I’ve been the coach for Manchester Harriers & A. C. Senior Endurance Group for almost 3 years now; each week I prescribe 3 sessions for the group. I started out by creating a spreadsheet with a technical focus for the week, a fitness focus for the week and then set two sessions that would occur as a group at the track and a third that would be done solo or in small groups, plus, drills for the week.
A couple of years later, while recovering from surgery, I did an online course in Strength & Conditioning – at some point I might do an in person one to get the level 4 qualification but for the moment the level 2 is sufficient to be able to program exercises for runners and supervise runners doing basic strength stuff – at this point I added a strength component to my spreadsheet.
I programmed the shape of the year based on feedback from the athletes who were attending my track sessions and the year pretty much looked like:
Jan – April: Endurance Focus, i.e., Half-Marathon and Marathon fitness and mindset.
March – August: ‘Speed’ Focus, i.e., 1500m – 5km speed and the mental skills to push yourself hard in races.
August – Feb: Cross Country (XC) Focus (my favourite part of the year to program) – I bring in agility, technical XC skills (mud, tight turns, grass, water etc.), 30-60 minute race efforts (distance is not necessarily meaningful for cross country), short hill power, race skills (we race as a team for XC so every person my athletes overtake is another point for the team – actual finish times become irrelevant).
The first year or so I never repeated a session, however, in the last couple of years there has definitely been some copy and paste – which I don’t feel is the end of world; when I program for individual athletes I do a lot of repetition but the sets either get longer or faster (progressive overload). Whereas when I’m programming for a group then I’m looking to make the sessions; engaging, have some kind of social aspect and also be good physiological and psychological training.
Now, 3 years in, its getting harder to program a week without a significant amount of repetition. At the back of my mind when I started programming for the group I did anticipate that I might end up with a 2 year cycle of programming that I could then repeat. The question that leaves me with is how do I avoid getting lazy and just leaving the same sessions on repeat. Time to come up with a new approach?
Coach Alex Masidlover 