One of my goals is to simplify speed as much as possible for other coaches - I believe this will help more athletes get faster. 

Which is why I picked today’s topic. 

Last week I talked about the purpose of profiling, including some of the physical properties we test when identifying an area’s athlete of weakness. 

Today, I want to shift more toward an actual session - how do you plan a session?

What is the chain of events that should take place?

I look at it in 3 parts: Plan, Monitor, Communicate.

1. Plan

You want to create a structure by periodizing. So we want to manipulate volume, intensity, and density to achieve the plan and training load.

2. Monitor 

Then, we will monitor changes in that athlete. So we want to observe changes based on the planned training load. 

So if I introduce a load, volume, and intensity, I want to know how did the athlete respond to that?

3. Communicate 

Finally, I need to be able to communicate this to coaches, staff, parents, and athletes. I want to ensure every stakeholder knows what just happened. 

In practice, #’s 1 and 2 require acute training adjustments. Or, minor changes or things that we need to tweak within our planned programming based off how the athletes are responding. 

The diagram below shows a more specific example of how we’ll look at it…

Let’s break this down further. 

At the top you’ll see our planned training, with additions and subtractions on the left and right side.

The first thing we’ll do from our planned training is monitor. I’m talking before the session begins. 

We like to use a wellness score, where an athlete submits a survey with a series of questions that they answer from 1 to 5. Could be a combination of sleep, soreness, tiredness, and so on. 

But we’re getting a score of the athletes ranking themselves subjectively and giving us feedback on how they feel. 

Last week I announced our partnership with Output Sports, which is what we use to get these wellness scores. Before we had Output, we used Google Forms and created them on our own. 

There are plenty of ways to track it, just make sure it’s in an organized fashion, especially depending on the number of athletes you’re training. 

You could also use HRV to track this with a tool like Aura or Whoop. Finally, you can also use physical screenings. 

How do they look? What does your coaches eye tell you? What’s their body language as they pull up? Are they tired? Do they have poor posture? What do they look like? 

From here, this is where we might make our first adjustment. 

If those things are negative we’ll make a negative adjustment to the training load. We’ll reduce training load. 

If they’re positive, we’re either going to maintain or we might even add. If they come in bouncy and feeling really really good, we might add a little bit (although this is rare). 

Next, as we enter the training phase we’re analyzing our volume, intensity, and density. 

We use GPS for this (Catapult is our preferred partner), you could also use heart rate among a few other things. 

Reminder: 

Volume: How much do we do. 

Intensity: How intense was that work/how fast was that work 

Density: How much work did we do in that amount of time

So if it’s higher than planned, we’ll adjust the following session. 

If it’s lower than planned, we might add to the following session, or we might maintain. 

If we’re right on target (which never happens…), we’re good to maintain. 

Finally, the response phase. What is the athlete’s response to the training? 

Looking at the RPE scale, how hard is the session? 1-5, with 5 being hardest and 1 being easiest. 

The athletes are telling us how they’re subjectively feeling again. 

The other way is to see if there’s visible fatigue. If everyone looks absolutely exhausted after then we know the response is going to be negative past that day. 

So if it happens on Monday, we know Tuesday is going to be a negative adaptation initially. 

So with a poor response we will adjust the future session. 

If a response is 1 to 2 on RPE, we might maintain or add on to the next couple of days. 

A good way to think of this is that we always want to look at what is our planned volume versus actual volume and what is our planned intensity versus actual intensity and then we’re able to subjectively measure these things through athlete feedback and trust. 

The final thing I’ll add making these adjustments comes from something I’ll take from Dan Pfaff, who famously made Plan B Sessions. 

It’s a great idea. 

Because in reality, every time an athlete comes into a training session, he/she is the product of accumulated fatigue PLUS lifestyle factors. Good and bad responses will require an altering of training load in the form of volume, intensity, and density. 

So, 

Have a plan - your stimulus for the desired goal. 

Monitor - observe changes based on the plan. 

Communicate - echo changes to concerned parties. 

Simplify speed. 

LET’S BUILD.