Coach Danny Stults: Balancing Life And Training
“All things in moderation.” We hear it often and people tend to mention the phrase when speaking of balance. The direct fallacy with this statement is that people who perform at extremely high levels are often hyper focused on a single component of their lives. Elite level runners are largely successful because of that ability to hone in and remove the distractions that take away from their ultimate long term goal. That simply is not realistic for the other 99.99% of us that run and race, and that is more than ok!
It's easy to fall into the mindset when training that we need to follow the plan day in and day out without deviation if we want to achieve a goal. No plan goes perfectly and what many runners don’t realize is that quality coaches build in variability to accommodate for that. The real value that coaching provides is not in the system or the production of the plan itself but in the adaptation to the challenges that athletes will certainly face. As athletes become more accustomed to a training style they will develop an instinct of when to push through and when to pull back.
But if you want to hit your goals how do you know when to push through and when to ease off?
Look at the picture as a whole.
Define your primary focus and timelines.
Are you allocating sufficient time to that focus in a manner that you can justify?
Consider how you can/or should adjust what you’re doing to give yourself the best shot of meeting your goals while giving sufficient time and energy to life’s other demands.
What are the factors contributing to your current state of being? What are the factors contributing to your total training load? We have a habit of looking at total training load in a limit manner, only considering miles run plus cross training minutes. The reality is your total training load encompasses much more of life’s day to day such as work/home/school stress, time on your feet, sleep, and diet amongst other factors. You should consider all factors impacting your day to day training and accumulated fatigue.
Next, don’t lose sight of what your primary goal is and when it is. Are you training for a marathon weeks away? Are you looking to be more consistent in your training over time? When looking at your goals as the focus of the big picture it makes it much easier to adapt and adjust given the challenges both life and running present. Can you afford to be tired or do you have ample time to adapt to this training? The answer often lies in how imminent your goal race or event is.
You defined your goals and you’ve been training for a while; am you allocating enough time and energy to what accomplishing those goals will require? If yes, is that coming at the expense of other aspects of life that you value highly or even more than your primary running related goal? The purpose of these questions is to look at your time and energy distribution across various areas of your life. This can help you justify what you’re doing or give you the opportunity to shift things around to make your pursuits both more enjoyable and sustainable.
Life happens, and making adjustments daily is a part of how we survive. The beauty of an experienced and trusted coach is that making these decisions becomes easier for you as an athlete. When making decisions on adjusting your plan keep your primary goal in mind but also focus on the work you’ve done as well as the work you will need to do. What decision positions you best going forward in your pursuit of progress and sustainability in your training? For instance, during a stressful week of work or school your workouts may not go as planned due to added outside stress. When considering that, it is very reasonable to adjust paces, distance, and/or intensity during that given week to ensure that the following weeks are productive.
You must consider the impact the outside stressors are creating. Did you feel alright on any other given “normal” week? When making decisions to adapt your plan, the real key is honesty. Being honest with yourself and your coach. As important as it is to do the work day in and day out some days you need to forgo that mentality to ensure that you can do the future work. It is also important to push when things are difficult beyond the norm if you have ample time to recover. In general, it makes more sense to adapt and be flexible in training as you get closer to your goal event versus early on when you can afford to carry a greater cost of working hard. Be patient in this process and don’t consider adapting or failing to meet targets in a workout as a failure. In my experience, the most effective adaptations are not removing the session but allowing the runner to feel it out and get through it.
When you make a decision to cut a workout, slow the pace, or even go the other way and do more it’s important not to second guess that down the road. You should factor that into decisions going forward but don’t spend the next week trying to make up for the lost workout. If you were so fatigued, so stressed that you couldn’t do it then you simply needed the rest. Your training plan will not fail because of that alteration.
Being tough and pushing through is an important part of improving but it often is not sustainable if it occurs too frequently when coupled with additional stress. When the immense ask of training and life are not met with ample recovery, nutrition, and hydration you frequently see athletes struggle to improve, become injured, or become ill. Take care of yourself physically and mentally, push yourself when you can, recover and be gracious with yourself when you need to. If you can find a way to get out the door consistently, a way to keep moving forward; your goals are much closer than they seem.
Final Takeaways
Consider The Whole Picture
Clearly Define What’s Important
Consider Timeframe
Be Honest
Be Patient
Be Tough, But Don’t Be Hard On Yourself
Decide and Move Forward