It happens to all of us. A wedding takes you out of town and disrupts your weekend long bike or run. A bike crash forces you to swap a month of training for a month of rehab and physical therapy. Your work demands shift your schedule and you can’t make it to the pool. The air quality has become so polluted or filled with smoke that exercising is now more dangerous to your system than it is healthy for it.
It’s always been this way and will continue to be this way. It’s important that you remain flexible in your training while at the same time remaining diligent about getting your training in. Consistency is the number one factor in improving fitness. Therefore getting in your workouts is important.
At the same time, it’s important to recognize and understand the “other” stresses in your life which contribute to your overall stress. Making a habit of waking up at 2 am to get your workout in may not be the best choice over time. Missing a long run on Sunday and simply adding it to Monday’s schedule in addition to your other workouts will disrupt the rest of your week’s plan and doing so may invite injury. Especially if Tuesday is a high intensity run day and now you’ve stacked a high duration workout on top of a high intensity workout without an easier recovery day in between.
It’s a fine balancing act that takes time to finesse. One thing I’ve found that has helped me both as an athlete and a coach is to have a clear understanding of the Key Workouts for the week. I often see athletes strain to get in as many workouts as they can for as many days until they get to the point they need a break and that break seems to, more often than not, come on the day of their Key Workout. To put this in real life terms, let’s say you are training for a Marathon. You have 2 or 3 workouts during the week which are more important than the others, most notably the long run. Instead of driving hard during the week to get in all of those workouts, some of which are of little important to the larger goal, skip one of those days so that you can get in your key long run. Maybe on the day you skip for training, you can do the extra load from work or take care of the house project that is scheduled for your long run day. Maybe you can move your long run to a different day on your schedule having it take the place of a less important workout. Which of course may require you to rearrange the rest of the week so that stress and recovery are still in balance.
I believe it’s also important to understand your reasons for why you train as well as to understand that importance as a piece to your whole (big picture) life. I’ve witnessed many an athlete lose their relationships because they placed such a high value on getting in their Ironman training.
There’s no clear cut answer which will satisfy every scenario. Perhaps the best advice I have is, “Hang in there.” Life finds a way to get in the way of our training AND we can also find our way back to consistent training with planning and persistence.
This week, my work schedule, is different from normal and I’m trying to figure out how and when I’ll make it to the pool. Getting my swims in is important to me right now as I’ve been working so hard to improve my Threshold Endurance and I’ve recently made progress; so I don’t want to lose those gains. I also have to remind myself that perhaps swimming once this week instead of twice will work out and I’ll be able to maintain my swimming ability. And I can look to next week to get myself back on track to my two regularly scheduled swim days. Maybe it sets me back a week or two but it’s not the end of the world. Plus, it’s a first world problem in the grand scheme of things. A little perspective helps.
Have any of your own recent stories to share of life getting in the way of your training? If so, drop a comment.
I have so many stories where life got in the way as a mom of two kids. Improvise. Adapt. And overcome…. I love the techniques you suggested all of which have helped me a lot. At busy times, it helps to think about few key workouts rather than focusing on running for 5 days. Quality vs quantity has been my path to success. I now ask why I do what workout and miss the unnecessary miles if I don’t have the time. Having a coach is really helpful as another tip to help figuring out how to alter and making these decisions along the way.