Coaching
Custom training plans to help you achieve your best possible performance
I provide personal coaching, tailored to the specific needs of each athlete, to improve their fitness and have the best performance in their chosen events.
Consistency is the most important factor to improve in endurance sports. Your training program is designed to maintain consistency, to keep accumulating training days, weeks and months, and to prevent days lost due to injury or overtraining.
Information
What you get
A training plan specifically tailored to you, your needs and your goals. It is designed to improve your fitness and your performance in your chosen events.
The relationship between the athlete and the coach is based on communication. Communication between athlete and coach is extremely important to develop that relationship, so the coach can create the best possible plan.
I am not an authoritative coach that will force you to train in a given way, the program will always be adapting to the needs of the athlete. From the athlete’s perspective, this means that they will have to keep the coach informed about how they feel about the training, their health, recovery, nutrition, etc., so the coach will be able to adapt the training plan.
The training plan is created around the athlete, their goals, their needs and their personal situation. The athlete is the center of the plan, the driver, and the coach is there to help them make the best choices to improve their performance. Those choices are informed by science, coaching experience and the history of training for endurance sports, but always putting the personal situation of the athlete first.
The athlete’s level of performance is assessed using specific tests, and continously re-assessed from their training data. From this, personalized training zones or levels are created to prescribe training. The training be constantly iterated, taking feedback from the athlete, to improve the training plan going forward and to find the most efficient program for the time available.
The biggest factor for success of an endurance training plan is consistency. Accumulating weeks and months of work with minimal interruptions. The plan will be designed with a gradual increase of training load to decrease the changes of injuries, overtraining and other setbacks that lead to loss of consistency.
That consistency plus the design of each training session will lead to the training program being effective, providing the biggest adaptation with the least amount of fatigue, and leading to a gradual increase in fitness peaking for your main goal event.
We’ll achieve that while keeping the program fun, using engaging training sessions that will have a specific purpose and will allow you to see your progress and maintain your motivation.
We’ll
Experienced
A guiding plan for experienced athletes wanting to have more autonomy or to develop their ability to self-coach
Performance
Weekly training plan for athletes who are seriously commited to their goals
Unlimited
Training plan for the athlete who wants to leave no stone unturned in pursuit of performance
You get 5% off if you pay 6 months in advance, and 10% off if you pay 1 year in advance.
To support young athletes, women’s sports, and athletes in special situations, we may offer special discounts. Please contact me to learn more.
A minimum commitment of 3-4 months to see results in your fitness is needed. To encourage this commitment, you will be asked to pay for 2 months up front, and then the payment of the 3rd month will be returned to you.
We will use intervals.icu, an online app which includes a training calendar, in which you will receive all your training sessions, as well as training analysis tools. All your training sessions will be uploaded to intervals.icu and I will analyze them to ensure that you are performing them correctly and to plan future training.
Then, you can easily check your training schedule on your phone, as well as sync it with several calendar services including from Google and Apple.
Your training data is uploaded directly from several brands of GPS watches and cycling computers, including Garmin, Polar, Suunto and Wahoo. However, as long as your device connects to Strava, your data will be uploaded to intervals.icu.
Intervals.icu also includes communication tools, so you can put your comments for each training session for us to chat about them, and it includes a chat for training-related questions.
You will get feedback on your training sessions and adjustments to your training to ensure that you perform your workouts in the correct way.
First, you will need the necessary equipment to perform your sport. If you are relatively novice and need advice, ask away during one of our calls.
Then, some tech gadgets are highly recommended:
– GPS device to know your workout duration, distance, speed and elevation.
– A heart-rate monitor. Chest straps are best and highly recommended, followed by optical monitors that go in the arm, and lastly wrist-based heart-rate monitors.
– For cycling, a power meter is recommended to know, objectively, how much work and power you are generating.
These pieces of equipment are what gives us the information to plan the training from long-distance. They are what we use to attempt to compensate for not having a coach with you, in person, for each and every session, they give us much of the information that we use to assess your training and your progress. However, all of these are nice-to-have and not strictly needed. You can still get a very good training plan even if you are missing some piece of equipment, but we will have to rely more on your subjective feedback.
Communication is an extremely important part of the coach-athlete relationship. It is necessary to know how the training is progressing and the upcoming threats that may appear, so we can navigate them in the best possible way. Several means of communication will be available:
– Messaging app (Telegram) for text and voice messages as well as phone and video calls (other apps possible if needed). This will probably be our most common form of communication.
– Intervals.icu, which offers several features to facilitate athlete-coach communication:
– The calendar itself, which allows to plan for future events, such as tough work weeks, exams, travel, holidays, etc.
– The comments for each activity, in which you can give specific feedback for the activity, what went well or didn’t, etc.
– The chat feature in intervals.icu, which we can also use for messaging, similar to a messaging app.
My expertise lies in endurance sports. I am a certified triathlon coach by the Spanish triathlon federation, and my experience and research have focused mostly on running and trail running.
I coach athletes to compete in events in running, trail running (including ultramarathons), triathlon, cycling and mountain sports.
I also have some experience in strength and conditioning for sports, but that is not my main area of expertise. However, if that is what you need, let me know and I’ll help you find the appropriate professional to help you achieve your goals.
I also coach athletes whose goal is not a specific endurance sport event, but who want to stay fit and healthy. Whether you want to stay generally strong to participate in different sports and outdoor activities or if you want to age healthily to be able to enjoy your friends and family, I can probably help you with that. However, if you belong to a specific clinical population or have a specific disease, I am not the right person to coach you, but you can contact me so and I will try to help you find a qualified professional who can help you.
Strength and mobility training will have two main goals. First, training the stabilizer muscles that may help us prevent injuries. Second, improving performance in your chosen sport.
Since I won’t be able to be there with you during every training session, we will adapt the exercises to your level of proficiency. In case you want to progress beyond your current level of proficiency in strength exercises, you may need to get external help to learn the basic movements, such as the squat and the deadlift.
The strength training plan will be adapted to you and your circumstances (time availability, access to facilities, distate for gym training, equipment, etc.) You will get descriptions and videos or illustrations of the exercises, and you may send me videos of you performing the exercise for some feedback. I will also help you with choices should you want to purchase some strength training equipment to train at home, such as dumbbells, kettlebells or resistance bands.
First of all, contact me to let me know that you are looking for a coach and may be interested in my coahing. You should contact a few other coaches as well, to find what works best for you. We will then set up an interview and you will receive a form to complete with further questions, so I can learn more about you, your goals and your specific personal needs. We will also use this interview to establish if our coach-athlete relationship seems compatible, whether my coaching is what you need at this moment in your athletic career and whether you like me as a person. Otherwise, no hard feelings! I will recommend you other coaches that may be a better fit for you.
Following the first interview, once you have decided that you want to move forward, I will send you the information that you need. You will create an account in intervals.icu and set me up as your coach, and you will upload all of your past training data. The first few weeks will still be for us to know each other: I will start prescribing your training so we will see what are the types of sessions that work best for you. At the same time, I will analyse your past training data to look for patterns: what worked well for you, what were your previous training levels, etc. With all of this information I will work to create your training plan and, hopefully, you’ll start seeing how your fitness and performance improve.