New Year Motivation

Happy New Year from me and the Kudo Coach team! Hopefully you’ve emerged from the holidays feeling refreshed, motivated and ready to hit 2021 hard.

Obviously this year is different, with uncertainty as to when cycling events will return to normal and whether you’ll actually be able to tackle your main goal for this year. As a bike racer I was always taught to “control the controllables”; in other words, we may not get to decide whether our event will go ahead, but we can decide to train hard and be at our best on that date, so time to get cracking!

Goal setting

To help with motivation and break you out of your winter hibernation, I would suggest finding an intermediate goal before your main goal for the year, and make this a B priority event in Kudo Coach. Think of it as a stepping stone towards your main goal. It will keep you focused and allow you to test your progress. Around two months from now is ideal; close enough to be motivating but far enough away to give you time to make an improvement. Also, try to make it fairly specific and measurable.

Some examples of an intermediate goal would be:

• You want to increase climbing speed for your hilly A priority event → Intermediate goal: Raise your threshold power (FTP) to weight ratio
• You want to raise endurance for a 100 mile sportive → Intermediate goal: Increase average power or speed over a four hour ride
• You want to increase strength endurance for your hilly A priority event → Intermediate goal: Ride a hilly route with 3000m of ascent

For some additional advice on goal setting during the Covid period check out our Corona virus training blog post.

Routine

Over the New year holidays our training routines can be disrupted, sometimes for the better as we can ride more often, but generally for the worse as family and travel commitments (and calorie intake!) encroach. But now’s the time to get back to a structured routine with Kudo Coach.

Think about the blocks of time you can train and look to add these into Kudo Coach by setting your available days. You should also add some structure with the smart workout selector which will suggest the best structured training session for you for any given day.

By having a regular weekly routine you’re more likely to complete your workouts, hit your weekly Training Load goals and increase your fitness level.

Consistency and Training Load

Training for a goal is all about consistency, and the best way to track this is to hit your weekly Training Load goal set by your Kudo Coach plan. Your aim is to achieve this with a combination of sessions each week. This is easy to monitor on your training plan screen. Do this successfully over a few months and you’ll see significant gains in fitness.

To train smarter you can use the workout selector and the weekly feedback to make the best use of your valuable training time and ensure you are not just achieving the training load but that the workouts are done at the correct intensity.