The Most Damaging Self-Coached Athlete Mistakes

Written by:

Adam Pulford

CTS Head Cycling Coach

Updated On

September 14, 2026

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The Most Damaging Self-Coached Athlete Mistakes

Although there are a ton of resources out there for self-coached athletes, I see cyclists managing their own training make the same mistakes over and over again. I also recognize that not every athlete wants to or can work one-on-one with a professional coach. So, based on the thousands of self-coached athletes who eventually signed up with CTS Coaches over the years, here are the most common self-coached athlete mistakes we see and how you can avoid or fix them.

Self-Coached Athlete Mistake: Failure To Test

When self-coached athletes start working with a CTS Coach, one of the most common things we see is a lack of testing in their training history. Whether it’s field testing, lab testing, or ramp tests on an indoor trainer, some form of regular and consistent performance testing is an important aspect of monitoring progress and ensuring your intensity ranges are accurate.

Many of the training software options available, including WKO5, TrainingPeaks, and others, have automatic or modeled FTP and VO2 max calculations, leading some athletes to believe that testing is unnecessary. Here are some of the reasons I still recommend testing:

• Field Test sessions are valuable training sessions for you to practice pacing for max efforts. A few of the common test durations include a 20min time trial, 30-second sprints, and max efforts between one and 5 minutes. Knowing how to pace these efforts, whether during a test or a real world competition, is just as important as getting the data from the efforts.
• Testing helps you evaluate strengths and weaknesses. Most self-coached athletes gravitate toward training what they are already good at because it’s more fun. However, testing across all energy systems with power durations helps to identify where you need to improve. Your current data is not a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just because you don’t have a strong 5-minute effort doesn’t mean you’re incapable of developing that aspect of your power profile.
• You don’t know where your limits are until you push yourself to find them. You also don’t know if you’ve improved unless you repeat and effort and record the data. Testing does both of these things.

I like to see athletes who do not compete regularly (or at all) complete field testing or lab testing 3-4 times per year. If you race regularly, you may not need to test as often because we likely have more data from maximum efforts at a range of durations. Even so, I like to see racers test at least twice per year.

Self-Coached Athlete Mistake: Setting FTP Value Too High

Your Functional Threshold Power (FTP) value is what many training software programs use to set your intensity zones. FTP is also used a lot when software analyzes power files from rides and races, and it’s a major determinant of your daily Training Stress Score, which feeds into your Acute and Chronic Training Load values in TrainingPeaks. If your FTP value is set inaccurately, it can affect your power targets for today’s workouts, but also give you a misleading snapshot of your training workload, fatigue, and readiness to perform.

In my experience, self-coached athletes have their FTP values set too high more often than set too low. And here’s why:

• “Harder is better” mentality: Some people think setting a higher FTP is better because it encourages you to push yourself more. It’s not. An accurate FTP that establishes accurate training zones is best.
• Your ego is attached to your outdated FTP: Fitness fluctuates up and down through different seasons and over the course of months and years. Holding on to a higher FTP that represented a period of greater fitness is tempting (kind of like keeping those jeans in the closet just in case you can fit into them again someday), but it’s hurting your current training more than it is providing inspiration.
• You think your 20-minute Power is your FTP: It’s not. The calculation is 95% of best 20-minute time trial power, but even that needs clarification. A good test is one where you’re fresh (not fatigued) and have completed a good warmup. Personally, I like taking 92-93% of your highest average 20min power because this removes more of the anaerobic contribution and gives a more accurate representation of your current FTP.
• You let software auto-calculate your FTP: This isn’t always wrong, but the weakness is that it always sets your FTP to 95% of your highest 20-minute power output. It will increase your FTP even if you just had an anomalous effort or a poorly calibrated power meter. It does not automatically reduce the FTP and recalculate your zones if you haven’t ridden in a while, though.

Generally speaking, you are better off training with an FTP that is set a little bit too low rather than a little bit or a lot too high. Most of the problems athletes run into are caused by inadequate recovery from high-intensity training. If your FTP is set too high, the numbers are going to encourage you to train with more intensity than you can currently sustain, recover from, and adapt to.

Self-Coached Athlete Mistake: Too Little Recovery

This really falls into two categories: Overall recovery from all stressors, and acute recovery between training sessions.

For overall recovery, self-coached athletes consistently underestimate the amount of sleep required to balance the cumulative stress from exercise, career, family, and lifestyle. Software training tools currently do a poor job of accounting for stressors outside of training, but I’d argue from my experience working with athletes that career, family, and lifestyle stress are what primarily causes an athlete’s stress:rest balance to get out of whack.

The most obvious and effective solution is to get more sleep and invest in improving your sleep hygiene (e.g., cool, dark room, minimal light pollution, minimal noise). If I can get an athlete to sleep for eight quality hours most nights of the week, training quality almost always improves. Important note: naps count!

For acute recovery between training session, the rule of thumb is to limit the number of targeted, high intensity sessions to 2-3 per week during the base, build, and peak phases of training. For most people, this simple scheduling paradigm allows enough time to recover from one training session to the next. As a result, over a period of weeks and month, athletes can sustain the level of training, make meaningful adaptations.

Self-Coached Athlete Mistake: Lack of Planning and Adjustment

Self-coached athletes often create an annual training plan at the beginning of the year and never revisit it. Meanwhile, life changes and training availability shifts, or goals change and new opportunities present themselves. The athlete starts improvising almost immediately, and by mid-year the annual plan is a relic.

A long-range training plan shouldn’t constrain you to following a pre-ordained path. It is adjustable and can be adapted to changes in your priorities, goals, and availability. But it’s important to revisit the plan and make those adjustments rather than improvise your workouts and training blocks in hopes you might get it right.

At any point during the year you should be able to answer a question about why you’re training looks the way it does this week and this month. That answer should connect to the work you’ve already done and lead to the work you intend to perform in the future.

Self-Coached Athlete Mistake: Over-Reliance on Tech and Equipment

The noise from the tech sector is loud right now. There are new software tools, power meters, head units, and more vying for your attention. You get emails about new supplements and bike parts almost daily. In my experience, training and nutrition are more cost effective for improving performance than any piece of technology or cycling equipment.

Example: A really good new wheelset may cost up to $4,000 and save you 3-8 watts over 40km distance. That’s 1-2% for someone with a 300W FTP, assuming the rest of your position is aero and optimized and you’re strong enough to hold that power long enough for the aero gains to be meaningful. A good coach will also cost you about $3,000 to $4000 dollars for a year, and our data collected from real athletes indicates the average athlete experiences a 15-25 watt increase in FTP in 8-10 weeks. That’s roughly 3-8% even for a moderately trained athlete. Additionally, where the wheels only help with aerodynamics, coaching improves durability, stamina, repeatability, fatigue resistance, tactical savvy, and much more.

If you’re not interested in coaching, I get it. However, I encourage you to spend AT LEAST the same amount of time planning your training, reviewing your files, and investigating improved training strategies as you do investigating new bikes and supplements.

The Bottom Line

The best athletes in the world, across the spectrum of different sports, have coaches. Nevertheless, many athletes have solid reasons to coach themselves and many of you are achieving your goals without the assistance of a personal coach. Your results will likely improve even further if you avoid the mistakes described above. And I’d also encourage you to give personal coaching a try for at least six months. The financial investment will similar to expenses you might otherwise spend on equipment, but I’m confident the improvement in your performance will far exceed what you’ve accomplished on your own.