 Right, check it out. So I'm out here on a Saturday beautiful day Coaching some runners got my clipboard my stopwatch and The conditions are pretty good. It's it's pretty good grip on the ground and Yeah, the runners are happy and I'm just coaching them through a threshold session of eight times five hundred meters at threshold and And for the most part they're taking their times themselves because I'm just in one end of the of the of the roots So they they run down there and then they take their time with their stopwatches And then they come back and they report to me and then I write down the times and Give them some input on on how they're doing and if they're running too fast or too slow or where there won't be at so Pretty cool I'll do this every other Saturday With a running group of Adults so it's not the kids on Wednesdays. I coached the kids and the teenagers in the local club But every other Saturday I have a running group Today there's just two People but that's okay because that means that they're gonna get extra attention and we're gonna be able to dive a little deeper in terms of their Exact times and all the numbers which is always fun So definitely feel like a like a coach when I'm standing here with my clipboard, and I think people that pass me by they They're not really sure what I'm doing, but that's okay Alrighty back in the office, and I thought I wanted to give you guys some tips on how to be your own coach during workouts, okay, so you just saw that intro there while I was coaching a group of runners and That's a really good situation to be in as an athlete to have a coach guiding you through a workout and That it's not just that if you're a beginner you need someone to tell you what to do it's not as much about telling you what to do as it is about keeping track of the session and Offering guidance and support so that the runners can focus on running and nothing else Okay, so let's suppose you have a track session and it's kind of a you know Kind of a busy session with maybe different lengths of repetitions and different Intensities different paces the most important thing as a runner during doing a workout is to execute the workout well, right to get a good Feeling of the workout and to get a good training stimulus from it And in order to do that you need to stay focused you need to be able to listen to your body and Dial in the right pace if you run a little bit too fast you might end up not really Hitting it right the way you should do maybe running a bit too hard and it becomes too hard of a session or if it's supposed to Be a hard session. Maybe you're not able to hit the right pace because you're not focused enough This is when the coach comes in as a just a really really valuable player in terms of keeping you Accountable keeping you focused and just simply telling you what's on the plan what to do and Reminding you of those things that you need to keep in mind while running like good posture Stay on point. Okay, giving you the splits. Maybe as you come around the turn that sort of thing That's what a coach does during a session. And so if you don't have a coach there yelling times Encouraging words and giving you feedback in between reps, then you got to do that job yourself Okay, and that can be a little bit challenging. Of course, you'll never probably be able to do it as well As a coach would and again, it's not that the coach necessarily knows more than you do Although in a lot of cases the coach will have more knowledge regarding How to train well and what to do and what not to do But even if you're equal in terms of your knowledge, it's just having another person there to bounce reflections off of and to Give you some input on how you looked and and whether or not you're hitting the pace or not right taking taking the time Etc. So the two really main things that I want you to focus on when you're trying to be your own coach at The track or during a workout is the first thing is your watch. Okay Get familiar with your watch. Okay. I have a Garmin here 6 30. I'm not sponsored or anything But I really like Garmin the point is you can you can customize the screens So that they're really perfect for Workouts, okay? Are you going to hit the manual lap button? Maybe because you're at the track right and it's 400 meters. We know that we don't need to rely on GPS We can just use the manual lap button when you when you lap Every time and then you'll get the actual time for the lap Or maybe if you're out of place, that's not measured up. You're gonna put it on auto lap You might even program in the recovery intervals two minutes of recovery and then three minutes hard two minutes recovery You can program it into your watch so your watch essentially becomes your Timekeeper your your coach if you will and you don't have to necessarily fiddle with it I see a lot of runners Fiddling with their watches a little bit too much during workouts not entirely sure how to sort of manage it Are they gonna stop it between? Raps are they gonna use the lap button? What about the time is it cumulative or is it showing just a lap time that sort of thing we can do that in another video I'm gonna make a note of that But your watch, that's the first tip. Just get familiar with your watch Spend some time setting it up properly for workouts you know, you can have different profiles at least in this one and and then Use it to your advantage so you don't have to necessarily think about the pace The second thing that I want you to do in a workout when you're coaching yourself is to take a moment before you Start the workout so after you warm up and you're ready to go and you're you're you know, you're ready to work take a moment a Minute or so and just remember the purpose of the workout Remember why you're doing this workout? Remember what you're doing and tell yourself to stick to the plan Okay, because it's so easy to get carried away sometimes I've I'm definitely guilty of this in the past. You just get so carried away Because you feel good during the first half of the workout, right? And you just run way faster than you were supposed to but it just feels good and you're just like hey Maybe my plan was wrong, right? Like maybe I don't maybe I can run much faster than I thought I could well typically what ends up happening is that the second half of the workout really sucks and You end up not really achieving The purpose of the workout which is accumulating time at a certain intensity or a certain pace perhaps Stick to the plan. Okay, and if the if if after the workout you you sit down and you sort of analyze the workout And you go hmm looks like it was a little bit Wrong the pace I should have run a little bit faster. Well, no problem You can come back to the track in a few days and do another workout because you didn't overdo it there You're you'll recover and you'll be fine to do another one taking it up a notch again Stick to the plan there as well over time You'll find what works and what doesn't and you'll see your fitness progress getting carried away and getting Emotional during a workout emotional in a good way, but getting emotionally invested is not a good idea That's where the coach comes in and says I don't care if you feel great Today, this is the plan and we're gonna stick to it, right? And you're also more likely to stick to the plan if you got a coach because you you're held accountable, right? So try to be that strict with yourself. Okay, try to be your own coach Okay, take a moment before the workout to ask yourself. What was the plan? What kind of paces am I gonna hit? What are the rules that I'm gonna stick to and then stick to them and if you feel yourself during the workout sort of Getting off track a little bit. No pun intended starting to run a bit too fast or not quite hitting paces or whatever Then take a little pep talk with yourself and act almost as if you're a little crazy and you have a little Second personality going on there where you're both coach and athlete So sort of try and maybe in the break in the recovery phase between the intervals You might just take a moment again few seconds Maybe 10 20 seconds to just have a little bit of a conversation with yourself as a coach as yourself You know, how are we doing? Are we hitting paces? Don't worry too much about why you're not hitting paces or why you're doing what you're doing That's for later when you analyze the workout also as a sort of your own coach but during the workout just Try and keep yourself accountable talk to yourself communicate with yourself and stay Focused that's what I want you to do most of the time We sort of lose focus a little bit and we just sort of have fun which can be fine sometimes But probably not doing key workouts That's where we want to be focused and and do what the plan says and then use that to inform our Planning process for the future. So if it turns out it wasn't a good session was way too hard Maybe it was over ambitious the paces that we were trying to hit or maybe they were not ambitious enough Well, that's back to the drawing board and we'll take we'll fix that for the next session, right? Quickly, we will have a pretty good idea of where we're at and just at the end there I just want to throw in as well one more little thing While you're running okay during the intervals or during the temple run or whatever it is pretend again like you have that little Coach inside your head telling you things like you're good. You're strong light feet You know upright posture relax You know easy speed those sort of cues and those sort of positive Encouragements tell them to yourself. Don't go like fuck fuck. This is hard. Oh my god Well, that's sort of the athlete talking But if you want to be your own coach You've got to also be able to turn on that coach hat while you're running and tell your athlete to relax Do you're doing good? You're doing well You know get it done and then just do it and of course be able to sort of be flexible on the day too Sometimes a coach will say, you know, you had enough. I think you're good now It was supposed to be ten times four hundred meters But I think eight times four hundred feet four hundred meters is enough for you today because I can see you're very tired You're you're at that sort of breaking point. Let's stop now and not overdo it That's another thing you have to be able to do as your own coach to be a little strict with yourself and be honest with Yourself and don't take it to the very limit because we don't do that in training. We do that in racing during training We don't want to take it to the limit. We want to take it maybe two-thirds towards the limit, right? We want to have several Reps or several miles in reserve when we finish to work out So be honest with yourself and again communicate with your inner coach. That's all for today Thanks for watching if you want an actual coach to produce a training plan for you Perhaps I do that. I offer customized training plans Check out the link in the description and we can do consultations talk about your training and stuff like that Thanks for watching. Please grab and have an awesome day. See you around