Unless you live in a bubble, there will be a time when life tries to challenge your consistency in training. It even happens to professional athletes. Nobody is immune.
It is important that you have an understanding of what to do when these challenges come your way. Developing some flexibility, moving a few things around, and changing the plan does not threaten overall progress. The plan will still work. In fact, it may work better this way.
You’ll be fine if you swing and miss. What we are trying to do is not strike out.
I have an athlete case study this week to illustrate the idea of balancing flexibility with predictability.
Ryan Haunfelder has some big goals in running for 2024, but being a runner is only part of who he is. He is a dad, a husband and works a busy job. This lifestyle can often present some hurdles that impair ability to train.
Sick kids
Long day at work
Feeling just plain tired
None of those factors above mean that all hope is lost with training. It does mean that there needs to be a sound structure in place and a willingness to be flexible.
Preserving consistency
It is well-known that a major determinant of increasing fitness is consistency. It is not so much how hard you work on a given day, but rather turning up to do “good work’ as frequently as possible. In the face of some challenges, Ryan has been able to get out in front of potential errors with some of the following points.
Good communication
There is a daily log that he fills out for me to review. If some of the comments indicate a period of high stress, we back off and move things around. There have been a few occasions when sleep was lacking, kids were sick, or there was ice on the ground. As frustrating as it is to push a hard workout to a different day, a dynamic approach to his week has almost always resulted in a better response on a high-readiness day.
Could he have forced it and likely done the planned work? Yes.
A lack of sleep does not make someone incapacitated. It is not life or death, but it is less ideal.
Our goal is to make fewer errors, thus training hard and recovering from it needs to be a feasible endeavor. This is less likely to happen when there were some outside factors working against him.
A reliable structure
The beauty of having week objectives as opposed to X on Monday, Y on Tuesday, etc…is it enables the dynamic approach. We do want some predictability which is why I give specific directions for each session and recommendations for structure, but Ryan is free to move days around. As seen above, it often works in his favor.
It may seem obvious to work this way, but there are coaches who operate by the “just push through it” approach.
An eye on good not perfect
This applies to execution of the week as well as execution of workouts. We touched on the week enough, so let talk workouts.
Ryan always receives a range of paces to work in for intensity days. “10K effort”, for example, is not a singular data point. It can vary slightly from day to day. Accounting for this has given Ryan some mental relief in workouts. If he is in the range, the work is getting done. We have even experimented with not looking at the watch until after the session and developing feel. The internal sense of pace is a work in progress.
Ryan had a landmark result in his most recent 10K, running 37:39. This was nearly his best 5K time twice in a row. Something must be working.
Much of this success comes from the work he put in all of last year, before we started working together. He has built himself a solid base, the goal now is the guide that base toward goals in half marathon and marathon racing.
With an eye on how to swing and miss but not strike out, Ryan is sure to see the benefits of staying consistent in training.