Indoors to outdoors

NOW THAT THE INDOOR SEASON IS OVER WHAT ARE THE TRAINING PLANNING OPTIONS FOR ATHLETES ANDCOACHES, ASKS JOHN SHEPHERD?

- JOHN SHEPHERD

WITH the British Indoor Championships done and dusted, it is now time to move on and to plan specifically for the outdoors. I say plan specifically, as really coaches and athletes should already have in place relatively detailed plans for the outdoors. However, perhaps targets may now need to be re-set and aimed for after a very successful indoors or reconsidered due to a less successful one.

Outdoors for the UK’s elite, the bull’s eye will be the Olympic Games and the trials in Manchester will be the secondary target on the way (there’s also the late season European Championships). For others, the main aim may be the English Schools or the various age group champs. However, it’s important that all reasonably training mature athletes have a goal and train accordingly as this will enable performance to be optimised.

After the indoors it is perhaps time to take a short break and then re-group and determine what needs to be worked on to get ready for the outdoor season – an outdoor season which could be just eight or nine weeks away. As Matt Long indicated in last week’s AW in the Andy Butchart and Hayley Mills article, the indoor season can be very much a stepping stone for the outdoor season.

Both Mills and Butchart indicated that they don’t specifically prepare for the indoors.

However, especially for sprint, jumps and throws athletes this is perhaps not strictly the case, as you’d not go into, for example, a 60m sprint race without working on speed and starting technique. As was indicated in the article it could perhaps be more of a case of athletes not actually training indoors and using indoor races to get them to a peak of sorts.

From a training planning perspective, it was noted that both Mills and Butchart use double periodisation and this is what also enables them to be ready-enough for indoor competition and outdoor competition.