Despite each athlete's unique situation, often times athletes will look for the perfect template or approach—the "right" plan to get them where they want to go. Training in fact needs to be a creative, fluid, and adaptable process based on a variety of situational factors. This is not to say you should not have a training plan (or map), perhaps even a very detailed one.
What's important to recognize is that even the best designed, fully customized training plan will need to be modified and adapted to the daily circumstances of your life. If you feel the impulse to check a box or put more training in the bank than the next guy, you are letting emotion dictate your actions instead of doing what is most effective for your body.
Emotion can be an incredible driving force but it can just as easily get us lost in the woods. For example, it is very easy to compare yourself to others, and to compare your training to what others are doing. This creates anxiety and a tendency to believe there is never "enough" training in your bank, right up to the point of being over trained or injured. But by then it is too late—you are lost in the woods.
Athletes ignore the not-so-subtle signs that are right in front of them: chronic fatigue, irritability, loss of interest, changes in appetite, nagging injury and increased muscle soreness. They fail to adapt and focus on their immediate needs of reducing stress, increasing rest, replenishing energy stores, and stopping their progress on the path deeper into the wilderness.
This fatigue can become so acute that it breaks their spirits. Highly motivated, type A over-achievers are the most susceptible to over training. They believe that the harder they push, the harder they work, and the more the effort they put forth, the faster they will become. In fact endurance training may be the one area of their lives in which less is more. They trudge manically on until they are hopelessly lost.
When survivors are questioned as to what kept them going through the pain and sometimes agonizing situations they faced, often when others gave up, the answer usually is not "to save themselves." Instead, they were working to see their wife, daughter or friends again, and fighting to live so that their family would not have to face a catastrophic loss. We call this extrinsic motivation in the coaching world, and it is the best kind. This is what gives an athlete their spirit and true purpose. It keeps them going when others give up. Just wanting to survive is often not enough. You have to have a good reason to want to survive when the situation is most dire.
A sense of humor is actually a critical survival tool. Humor lowers anxiety and restores mental balance, and it is a great defense against panic. I have noted that a sense of humor is a key ingredient to a successful race season and a valued tool in the athlete's arsenal.
The athlete that gets the most out of their training surfs upon the waves of stress and recovery while remaining balanced and in tune with themselves. When they are tired they rest more, absorb nutrients that will sustain them optimally, and do not let their emotion overrule their reason.
They laugh in the face of adversity. They recognize that their energy is a scarce resource and train just the right amount, at the right time, then focus on replenishment. They can see themselves objectively and with reason, and balance risk/reward of their training against what will yield the most return. They have a spirit and purpose that keeps them buoyed and focused through the toughest training. Their strength comes not just from their toughness, it is in their flexibility, adaptability and reason.
One of the most common refrains I hear from athletes is "I am training hard but my performance is diminishing instead of improving." My answer: "You are tired, now rest. Can't you see the forest through the trees?"
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