Annual Planning
The annual planning is where you periodise a season on macro level. Working from the athlete's concrete goals, you define per sport and per week how much training you want: total duration, distance, number of sessions, and how demanding those sessions should be. When you then fill in or adjust the weeks in the calendar, that macro plan stays at hand as your reference, so every week has context and every block has a purpose.
Structured periods also make overtraining and underloading easier to spot. You see the build-up of a season in one screen instead of reconstructing it week by week.
The grid
The annual planning shows the weeks of the year, each one a row:
- Week number from W1 to W52
- Program with the colour label that marks the period
- Targets per sport in the columns you selected
- Totals across sports, calculated for you
- Races for that week
- Notes for anything the numbers do not say
Choosing your columns
You decide which columns you want to see, per sport. That way a running coach is not looking at swim columns, and nobody scrolls past data they never fill in.
- Sessions for the number of workouts
- Duration in hours and minutes
- Distance in kilometres
- Coachbox Stress Score or TSS for the training load
Duration, distance and sessions describe the volume of a week. The Coachbox Stress Score describes what that volume costs the athlete, because it weighs duration and intensity together. Planning both next to each other is what separates two weeks that carry the same kilometres but not the same demand: 50 km at 100 SS in a base week reads differently from 50 km at 170 SS in a race-specific week.
Totals per week are calculated automatically, so you immediately see whether the athlete is on schedule.
Marking periods with labels
Right-click a week to give it a program label. Under Manage labels you create your own labels and give each one a colour, so the vocabulary follows your own coaching language rather than a fixed list. Common ones are base, build-up, race-specific, taper, rest, training camp, holiday and test week.
Because the colours run down the whole year, the periodisation of the season reads at a glance.
Planning races
In the Races column you note the important competitions. These are linked to the races page, so the key dates anchor the blocks you build around them.
The graph
Above the grid you can switch the graph on or off. It plots the planned macro data across the season per sessions, duration or distance, which makes anomalies easy to spot: a build-up that rises too steeply, or a stretch without a recovery week.
The graph itself charts volume. The intensity side you read in the Stress Score and TSS columns in the same view.
Following the plan in the calendar
The annual planning is integrated into the calendar. In the week view you see what has actually been planned or completed against the target from the annual plan, per sport and per metric, including Stress Score and TSS. That is your anchor while working on the micro plan: you keep the macro picture in sight without switching screens.
Copying blocks and seasons
- Select a block of weeks, then copy and paste it to repeat that block later in the season
- From the actions menu you duplicate an entire annual plan onto another athlete, which saves rebuilding a proven structure from scratch
Tips
- Plan the annual schedule at the beginning of the season
- Build gradually, with a maximum of about 10% per week
- Schedule a recovery week every 3 to 4 weeks
- Take work, holidays and other commitments into account