Plans · Train your way
A plan built around your actual week
Shift work. Travel. School runs. A pool that is only free at lunchtime. Most plans assume a life nobody has. This one starts from the week you genuinely have and builds the best possible training inside it.
Tell me the week you actually have, not the one you wish you had. I have coached shift workers, new parents, people who travel every month, and athletes fitting triathlon around another sport entirely. The plan bends around all of it. That is the whole point of building it this way.
The plan assumes a life nobody has
Open almost any triathlon plan and it assumes an athlete with a predictable week, pool access on demand, weekends free, and no dependants. It prescribes Tuesday intervals, a Thursday swim and a Sunday long ride, and it is entirely correct for someone who does not exist.
Real weeks have shift patterns, travel, small children, and pools with awkward lane hours. The gap between the plan and the week is where adherence dies, and adherence, not programming, is what decides almost every amateur outcome.
Blaming yourself for the mismatch
When the plan does not fit, most athletes conclude they lack discipline. They do not. They have a scheduling conflict being misread as a character flaw. So they either force the plan and burn out, or fall off it and feel like a failure, and both roads lead away from the sport.
The false belief is that the optimal plan is the best plan. It is not. The best plan is the highest-quality training that fits inside your genuine constraints, which is a different question and a much more useful one.
"A plan you can follow beats a better plan you cannot. Everything else is arithmetic."
Constraints first, then quality
Building your way round starts from the constraints: which days you can train, how long each slot is, what facilities you can actually reach, which sport needs the most attention, and how much total load your life can absorb this season. Only then does the programming happen, packing the highest-value sessions into the space that genuinely exists.
Then it stays flexible. Move a session and the week rebalances rather than breaking. Miss one and the plan adjusts instead of accusing. And each morning your Protocol Score decides the intensity of whatever is scheduled, so a plan built around a hard week does not become a hard plan.
What you set, and what adapts
Your days
Pick the days you can genuinely train, including the awkward ones. The plan builds around them rather than around a template week.
Your hours
Set the real total. Three hours honestly available beats eight aspirationally available, every season.
Your emphasis
Weight the plan toward the discipline that needs it, whether that is a fearful swim or an underbuilt bike.
Your target
A race with a date, a distance without one, or simply staying unbroken. Set it later and everything re-anchors.
Six to twenty-six weeks, your shape
This is also the plan for athletes whose triathlon is not the only thing they do. Plenty of people arrive from football, climbing, martial arts or the gym and want swim, bike and run structure that supports the rest of their training rather than swallowing it. Set the emphasis low and the plan behaves like conditioning instead of a campaign.
Custom plans run from six to twenty-six weeks across any triathlon distance. With a race date, the plan works backwards from race day so the taper lands correctly. Without one, it runs in rolling four-week waves you can stay in indefinitely, and re-anchors the moment you enter an event.
Start by seeing where you are: the race predictor takes sixty seconds and gives you a finish window to build toward. Then the app shapes the weeks around your life and adjusts them each morning around your body.
Or let a human do it
If your constraints are genuinely complicated, shift patterns, a young family, a long-haul job, that is exactly the conversation Abraham has with coached athletes. Apply through Unbroken and he reviews every enquiry personally within 24 hours, or call 07414 807997.
Train your way, answered
Every plan, one method
Swim, bike, run, strength, recovery and the mind, coached as one and answerable to your morning.
Train the week you have
Build the strongest possible plan inside your real constraints, then let your body set the intensity.