‘Writer’s block’ is a well-known problem and there’s plenty of advice out there on how to move past it, including tips like breaking the writing task into small parts, or “prepping the page”, i.e. writing out a skeleton framework to fill in later.

Similar struggles apply to other people and fields though, including endurance sports coaches and self-coached athletes as it happens!

Instead of a blank page and a flashing cursor, we’re faced with a calendar of empty days asking to be filled in with structured workouts which then need to all fit neatly together into mesocyclones and logical phases which progress and develop over time.

To help, here’s an overview of a practical process for overcoming “coach’s block” that we rely on daily, and which if you’re a coach, you may be able to use or at least take inspiration from to aid your training programming.

1: Add your anchor dates

The first step is adding the events into the calendar on the correct dates.

This helps us immediately see the gap between present day and race dates and makes the ‘north star’ clear. In other words, we know exactly what we’re working towards, and have some boundaries to work within.

Other key dates can be added at the same time e.g. days where you know there’s little time for training, or times that you’re/your athlete is away on holiday, and so on.

In effect, you’re adding the non-negotiable days to your calendar - the days where you know exactly what you’ll be doing on the bike, because you’ve already planned a race, or something else that dictates what you can do.

This step is easy enough, and a good way to get the process kicked off and generate some inertia!

2: ‘Prep the calendar’

From here, we’ll look to “prep the calendar” and make things easier for ourselves by working backwards from the first A-priority race/event.

We’ll also use notes on the Monday of each week to briefly summarise the focus of each week, starting with the taper week, mesocycles etc. This is a good time to pencil in where formal testing may go too.

Sometimes though, we take a slightly different approach here, using Excel to note on a week-by-week basis some broad features of each week, such as the focus of the training, key sessions, rough volume targets, mesocycle start dates and so on, again working backwards from the first A-priority race.

This can be an easier way of seeing what the training will look like from a high-level view if you struggle to get this perspective from your training planning tool of choice.

You can see an example below:

In either case, this step is very similar to ‘prepping the page’ when it comes to writers block.

In effect, we’re mapping out a skeleton framework of what the training should look like. We’re not adding the details yet, but we’re starting to flesh out a structure.

3: Create your workout ‘palette’

Having created the skeleton framework for your plan, then next step is to start adding workouts to your calendar.

It’s really helpful to have a small collection of central workouts that you can drag and drop into your calendar, and then tweak to suit your requirements. We both use our Complete Workout Library for this purpose, which you can pick up for yourself here.

We’ll also typically decide on a narrow selection of workouts that align with the goals of the training, so that we’re not overwhelmed with choice when it comes to selecting workouts.

Another benefit of choosing from a narrower selection of sessions is that it makes it much easier to track performance improvements over time, as you’re always comparing like-with-like workouts week to week (e.g. throughout a particular mesocycle).

This process is a bit like how a graphic designer will have a colour palette to work from in a program like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator; it helps you stay focussed, and improves your efficiency since you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you come to plan a week.

4: Build a basic week blueprint

Our next step is to figure our a basic training structure that works for the athlete’s (or your) typical weekly schedule.

Many people have a repeatable pattern of work and other commitments, and thus once this basic structure has been developed, it makes it much easier and quicker to start adding training into your calendar.

For example, for athletes with a typical Monday-Friday working pattern, we often find something like the following basic structures work well in many cases:

5: Batch schedule similar workouts

Next you can start to go through and flesh out each week using the workouts you’ve selected in your palette (of course pulling in addition workouts too if needed) and the basic week you created previously.

You’ll generally find there are common sessions that repeat in a regular pattern, such as a day off every Monday, an interval workout on a Tuesday, and a long endurance ride every Saturday, for instance.

An easy way to make quick progress with your planning is to add these ‘regular’ sessions to your calendar, but leave gaps in your calendar for atypical periods that might require more thought (e.g. during testing weeks, or periods of time where your availability changes).

TrainingPeaks has recently introduced a new feature that allows you to quickly batch-schedule recurring sessions, as shown below. This can speed up the planning process nicely.

You can even batch-schedule interval sessions, and then adjust these to add progression, as we’ll explain further below.

6: Fill the gaps

You should now have a training plan that’s roughly 80% complete. You’ve got most of your structure laid out, and you should have a good idea of where things are broadly heading.

We find that this is a good time to address the trickier or more unusual parts of the plan, such as dealing with testing weeks, or weeks where training availability may be undetermined.

The main reason we leave this stage until later in the planning process, is that it can initially feel a bit daunting, and hard to see which direction to take with the planning. But once you have most of the plan fleshed out, the task of planning these trickier parts becomes lighter, and you have fewer variables to play with.

You might find yourself needing to tweak some of the training in the weeks leading into or following these gaps too, to make sure things flow nicely. This is absolutely fine, and fits nicely with our next step…

7: Adjust and add progression

Now that the weeks are filled out with the basic framework, it’s time to add progression to the plan by adjusting the design of the workouts each week so that the athlete is gradually challenged more as they get fitter.

This might include extending the long rides by 10% in successive weeks, in a cycle of 3-4 weeks, or perhaps adjusting the interval blocks in key high intensity sessions to be longer or more intense.

Understand that these progressions will be somewhat arbitrary in the early planning stage and will likely need to be tweaked closer to the time and using recent training experiences as a guide.

The appropriate means of progression will also differ on an individual basis based on the athlete’s strengths and limiters, the nature of the event being prepared for, the training history of the athlete, their time availability and many other factors.

8: Finishing touches

Whilst personal preference will dictate what’s done here from athlete to athlete (and coach to coach), for the finishing touches, we like to add notes on a Monday explaining the goals for the upcoming week, and outlining any pointers/warnings to be aware of etc.

We also use notes to give reminders and process goals around things like nutritional consideration, metrics to look at, variations in the workouts to add in etc.

These notes help to pre-empt questions the athlete might have, keep them motivated and on the right track and if you’re self-coached, can act as reminders, nudges and prompts to help you with your training.

How To Overcome “Coach’s Block”: 8 Tips For Getting Down To Planning