People who know me know that long before our current crisis I was firmly against training trips, or training camps, or getting on an airplane to go another place to swim. However, if anybody is looking for an easy budgetary cut for the upcoming season, provided you typically budgeted for such a trip, my advice is to CUT CUT CUT.
Perhaps I am biased. I never liked training trips in college, except for the year that we DIDN’T LEAVE CAMPUS in Waterville, Maine. Which I guess makes it not a trip. My strongest memory of training camp as an athlete is my coach insulting the manhood of my teammate with a torn labrum after the teammate declined to compete in a meaningless meet.
As a coach, I reached my nadir of training camps when I missed my daughter’s first crawl to be in Rijeka, Croatia then travelled to Monaco with some very emotionally exhausted teens to compete in the Mare Nostrum. The trip had from what I understand primarily been organized around the cycling habit of the then outgoing National Junior Coach.
So with that acknowledged, I hope to convince you that training trips should be a thing of the past. You’ll thank me when you don’t go.
The Theory of Training Trips
Here is, as far as I can understand, the positive rationale for training trips.
Get everybody away from their normal routine, be it school/family/friends etc, so they can give extra focus to training
For cold weather teams, the opportunity to train outdoors in the winter
Extra opportunity for team bonding/team development
Light money on fire
Ok I was kidding about the last one. Let me say why I disagree with each of these.
Routine
When I lived in Denmark, teams were OBSESSED with training camps. I found myself, in my first full year, attending four training camps. One was ten days, another was fourteen. The most frequent argument I heard was that the training “environment” in Denmark sucked, thus it was necessary to get out of the country.
I won’t bore you with the details, suffice it to say a lot of what people said sucked about the training environment had to do with normal school demands and a weird obsession with overtraining 13 year old girls before they dabbled too much in puberty.
Rather than spending tremendous resources planning an expensive, and very short, departure from your training environment, why not focus on actually improving that environment? Why not find a way to make the particulars of your current situation work a little better for you? Why not have a little more fun at home?
The Great Outdoors
I will grant you that training outdoors rocks. Particularly now, when it feels a whole hell of a lot safer than training indoors. To that point, I won’t argue too much with the desire to train outdoors.
However, if we’re witnessing anything right now, there is ample opportunity to train outdoors that usually goes unused. When I was a college student, I relished the two weeks where it was still warm enough to swim in Lake Messalonskee, even though I was terrified of open water swimming.
So if you need to scratch that itch still, perhaps look for the many opportunities to train outdoors during the normal time of year where you live. Apologies if you live in a place where that is never the case.
Bonded By Steal
My few bright spots on training trips were marked by team bonding activities, usually the simpler the better. By far at Georgia Tech the highlight of each year was a series of “skits” which would depict events from our season up to that point. It was a huge moment of catharsis as we all laughed at some things we hadn’t allowed ourselves to laugh at yet.
You don’t need to go anywhere to do this, however. In fact, you are much better off incorporating it throughout the year. Imagine doing other essential parts of your training only at certain times of year. Imagine lifting only one day out of your whole year, or only practicing relay starts once. It just doesn’t make sense.
Now if you excuse me I’m going to go light some money on fire.