplined and dedicated to the overall picture. I have something to work towards & it had a knock on affect to everything I do around the plan. The lifestyle goes hand in hand with the plan, it’s unavoidable, and when you get the best practices top and tailing the training, you’ll just know about it.

For a bit of further reading, closed skills such as kicking a ball from a tee very much falls under the umbrella of Kinaesthetic learning, or tactile learning. This recent blog at Project-Active explains a bit more about how we can learn more from feel rather than a textbook.