Whether you are a professional, elite amateur or weekend warrior; planning is a crucial part of achieving your goals. A good plan of attack is like an athlete's north star, it provides a key point of reference. At The Cycling Formula we utilize our proprietary histogram to create a road map for each of our athletes. It is this tool that provides a firmly rooted path for both the coach and athlete to follow and reference throughout the season.

The coach's primary role should always be to keep their athlete's healthy both physically and mentally. It is this objective that dictates exactly what workouts look like on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. If the athlete is not both mentally and physically fit then optimal performance simply will not happen. It takes a combination of both for peak performance to occur. This is the goal for all athletes when they toe the line come race day. Imbalance can easily occur if a dedicated approach is not created and abided by. This can be difficult at times as things get in the way. Race opportunities pop up that weren't on the agreed upon schedule, injury and sickness happens and in general LIFE HAPPENS. It is extremely hard to follow a path without sometimes wavering off a bit. This is why having a season plan (histogram) and being dedicated to the process is so important.

Let's now lay out a step by step approach to help create a plan.

1. Sometime in your offseason, far away from the races you should look to choose the "MONUMENTS" of your year. These monuments are the key races or key times of the year when you want to be 100% primed for optimal performance. It is with this knowledge that allows for everything else to be created.

2. Hand in hand with determining the times of year you want to be peaking you should also be spending time determining:

• What are my weaknesses and how can I improve upon them?
• What are my goals, targets and outcomes for the upcoming season?

3. With the first two steps completed you can now move on to laying out the plan. At TCF it is now when the coach will take all this information and develop a histogram for the athlete. A histogram designed to incorporate everything about the athlete. Their daily schedules, targeted areas to develop, key races/timeframes for the year and anything else of importance.

When you put those steps together you get an objective roadmap for the coach and athlete to follow. The athletes job is then to simply follow through on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Easy as that. The coach (proving their worth) works hard to keep the athlete on the correct path. With roadblocks popping up at all times it can become difficult to stay the course. At times a fork in the road might be the right thing to take, whereas at other times staying the course is the right move. In each case, decisions are always made to put the athlete in a place to reach peak performance when they need it most. The races!