“Live your life each day as you would climb a mountain. An occasional glance toward the summit keeps the goal in mind, but many beautiful scenes are to be observed from each new vantage point. Climb slowly, steadily, enjoying each passing moment; and the view from the summit will serve as a fitting climax for the journey.” – Harold V. Melchert
The third step of the Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle is to Check. After you’ve done the work, you need to check in and see how the work is progressing. The process wouldn’t work without any of the steps, though I believe this is the most important step. It’s where you really analyze what is working and what is not working, it’s this experimentation what will help you identify the training that is best for you. This is the time to be 100% honest with yourself if you really want to win.
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There are a lot of indicators of your performance, they will not all agree. You likely have access to most of the below, pick the ones that work for you, monitor them, but make sure you’re consulting multiple frames of reference to get a more complete picture. Place the most emphasis on how you feel physically and mentally.
How do you feel physically? Are there things you can tell are improving? Are there things that concern you? Are you feeling good sore or over done sore? It can be very hard to determine where to draw the line on the right amount of work for you at the time. You should have some soreness and tiredness, after all you’re putting in a lot of extra work. It’s hard to describe, but when I feel I’m at the best level I might be tired or sore, but there’s a sense of accomplishment with it that feels good. When I am over trained, I just feel drained.
How do you feel mentally? Do you feel like you’re giving things your best try? Do you feel like you’re making too many excuses? Do you feel like you’re pushing too hard when you probably shouldn’t? You have to be careful because before a workout, it’s easy to over plan with the best of intentions. After missing a workout, it’s easy to beat yourself up for not doing the workout. The moment of truth, when you’re getting ready it’s much easier to find excuses not to do it.
Note: I like to do a short weekly recap of the week, how things went and how I feel. This helps me capture how I feel physically and mentally if I need to look back to see what has or has not been working well.
What does the completion of your plan look like? Tools like TrainingPeaks make this very clear. Every workout will be highlighted based on duration completion. It also gives you a quick weekly snapshot of Planned vs Actual Duration, TSS, Distance, etc. Are you hitting 80% or better?
Do you have other performance indicators you can look at? Garmin Connect will give you a training status of Productive, Maintaining, Overreaching or Recovery as well as load scores. TrainingPeaks recently started a similar Training Rediness score from Recharging to Overloading, along with scores for Fitness, Form and Fatigue. These apps are guessing based on limited information, though it’s another thing to consider.
How do your measurements look? Weight loss is not everything, but it is a thing, it will likely go both directions, hopefully down more than up. During this process you should be building muscle, staying well hydrated and stressing your body, which leads to inflammation; any of these can lead to seeing some weight gain or less than anticipated loss. Are you taking other measurements? For me, it’s inches around chest, belly and waist along with blood pressure. I also have a Garmin Index S2 that provides other measurements, though I honestly haven’t looked at them that closely and would take them with a grain of salt anyways. At the same time, I take front and side pictures of myself, something I haven’t looked back at as much as I should.
These are all tools you can use to get feedback on your workouts. You will not necessarily want to make changes based on one activity or even a week of training, but as you see trends you can act on this information and pivot accordingly, our next step.