Welcome to your Custom Plan

We have created a short document to help you get the most out of your custom plan.

Our team at Evoke Endurance wants you to get the most out of your custom plan. Below we have created guidelines to help you direct your own training throughout the plan.

CUSTOM PLAN BASICS:

Your coach has already had a conversation with you and written the weeks of custom training to match your current fitness and start you on the journey of reaching your goals. Throughout the next few weeks, it is up to you to follow the plan and make adjustments as needed.

PROGRESS:

Progress can be slow, but you will have the most success if you stick to the plan that has been created for you. Don’t expect to see life-changing results in the first six to eight weeks; aerobic training takes a considerable amount of time and patience for actual results to come. Don’t expect your training to be a nice upward slope; you will have both good days and bad days. Training is never linear.

ADJUSTMENTS:

What happens if your cousin’s sister’s dog has a birthday party you simply must attend, and you miss a day of training? Life happens! We know things come up that you can’t predict. Don’t sweat it too much. Move on. Here are a couple of rules of thumb we like to advise:

Don’t try to make up missed days on other training days. Sometimes it makes sense to move the rest day. Other times, you miss a couple of days, or things get messy. Don’t try to then add two workouts in one day. Doing this can throw off the rest of the progression.

Keep your strength sessions at least 48 hours apart, ideally 72 hours. We know it can be tempting to sometimes stack strength days, but this won’t give your body enough time to absorb the training and most likely will leave you fatigued.

Same rule of thumb for higher intensity training. When in doubt, do aerobic training! You should be able to recover within 24 hours of most aerobic work.

If you miss four training days in a week, repeat that week before progressing to the following week.

RECOVERY:

Recovery is essential! Rest when you are tired, and take your scheduled days off seriously. Movement is always a good thing, even on rest days. Get out for a ~20min walk, a low-intensity swim, yoga, or, if you are at a higher fitness level, a light jog. Sometimes you need a rest week or rest day sooner than planned, and you should take the initiative to do so. If your workout quality starts dropping off two days in a row, take a day off. The last thing you want is to get too worn down, injured and/or sick. It’s always better to take one extra day off than miss a week of training due to illness.

HEART RATE TEST:

Performing a proper heart rate drift test is crucial for your long-term training. Workouts in your plan will mention the HR thresholds gleaned from the HR drift test. Mainly they will mention staying below the Aerobic Threshold (AeT) but will also specify HR values above the AeT. You may retest at any time, but generally, changes are not detectable within about six-eight weeks of consistent and properly performed training. The more aerobically fit you become (i.e. closer to your genetic and age potential), the more precise and voluminous zone training needs to be in order to see changes in AeT. This article does a great job explaining the test in detail.

METRICS/TRACKING:

Tracking both your training and your life is crucial for success in training. We highly recommend you track your workouts along with other physical activities. Utilize the “post activity comments” box in Training Peaks, writing remarks about leg fatigue, what was especially hard about the workout, or other seemingly important notes. Keeping track of your energy levels and how training went will help you learn a lot about yourself. Take the time to connect your watch with Training Peaks. The more data and notes you can collect about yourself, the better. If you return to do a second plan, this will give your coach more information to work off of. Here is a list of watches compatible with Training Peaks

WHEN TO CONTACT A COACH?

Remember that your coach will not be looking into your Training Peaks profile daily to provide feedback. We do expect questions to come up from time to time. If you want to do a deep dive, you can schedule a call with your coach for $60/30min. You can schedule this by emailing your coach directly.

You should reach out to your coach the WEEK BEFORE your last planned week to schedule a call for a follow-up plan.

WANT MORE INFORMATION?

Check out our Resources Library.