Small tweaks, big gains

TRAINING TENDS TO FOLLOW A FAMILIAR STRATEGY, WRITES DAVID LOWES, BUT A FEW TWEAKS CAN LEAD TO MUCH IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

- DAVID LOWES

ALTHOUGH I like to think of myself as a modern-day coach, I sometimes find that integrating old school methods which were successful in the past can be the catalyst to better performance today. You’ll find out about some of these below.

Making changes

At the end of a season or peak training phase it is time for rest and recuperation for the athlete and the coach too. However, it is also an important period when reflection takes place on what went well and also what didn’t go so well.

It is very frustrating, even demoralising, if the season has been a poor one. It certainly needs a clear mind and steely self-belief to know that the work done, although not producing the goods, still included most of the ingredients for a successful outcome.

It is therefore, at times like these for me, a case of making those tweaks and not wholesale changes. This is a theme which John Shepherd explores some more on p42 when looking at the indoor to outdoor seasons transition and periodisation models.

Coaches and athletes can get stuck in a rut and lose track of how things can be made better. Generally, many go down the route of training harder with more volume when they want to have a better next year (or subsequent training phase). Although there is nothing initially wrong with this, it doesn’t always solve an existing problem. It isn’t always volume or even quality work that have led to racing inadequacies, and that’s why I look back now and again at training diaries to see how things were done and I can take from this to make training plan tweaks to get those good results back on track.

Below you’ll find some of the go-to tweaks that I have used to improve performance over the years.

1. Getting the start right