When Lance Armstrong was trying to find his familiar desire to ride bike again (following his cancer treatments, he made a brief comeback and then stopped racing... perhaps forever), he and his coach Chris Carmichael, arrived at the idea of traveling to North Carolina, the site of his past racing glory. They held a ten-day training camp with a fun, former teammate.

Riding mostly in the rain on old country roads, Armstrong rekindled a love of riding, training hard, and focusing efforts on increased fitness. With Carmichael's efforts to get him out of his Texas surroundings and away from distractions, Armstrong's amazing comeback began. The rest, as they say, is history...

Change Training Patterns

All of us have repeated behaviors and patterns about which we rarely think, so coaches frequently structure training sessions based on tradition rather than specfic need. There are endless ways to change pattersn of repeated behavior.

Examples may include... switching the content of the morning and afternoon practice sessions, having assistants lead the session, having athletes choose the structure from a menu of choices or going twice as long one day with a day off versus two medium length days.

Without changing the effectiveness of your training program, can you make a conscious plan to regularly change the pattern of training to keep it fresh and novel? If you plan for regular change, you can still have a highly structured, scientific training program, but the small changes will satisfy athletes' needs for novelty and variety.