How to Maximize Your Potential

If your goal is to achieve excellence and to be the best you could be, it is important to identify the gaps in your training, i.e. there is always a GAP between your potential and performance, and between an okay performance and excellence.

In order to identify the gaps you need a systematic approach which should include recording all of your training details. You should start with your goals (short term and long term) and review last year’s season results and rate each area: what you achieved, underachieved or overachieved.  To do this you need tools, and one of the tools is your YTP (Yearly Training Plan).

Review your YTP compounds to include training, camps and a race calendar plan for each of the phases: macrocycles and microcycles, volume and intensity. Then check what was the target for the Key Performance Factors (KPF) and rate them to pinpoint where the shortcomings were.

Some of the cycling KPF’s;

Aerobic Capacity
Endurance Capability
Aerobic Power
Maximal Aerobic Power
Anaerobic Capacity / Power
Speed
Muscular Endurance
Core Strength / Endurance
Pedalling Efficiency, Aerodynamic
Body Composition
Recovery Regeneration, Nutrition
Flexibility
Physiological Skill

Of course you can analyze those KPF’s if your plan is measurable and based on your goals. Finding and analyzing the gaps is an important part of each new plan. When you are building your new plan, don’t forget to include your strategies for all KPF’s, and make sure your plan is achievable.

Whatever you race at a club or international level, you and your coach must have a clear idea about the details. The next step is teamwork: a partnership between you and your coach with effective communication between the two. Trust between an athlete and coach is an important element for success.

By Houshang Amiri
Photo: Louise Hodgson-Jones