Foto: Swiss Triathlon

Even top athletes can't take shortcuts. Quite the opposite: the best are perhaps simply more willing than everyone else to do what it takes to achieve success.

The Olympic Games aren't over yet and the various statements from athletes and coaches always mention one key factor for success: consistency. While this might sound pretty simple, it can be difficult for us amateur athletes to acquire this key to success. After all, we have so many obligations and distractions and only 24 hours in a day. However, it's worth trying to improve your consistency if you can. Consistency doesn’t mean that you need to train more often and more intensively; it ‘just’ means following your goal consistently and systematically - without breaks and injuries - over the course of several months.

Listen to the interesting short interview with Brett Sutton, the coach of silver medallist Julie Derron.

Checklist for success

• Set a realistic goal:
  Decide how much effort you can put in and set a realistic competition goal based on this.
• Plan the remaining weeks:
  Count the weeks left until competition day and separate them into a preparation and competition phase. Then, break down these phases into build-up and recovery weeks at a ratio of 3:1.
• Plan your weekly training sessions:
  Plan the content of your individual training sessions and decide when you will carry them out right away, if you can. This makes each training session purposeful and gives you a good reason to follow through.
• Highlight key sessions:
  You should have one to two key sessions per week that you should never miss. Set priorities and try to follow through at least on these key sessions each week, if all else fails.

A plan is only as good as its implementation

You now need to think about successfully implementing your realistic goal based on your plan. You'll see that it becomes easier to train regularly when you have a goal in sight, when you've thought about what content you can put in training sessions, but more importantly, when you know that consistent training will help you achieve your goal.