- I currently pay $350/mth for my coach. I’ve paid less in the past with other coaches and find that the $ amount is tied to two things, education/certifications, and accessibility. Finding the right combination for you is important.
- As a master’s racer, I don’t view time as a weekly volume, but more of a matter of what are my goals and how much time do I have to recover from training mistakes I make from me learning on the job as a self-coach. With very specific goals in mind (Nationals TT podium) I think my chances of wasting a year of training opportunity self-coaching are greater than with a quality coach. The other aspect of time that I look at and is slightly related to the first is my own time. I have a degree in Exercise Physiology (I haven’t used it for years, but I have one) but have a busy senior level position in my company so I don’t have as much time as I would like to plan things out. I still read and learn a ton and my coach and I have some great discussions that inform my training, but to be able to have him take the planning part and be thinking of the macro cycle as well as the micro cycle is huge in maximizing my own personal time.
- It depends. I’ve had younger and older coaches and haven’t found age as big of a factor until the last couple of years. If the coach has experienced age-related changes, that gives them some valuable insight. If a coach hasn’t personally experienced it, I would want them to have some fairly significant experience coaching masters athletes. At 52, I’ve found this to be more important over the last couple of years. It was minor until I hit 50 and then I began to see more noticeable changes in how my body responded to volume and intensity. My coach is older and with that understanding, we have been able to work my plan to where I just finished the biggest block of my cycling career in terms of volume and intensity. It just took a little more time and planning to get there than if I had been 40.
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