168 HOURS: THE WORKING BALANCE
eating and recovering, how do you balance the remaining 50-hour each week? With limited time to spend with family, friends and relaxing it is crucial that you begin to establish your professional and personal boundaries with your athletes, manage your time wisely and to plan ahead.
T
ESTABLISH BOUNDARIES If you are a full-time or part-time coach
it is essential to establish your coaching hours with your athletes. you must be clear and concise when you are available to connect over the phone, e-mail or in person. Establishing these boundaries will effectively allow you to balance your professional and personal life as a coach. Setting boundaries between your
coaching and personal training are extremely important. It is great to be able to get out and ride and run with your friends and athletes; however it is not always the best use of your training time. make sure to set aside time in each of your training disciplines for you to swim, ride and run at your pace to ensure that you are on target to achieve your personal goals. As a coach competing it is important to lead by example, don’t be the one that says, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
MANAGE YOUR TIME Triathletes are often categorized as Type-A
personalities; however just because you are organized does not mean that you are managing your time well with work, athletes, co-workers and your personal training to the best of your ability. map out your time each week, whether it is by clearing our your inbox, downloading training logs and files, or making phone calls. make a plan and stick with it. I personally begin my week by
downloading all my athletes’ training logs and files from the weekend. This allows me to then go through my inbox and voice
here are only 168 hours each week to master the balance of life as a coach. After sleeping, working, training,
messages and respond to my athletes with more effective and influential feedback to their questions, concerns and comments. I also have set a goal to connect with all my athletes by the end of the day on Monday or Tuesday of each week. Often, Wednesday is they day for me to get caught up on all the social media, read a journal article, watching a webinar or even work on creating a weekly hot topics document to send to my athletes. This allows for Thursday and Friday to prepare for the coming weekends training or racing events. If you are a part-time coach, the same
approach should be taken; you just may find that you have a more condensed version of the above. The weekly hot topic document, journal article reading and webinar can be turned into a monthly edition instead; the same amount of knowledge can be gained and shared by you and your athletes on a regular basis.
PLAN AHEAD Organizing your training equipment ahead
of time each week, by determining your weekly routine for your training it’s easy to get your gear bags prepared for each week. This means having all your pool equipment ready to go in your car and a spare cycling kit and running clothing at the office or by the door. At the start of the week you may feel a little like the crazy bag lady with your swimming bag ready to go in the car, another bag with two pairs of running and cross-training clothing and yet a third gear bag of two cycling kits ready to ride for all conditions. It is one less thing you will have to do each day, and you may find that it holds you more accountable to your personal training, if it’s packed and out it will be a reminder to get out and train. Each week do the bulk of your food
preparation on one day. For example, it’s easy to make a giant bowl of rice for the week (use a crock pot; it is set-up for easy cooking and quick storage). When you bring home your fresh veggies for the week chop
By Lindsay Hyman, USA Triathlon Certified Coach
them all up at once, when you need them later in the week the work is done and you can quickly thrown them into any recipe.
A phrase I use often among my fellow
coaches is that we are progressing forward fast, and you must be adaptable to keep up. No matter if this is in regarding to your time management, education or your personal training, it’s essential to be able to adapt to your environment. By establishing your boundaries, managing your time and planning ahead you can make room for 5-10 more hour each week.
Write it down and see for yourself where your weekly hours go: • 55 hours = Sleeping & personal Care • 50 = Working • 15 = Eating/food preparation (excessive, but I LOvE to cook)
• 12 = Training • 8 = Social time • 7 = Relaxing • 6 = Tv – I like my crime shows and the Broncos
• 5 = Commuting to work and training sessions
• 4 = Family commitments • 3 = Reading books, articles on the web • 2 = Cleaning – my house and my bikes • 1 = massage – I have to work on keeping up with my athletes
Lindsay Hyman is a pro-level coach with Carmichael Training Systems, Inc. and a certified USA Triathlon and USA Cycling Level II Coach. In additional to competing in Ironman-distance triathlons, she coaches athletes from first-timers to world champions in sprint to iron-distance events. For further information on coaching, camps and performance testing, visit
www.trainright. com.
page 16 | PERFORMANCECOACHING
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18