Blog

BY WILLIAM RITTER

Ready to take your training to the next level? Then it’s time to find a training plan or a coach. Here are the pros and cons of each, and why you need them to reach your goals.

Are you excited to race? Like many others, you may be severely under-trained and under-motivated at the moment given the restrictions and seemingly endless cancellations brought on by the pandemic. The good news is that as things seem to be getting under control, races are slowly coming back. The bad news, or at least something to be aware of, is that you may be ramping up faster than you should. Many of you may be wondering whether you should get a training plan or a coach for this return-to-racing period and beyond. To help with this decision, I have outlined below several pros and cons of training plans and coaching. 

Training Plans: The First Step Towards Meeting Your Goals

Training plans are offered by many coaching companies on TrainingPeaks, for example,  but the athlete buying the training plan is not receiving any coaching. 

THE PROS

• Considerably less expensive than 1:1 personal coaching.
• Provide structure and guidance.
• Improvements are likely compared to unstructured and random training.

THE CONS

• Training plans are usually generalized and not specific to any particular athlete. 
• Doesn’t take into account the strengths and weaknesses of the athlete. 
• Training plans are designed for ideal scenarios and don’t accommodate an athlete taking a sick day or dealing with a niggle that may necessitate a few days off. They also do not account for other life events such as emergencies, vacations, etc.
• Doesn’t adjust for how an athlete responds to the stress of training. 
• There is little to no accountability with a training plan. 

At a low cost, training plans offer good guidance for race-specific training. The TrainingPeaks training plan store allows you to input things like your race date and event type, your experience level, and the number of hours you’re available to train each week so that your training plan fits closely with your goals and your lifestyle. Once you purchase a plan and sync it with your TrainingPeaks app, structured workouts will populate your calendar so that you can focus more on your workouts and less on how to plan them. 

While training plans are far superior to random, unstructured training, they are inferior to 1:1 personal coaching. For example, many triathlon training plans typically include a large portion focused on the bike because this is the largest percentage of time in a triathlon. However, this can do you a disservice, especially if you already have strong bike skills but are weaker in the swim or the run. 

Training plans also fail to take into account when athletes miss a session. Many athletes will try to double up or make up more training on the weekend or, even worse, try to train while sick, which will usually only complicate the problem. 

Coaches: The Gold Standard of Training

Next, let’s discuss the pros and cons of 1:1 personal coaching. 

THE PROS

• Your coach will hold you accountable. 
• Your specific training zones for pace, power, and heart rate can be adjusted by your coach as improvements are shown. 
• A coach can adjust your training to account for missed sessions such as any injury, illness, life demands, and otherwise missed training. 
• Technique analysis available. Many coaches should be skilled to analyze your movement patterns and bike fit for the various disciplines. 
• Also, many coaches provide ongoing continuous education to their athletes. 

THE CONS

• Coaches are more expensive than training plans.
• Requires trust, consistent communication, and detailed feedback to the coach for how the session went.
• Requires more commitment and execution in training sessions. This shouldn’t be a drawback if you’re serious about your training.

While 1:1 coaching can be expensive, the benefits are innumerable, mostly because a personal coach will account for your individual needs. Most athletes succeed with personal coaching because coaches are constantly monitoring their training progress, making necessary adjustments, and balancing the training between the athlete’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Also, each athlete responds to stress differently and there are many factors to consider such as life stress including work and family, age, fitness level, and training load. Software platforms like TrainingPeaks help provide coaches the ability to use data to better understand training stress. 

Another reason to hire a coach is injury management. If you’re prone to injury, a good coach can evaluate your technique and build your training up safely to a load that you can handle. You, the athlete, have to be committed to providing detailed feedback from training sessions, which helps the coach also apply appropriate loading for the training stress. 

There are major differences between training plans and 1:1 personal coaching. As I outlined above, the key benefit of training plans is the lower cost and structured workouts, but the major drawback is that they are typically generic and don’t take into account your limiters. The drawback of personal coaching is the cost; but in essence, you get what you pay for. The main difference is that a coach can help you train smarter by adjusting your schedule on a regular basis to help you progress or scale. Also, a coach can help you with more insight, perspectives, technical analysis, and tactics for racing and training. Finally, a coach can help you with your sports performance fueling and strength training.