It has always been said that practice is the best teacher. To reach our goals we need to be disciplined. Motivation wears out, discipline does not. When it comes to improving at sport there is no magic formula, it takes time and patience: training consistency is the key to improvement.
To see how the effort pays off you need to have a plan and execute it consistently. Here are some tricks to make your sessions more bearable and not fall into monotony and boredom:
Set goals
Having a goal is key to making progress and achieving consistency in your training. Without a fixed goal, you may ask yourself, “Why am I training? Your goal doesn’t have to be to win the Tour de France, set goals that are in line with your level and where you want to go.
It is useful to set long term goals, but it is also useful to set short and medium term goals. These closer goals will help you stay focused – as they will seem more like a to-do list to cross off – to get to your big goal.
Schedule appropriately
As with goal setting, you need to plan in a way that is not overly demanding. When you first start out, it’s easy to feel motivated and believe you can do it all. But it’s not every day that you’re going to feel that motivation, and even less so when you’ve been training for a long time.
Even if you have to travel or there are some weeks when you’re not going to be able to do your workouts on a regular basis try to stay active so that when you come back it won’t be hard to get back to your level.
Use coaches
Coaches will help you in your preparation making your evolution faster and safer. They are an essential tool when you want to take it seriously.
Also, when we train on our own and, for whatever reason, we fail a training session, we fail ourselves. If you have a coach who takes you there, you will feel a higher level of involvement, this will make you feel like you are failing your coach when you skip workouts too.
Be aware that it is not linear
Progress is not linear, there are many factors involved that can make your evolution one way or another. Being aware of this prepares you mentally to face the adversities of your evolution. Suffering an injury or feeling that you are not improving can make you throw it all away if you don’t take it into account, but training consistency should not only be physical, but also mental.
Have fun
Training can become a hard and monotonous task when we have been doing it for a long time. It is necessary to get out of what we are used to, give it another perspective and have fun while training. A cycling simulator like Bkool can be a great tool for this.
I’m not saying that every day training should be pure fun. But it is necessary that on certain days you have a more enjoyable training or that training is done in the form of a game, so your head can rest and get out of the cycle of discipline and doing everything perfect.
Being disciplined and consistent will make you reach your goals. These tips or tricks will help you not to lose focus and make your workouts more bearable. Now that you know what to do, put on your cleats and hit the trainer!
