Got an event planned, or looking for one? What should we look for and how to build ourselves up ready to take it on.
So you’ve found an event you want to prepare for? – how do we find the best route to planning our success? By working backwards and understanding the strengths we will need to possess to achieve it!
Having had the opportunity to work with numerous individuals on a wide range of goals, one thing is clear building in a path way is critical to success.
That pathway has a number of stands, from recognising the areas we wish to build, incorporating appropriate counter activities and ensuring we have some flex baked in.
It’s all too common to look solely at the goal, back to using running as an example!
Signed up for a race, its X distance and we then start to run more and more to reach that distance, it’s a logical step and actual forms one of the strands.
Lets break it down a little further:
We need to:
run X miles
Increase leg and core strength to run X miles
recover our muscles from the runs
increase our pace
increase our O2 intake over the duration of the run.
No particular order there, just that these are additional areas for us to consider incorporating, want to add speed to our running, have an interval session programmed. Need to increase our O2 uptake, add in some hill reps.
The goal is to create the plan based on our needed outcomes, if we are looking to improve our time we need to add speed, and strength, likewise if we are just looking to complete the distance then we need to make sure we are recovered and our underlying O2 uptake and strength are ready to support us.
When considering these additional areas slow and steady wins the race, the goal is the sum of the parts but the parts can’t outweigh the goal.
Strengthening our legs shouldn’t be taken to the point where soreness effects our running, likewise continuously running hills and not increasing our distance will also hinder our goal.
Balance is key, I like to consider it as pizza, all areas are slices, ocd trigger warning, not all slices are the same size! They do, however, make an entire pizza and that is our goal – to eat one whole pizza, wait no, to achieve our goal, then have pizza.
In summery, find the key components of your goal, make time for the additional areas that would benefit from improvement, don’t add pineapple and slice size should be different.
Need help with planning your goal? – Chat to one of the team here at SF info@spikefitness.co.uk or 07597215652.