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Communication is important. Instead of just ordering "coffee,"
you can tell the barista you want a "tall skinny latte,
extra-hot." Being able to specify these details when
you order coffee gives you a much better result.
The same holds true for exercise. Often, when getting coached,
athletes might be told to "run 3 miles" on a particular
day. But there are many different ways to run 3 miles. Different
paces. Different heart rates. You can perform a workout
concentrating on form or focusing on speed. Athletes who
follow a PC Coach training plan already get specific instructions
(either pace, or heart rates) both in the planned data section
of the workout view, and in the workout guide.

Example of a PC Coach workout (from Benson running plan),
which gives you the distance, pace, and HR values for your
workout. Click on the workout guide icon (w) to get even
more detail.
For athletes getting their workouts from a private coach,
good communication is essential as well. To assist in this
coach-athlete communication, we've added enhancements to
the PC Coach Remote Coaching Feature (RCS) to help coaches
and athletes communicate more clearly. But the RCS feature
can be used for more than just the traditional coach-athlete
communication. Read on to see the many ways this amazing
feature may help you get more out of your training. Click
on each topic to learn more.
Five Exciting Ways to Use the Remote Coaching Service
(RCS) Feature
1) To send workouts back and forth between
you and your coach.
2) To send the details of that really hard
workout (or race) you just did to your training buddy (buddy
must have PC Coach).
3) To send workouts back and forth between
your computer at work, and at home.
4) If you create workouts with the workout
editor, send the new workout definition to your workout
partners.
5) If you workout with a group (running club,
Team-in-training group, etc), use PC Coach's .RCS feature
to publish workout schedules and communications.
The PC Coach
RCS icon. Click here to begin the magic!
1) Sending workouts back and forth between
coach and athlete.
- The coach needs to communicate to his/her athletes which
workouts should be done, how they should be done, and
be sure the athletes have all the information they need
to complete the workout.
- The athlete needs to communicate back to the coach which
workouts were completed, and exactly how they were completed.
- Over time, the coach wants to show his athletes the
progress they have made, and make adjustments to the schedule
if necessary.
Here is how RCS helps with these 3 needs: RCS allows a
coach to create a detailed workout schedule for his/her
athlete, and by pressing the RCS icon, have 1 or more weeks
of workouts bundled up and sent to a client via an email
attachment.
When the client receives the email (he must have PC Coach
Elite or a training bundle running on his computer), the
client double clicks on the attachment, and the workouts
are loaded into his PC Coach program. All the planned workout
data, workout notes and coaches' notes will all be received,
making it easy for the athlete to perform the workout exactly
as the coach intended.
The athlete now completes the workouts and uses PC Coach
to log his data after exercising (workout time, distance,
even downloaded HR data, if desired). After a number of
days (or weeks), the athlete sends his completed workouts
back to the coach. To do this, the athlete simply clicks
on the mailbox icon, and chooses the date range he wishes
to send. PC Coach creates an email attachment, and the athlete
mails it to his coach.
When the coach receives the data, PC Coach will read it
into the coach's system. The system fills in the athlete's
data, and the coach will be able to see all the details
- even downloaded HRM data - for each workout. The
coach can view each workout, or run reports on the client's
data. And, with the enhancements made to PC Coach 3.7, now
the coach can even send
custom reports, or heart zone settings to their clients.
Using RCS, the coach and athlete can send details of each
workout back and forth - as easy as sending an email. Best
of all, there is no per-month charge to use this communication
feature (as there are with some web-based programs). As
long as you and your coach both have PC Coach, you can communicate
as much as you like!
2) To send the details of that
really hard workout (or race) you just did to your training
buddy.
The incredible power of RCS is not restricted only to coach-client
communication. Perhaps you have just done an incredible
race (Boston or Hawaii), you've downloaded your heart rate
data and filled in all the details, and now you wish to
share your success with your training buddy. If your training
buddy has PC Coach, just RCS him a file with the workout
included, and he'll get the full details! Or, if you want
to keep your training partner motivated, send him your workouts
weekly. He'll be able to run reports (such as miles run
per week) on your data, as well as his own.
3) To send workouts back and
forth between your home and work computers. Many users
have one computer at home, and another at work. To send
workouts back and forth, use RCS. (This was an article a
couple of issues ago, link to that).
4) Like to share your training knowledge
with your friends? What if you just designed the most
incredible bike workout, or strength training workout. Share
these gems of wisdom with your friends, again by using RCS.
Here's how: First create your workouts and schedule them
in a week on your calendar, next create an RCS file for
that week that has all the workouts scheduled (so they are
all included in the file). Finally, send it to your friends
that use PC Coach! When they open the .rcs attachment, they
will get the week's worth of workouts, along with the workout
definitions. The workouts will be added to your friends'
personal folder, and they will be able to use these workouts
to plan or log workouts.
5) If you workout with a group (running
club, Team-in-training group, etc), put the group's running
schedule on your calendar with PC Coach, save those weeks
as an RCS file, and email the .rcs file to the group members.
Those members with PC Coach can read in the schedule,
and load it on their PC Coach calendar.
I hope this article has given you some new thoughts regarding
the RCS feature. It's a great way to communicate with your
coach, but an even better way to communicate with your friends.
Have fun! And if you have created a special workout you
would like to share with other PC Coach users, email it
to us, and we'll post the most useful workouts on our website.
Send your favorite workout (in an RCS file) to: workouts@pccoach.com.
Want to expand your library of PC Coach workouts?
Visit our workouts page
for a RCS file filled with new PC Coach workouts.
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