Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Have a Plan

"Fail to plan and you plan to fail". This saying has more importance than you realize.

In order to be successful at anything in life, especially sports, you must plan for it. Amongst other things, you must plan out your race schedule, your training schedule, and your training times. Then you must plan on the best way to make everything happen. "Winging it" only works for so long. The best athletes are the ones who have planned their success.

What's the first step in this planning process? Goal setting. You must set realistic yet challenging goals to keep you motivated and on track.

An example of a goal would be -
Eat healthy

That's a great goal, but how do you eat healthy? What are the steps to eating healthy and how do you know if you are doing it?

You must break your goals down into more goals and tasks. If your goal can be broken down, you are not finished making it.

In order to eat healthy, you must know what eating healthy means. A better goal would be-
I plan on buying more fruits and veggies to have on hand at home for snacking. I will stay away from highly processed (packaged, sugar filled) foods and buy more "natural" foods that have not been as processed. When I will always remember to eat a healthy snack (ie banana and milk) after my ride. Etc, etc.

The same goes for training.  Do you know what you're training for and why you're doing what you're doing this time of year?  Know exactly what you're training for (your goal), then break it down into smaller pieces and train for each piece.

Goals have to be broken down, and down, until all you have to do is follow the steps.
Plan to succeed.

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