Why an Annual Training Plan Makes the Difference Between Making & Missing Goals - Coach Tip Tuesday

When considering training, athletes often think about their workouts.  In fact, workouts are probably the thing that athletes think about most.  They might consider how long or how far they’ll go in a workout, what intensity they’ll execute the workout at, and/or what intervals to plan in a given workout.  However, individual workouts are only one piece of the larger puzzle that athletes need to solve in order to be able to successfully reach their goals.

Over my years as a coach, I’ve come to appreciate that one of the most significant things I do for athletes is think about their training in the long-term.  Left to their own devices, athletes - whether they are self-coached or even if they are working with a coach - often get very caught up with what is “right in front of them” training-wise, and they focus on the short-term…and only the short-term.  Simply put: Athletes get hyper-focused on what they are doing right now and don’t often consider the long-term forecast, including how what they do now absolutely impacts what they will be able to do later.

While this kind of short-term approach works okay for people who are exercising, athletes who are training for goals and races at which they expect to reach their goals need to deploy a different strategy that considers more than what they are doing in the short-term. A thoughtful and well-developed Annual Training Plan (ATP) can make the difference between reaching goals and missing them.

What is an Annual Training Plan?

An Annual Training Plan is what the name implies: It is the plan for an athlete’s training over the course of an annual (yearly) cycle.  It can be thought of as a roadmap; an Annual Training Plan forecasts the training phases that will be leveraged as an athlete progresses toward their goal races in a given season or year.  It also accounts for any major happenings in the athlete’s life, such as milestones (weddings, graduations, etc.), vacations, and personal happenings (work travel, etc.).  Basically, the Annual Training Plan gives a holistic, long-term view of all of the elements that need to be factored in when planning an athlete’s training.

Most athletes set goals, and they seek to accomplish these goals at races.  (Remember: Races and goals are not the same thing.  Races are the setting in which athletes seek to accomplish goals, but they are rarely goals in and of themselves.)  That being said, it’s important for athletes to prioritize their races; not every race can be treated the same in terms of importance and priority from both a physiological and a psychological standpoint, as not every race can be the setting where all goals that an athlete sets can be accomplished. 

A-Races are the most important races in a given season or year to an athlete; these are the races where athletes are seeking to have the highest probability of successfully reaching their goals.  A-Races require a lot of time and energy to prepare for, and they also require a significant amount of time to recover properly from.  As such, I recommend using A-Races as the main “landmarks” in an Annual Training Plan.  To get started with designing an Annual Training Plan, plot where A-Races fall temporally and then work backwards from these dates to plan the rest of the Annual Training Plan.

An Annual Training Plan covers a year, which is otherwise known as a macrocycle in the endurance sports world.  Macrocycles are further broken down into planning periods called mesocycles, which are usually 3-6 weeks long.  When thinking of the Annual Training Plan as a roadmap, mesocycles are effectively the stretches in between pit stops; they are planning periods that can facilitate progress and function as checkpoints along the way to the athlete’s intended destination or goals.  Mesocycles are further broken down into planning periods called microcycles, which are usually a week in length.  Microcycles are composed of an athlete’s weekly training workouts, and these workouts themselves are the most granular aspect of an athlete’s training.

How to Make an Annual Training Plan

Once A-Races are plotted, you work back temporally, planning out the microcycles that make up the mesocycles.  In Linear Periodization, which is the most common (though not the only) method of annual planning deployed in endurance sports training plan design, mesocycles fall in a particular order that builds in specificity as the athlete gets temporally closer to their A-Race.  Working backwards ensures that the most specific (and therefore, arguably the most important) time periods of training happen at the correct times relative to an athlete’s goal, which in turn helps an athlete be as prepared as possible on race day to try to reach their goals.  

These mesocycles are planned with specific intentions in mind, and they’re personalized for each athlete.  The three main types of adaptations we seek in endurance sports training are neural, metabolic, and physiological.  Neural adaptations are responses to training the neuromuscular system.  The neuromuscular system connects muscles and nerves, which control body movements and functions.  Examples of neural adaptations include improved quality of movement, such as swimming form, cycling cadence, or running mechanics.  Metabolic adaptations refer to training responses and improvements to the way that our bodies produce energy.  Enhanced aerobic endurance (aka the ability to sustain an activity such as running or cycling for longer periods of time), improved respiratory function, and  enhanced fuel utilization are examples of metabolic adaptations.  Finally, physiological adaptations are the adaptations that occur within our body’s systems and tissues.  Improved tissue resilience, durability, and stronger muscles are examples of physiological adaptations.

There is a cadence of “up” or working weeks where training volume and/or intensity is slightly higher than the previous week or weeks.  These “up” weeks are followed by a “down” period of recovery in each mesocycle.  How many consecutive “up” weeks are planned is individualized to each athlete, but I’ve found that a ratio of two “up” weeks followed by one “down” or recovery week works well for most age-group athletes.  More traditional or “old school” models of planning used to call for three “up” weeks, but I’ve found that most age-group athletes are leading busy enough lives that the third “up” week isn’t as high quality as the first two due to the fact that athletes are mentally and physically fatigued by the time that third week rolls around.  As such, it’s more practical to plan for a recovery week at that timing so the athlete can rest a bit before heading into another round of “up” weeks.  Quality - not quantity of - training weeks strung together over the course of an Annual Training Plan has the most significant impact on an athlete’s adaptations and performance gains.  All this being said, sometimes life events and/or the timing relative to races necessitates changes to this cadence of “up” and “down” weeks.

While an Annual Training Plan is meant to be much less specific than individual training weeks are when they are planned, an Annual Training Plan can and should contain the broad ideas about and outline how to build volume, intensity, and training load over the course of that annual cycle.  Additionally, it can (and should) include the appropriate outlines for regressions from those elements during recovery weeks.  

Within the plan for each microcycle (week) of training in an Annual Training Plan, you can plot out your intended progressions for your key workouts each week.  For many athletes, this involves planning out a solid progression to build their volume on long endurance workouts.  For other athletes, this may include a progression for certain intervals or skills (such as completing threshold intervals or speed work).  Finally, you can include notes about when you intend to complete any benchmark testing (such as Functional Threshold Power (FTP) Tests or Lactate Threshold Heart Rate (LTHR) Tests).  While the actual contents of individual workouts should not be planned until you see how your workouts unfold over the course of your training, you can sketch out the rough overview for them to help guide that specific workout planning when the time comes.

Athletes and coaches all craft Annual Training Plans differently.  Some use software to generate them, while others use actual pen and paper.  I’ve always used either Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to plan out Annual Training Plans for the athletes who I coach.  For me, the spreadsheet medium lends itself to this, as it contains clearly delineated rows and you can apply formulas for any calculations you may want to do.  This being said, Annual Training Plans are simple at their core in terms of how they are planned out and laid out; what we’re really seeking is a visual representation of an athlete’s training year that is easy to read and understand.  (Here's an example of an Annual Training Plan that I crafted.)

Why is an Annual Training Plan Important?

Individual workouts help athletes prepare physically and mentally for their intended goals.  They impose a stimulus in the hope that that stimulus will in turn yield desired adaptations that will prepare athletes to meet their goals.  Many athletes consider the physical adaptations that they will need to incur if they are to reach their goals, but the mental adaptations to training are just as important - if not more so - than the physical ones.  While individual workouts are obviously important, the most significant thing about workouts is how they relate to each other and build off of each other over time - both from a mental and physical standpoint.  This is where an Annual Training Plan becomes so important; an Annual Training Plan represents the thoughtfulness of how each workout builds on each other to collectively add up to give an athlete the highest probability of success when it comes to reaching their goals.

While knowledge about training science and training plan design is important when it comes to crafting an Annual Training Plan, I’ve learned that this process is at least equal parts art and science.  The art side of designing an Annual Training Plan accounts for the fact that an athlete’s training needs to be as simple as possible while still addressing all of the complexities of training.  One of the most significant complexities of training is perhaps a surprising one: The most complex aspect of endurance sports training is that humans are, well…humans.

Each individual athlete is unique.  While there certainly are best practices that can be deployed in training for every athlete, how those practices are planned for, leveraged, and applied manifests at least slightly (if not entirely) differently for each athlete.  Every athlete has a different history in sport, different injury history, different motivations for training, different goals, different strengths, different limiters, and most importantly: a different life.  No two athletes will ever live the same day-to-day existence, so it’s impractical to think that applying the exact same strategy or training plan to two different athletes will be practical let alone successful. 

As such, two athletes training for the exact same race may very well have (and realistically, should have) two different Annual Training Plans.  Their training phases and mesocycles will likely be different lengths.  The rate at which their volume, intensity, or skill work builds may be different.  (For example, one athlete may have a three-hour long ride in one week while a different athlete has a two-hour long ride in the same week).  Their life happenings will not be the same, so one athlete may not be training one week while they have a family wedding out-of-state while another athlete who is home and on their normal routine has a full week of normal training.  You get my point: An Annual Training Plan is a highly individualized, personalized roadmap for each athlete who it is designed for.

How to Implement an Annual Training Plan

An Annual Training Plan is a living document, meaning that it is not “done” once it is planned out.  Nor is it meant to be a rigid approach to one’s training.  Instead, it should be monitored, maintained, and modified throughout the year to account for what actually unfolds in an athlete’s training and in their life.  There are basically three ways training can go: as expected, better than expected, or worse than expected.  While every athlete I’ve ever met anticipates that their training will go as expected (and they often hope that it will go better than expected), my experience has shown me that things rarely go as expected.  Life happenings happen.  Family needs change, you can get sick, work projects come up, etc.  And as such, training happenings happen. 

The most important thing an athlete can do in their own training is to assess where they currently are, see how training actually unfolds, and chart their future course in training accordingly.  This - planning for training based on how things actually go versus how one predicts or hopes that they might - is the main difference between true coaching and a training plan.  When it comes to an Annual Training Plan, this may mean extending some training phases (such as Base Phase or Build Phase), altering the cadence and ratio of “up” and “down” training weeks, or revising goals and/or races that were originally accounted for in the plan.

As you move through the year, you may discover that you have different training strengths and limiters than you originally thought.  For instance, you may have thought that your hill climbing skills were proficient, but find yourself struggling on climbs.  Or, you may find that long workouts take a lot out of you and require a bit more recovery time.  As you learn more about what is going well and what you may need to spend additional time working on, you can revise your Annual Training Plan to reflect these things so that you are continually working toward being as prepared as possible for what you are seeking to accomplish on race day.  

Your Annual Training Plan should always be a reflection of what you need most in training and what will serve you best in training as you pursue your goals.  The willingness to have an open mind and to be flexible about modifying things along the way - even if they are significantly different than what you originally anticipated - is one of the most profound things you can do to help set yourself up for success over the long-term.

The Bottom Line

When seeking to solve any complex problem, the answer almost always lies in the fundamentals.  Training can absolutely appear to be a complex problem, especially when an athlete is deeply invested in it and their goals.  However, the answer to the question “What is the best training?” doesn’t lie in a complex formula, a catchy video short, or a glitzy “new” approach.  The fundamental approach of planning out an Annual Training Plan helps transform training from being a complex problem into a manageable one.  

Doing this - taking the time to thoughtfully plan out your long-term path to your goals - will take you much further than any other fancy or complicated-sounding approach you might hear about.  Having an appreciation for how each piece of your training fits into the larger puzzle and understanding the path forward that you are taking will help you proceed toward your goals with confidence.