I admit, in my five years of coaching, I've struggled with creating training plans. Growing up I followed those three to six month plans often found in Lydiard or Daniels books and I thought that the key was in the depth of the training schedule. It was a bit easier when there was only one person who had to follow that schedule and that person was willing to do the things necessary to keep the training close to the original. It may be obvious to others, but it wasn't obvious to me at first that trying to keep a group on the same page was going to be a huge headache. I had plenty of them.
I would find myself writing training schedules for the month, then three days in I would have to change something. I felt that the training I wanted was being constantly derailed and my athletes would not achieve what I had originally planned for them. It took a few years before I fully gave up the idea of scheduling my training more than a few days out. I understood at that point that as long as I could go back to the roots of my training philosophy, the training would eventually get done in due time, even if I had to constantly switch what days workouts would be done, etc. And a crazy thing happened, my runners didn't stop improving. It was a relief to know that I didn't need to be so high strung about the day to day perfections. I then had time to deal with headaches from other aspects of dealing with teenagers!
My advice to other coaches, especially young ones like myself, is not to worry about missing days here and there in the training program, and following something too rigid will always leave you in disappointment. Stick with a philosophy and you will end up much happier at the end of the day.
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