Reflection

As some of you have noticed, I stopped posting on my blog for quite some time. It was for me a time of reflection. A time to look back and evaluate my coaching methods and my training philosophy. During this month, I have come to accept the shortcomings of my approaches to triathlon training, and be more open to what others have been using successfully for so long.

Therefore, I have made a list of measures that will become effective immediately for the athletes coached by me:
- From now on, all training should be done with a HRM. The use of a powermeter on the bike will no longer be encouraged. For those that, for curiosity, still want to keep their powermeter, I will instruct them to use power as just an auxiliary metric, with HR being their primary way of measuring intensity.
- The use of a Garmin and a motionbased account will be mandatory for all pstriathlon.com athletes.
- I will build personalized playlists for my athletes to listen on their iPod while running.
- I will have my own definition of lactate threshold. It will be based on a way of measuring your lactate through your breathing. I will call it pLT.
- I will create my own version of the basic concepts of exercise physiology. This is not totally developed yet, but I think that the next big thing after aerobic/anaerobic is going to be paraerobic.
- Having a long ride on Saturday followed by a long run on Sunday will be one of the staples of my program.
- Another staple of the program will be the mandatory weekly day off.
- Walk breaks during long runs will also be mandatory.
- I will discuss race strategy with my athletes solely based on bike pacing.
- I will stop asking my athletes to do “all-out” or “best average” sets.
- Everytime my athletes have a bad race, I will remind them that there isn’t such a thing as failure, just feedback.
- I will make an effort to read more books about training. When reading those books, I will look for what makes them unique and individual, instead of looking for their common points.
- I will watch Full Metal Jacket at least once a week, always searching for new ways to apply the teachings of the film to my coaching practice.
- I have come to realize that having myself reply to the emails I get from athletes is a practice that belongs in the 20th century. I will now have an apprentice coach to reply to the emails like it was me. Interested coaches should apply to the position and screening will go on until the position is filled. The tuition fees for this apprenticeship will be low, as to allow anyone to have the priviledge of learning from me.
- I will constantly remind myself that triathlon coaching is a business, and that as such, the customer is always right.
- I will take every opportunity to mention the names of the pro athletes I coach, only because it fills me with pride to work with such talented people.
- In order to fulfill the requirements to become an Elite Level Coach, I will write articles and post on Forums demonstrating this new approach to triathlon training.

This is just a small part of all the changes I will be making to my coaching in the following months. It will be a hard process, but I am sure a new, better Coach Paulo will emerge from this.