When life interferes
Having just survived the end of term ‘sandwich’, where I work as usual in the early morning and evenings and the meat in the sandwich is the school holidays, I feel it’s time to follow my own advice, prove my training works and apply it to myself as I get back into life and, often forgotten, training!
Clients are heading into week 3 of their 9 week training cycle and while I try to keep in sync… hmm I haven’t! But I think that might actually work for all our benefit and here’s why.
First of all, what’s a good plan is? A good (not “optimal”, because optimal usually doesn't get done when life interferes, which can be often) training plan is best done thru trial and error per training cycle. It's common to overshoot or undershoot (me currently!) in the first couple of weeks on the exercise selection, weight/intensity, tempo, range, volume, etc and so forth.
The key is to start as simple as possible and address 3-4 goals tops at a time, less if they're all skills. (Group training at Fitbynature are focusing on the building and honing their basics cos the only trees that stand strong in the storm are those with strong roots!)
Take notes that help you know what to tweak as you go, especially on how you feel for recovery purposes. Not sure I’d call this journalling but it’s pretty much that. (Current clients ‘check-in’ thru their prep flows, looking for stiffness in their ranges, aerobic capacity, endurance and recovery as these are all gifts of our innate adapting body, and mobility cos you can’t strengthen where you can’t go! We also each have individual projects to find time to get to, and individual interfering lives to reset within a training cycle let alone a session!)
When things are in a good groove, and the training plan fits your current life's rhythm, then you can more or less put it in semi autopilot for 6-12weeks at a time. (It feels good to feel good and consistency over intensity is always our goal: consistency and progressive overload will make you better gains that 99% of folks!)
And then? Well, I’m looking forward to the next school holidays and being able to do it all again - tennis, skateboarding, ninja warrior, surfing, anything and everything just for the love of it!
It’s funny really how we tend to separate exercise and life, don’t you think? But at least through checking in at the start of each session, on a bigger scale each training cycle completion and an even bigger checkin with school holiday ‘demands’ and JOMO I’m making sure I’m fit for life and all its potential!
