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.