One of the biggest challenges my athletes face is when life has other plans and their training got derailed. All of a sudden one day you wake up and every workout is hard, you are slower than you were and you feel tired and unmotivated. If this has happened to you, you are not alone! Most of us, including myself, have experienced this! It is easy to hold onto the athlete you were and become frustrated when you realize you took a few steps back.
If this happens to you the first step is acceptance. You should allow yourself to grieve and feel the emotions that come to you. It can be sadness, anger or frustration. Once you accept that you have lost some fitness then you can come up with a plan. Creating a plan involves evaluating your current life situation. If you have been dealing with stress, injury, illness or being too busy it is important to look at your schedule and be realistic about the time you have available to train. Sometimes you are in a situation where you have too many demands and don’t have much time for your workouts. Other times it can be your mood that creates a lack of motivation. Sometimes you can feel like you have fallen so far off the ship that you can’t get back on.
If the reality is that you don’t have much time available focus on how you can go into maintenance mode. Consistency will keep you fit enough to get back to training easier. This could be finding workouts that are less than an hour long. HIIT workouts are short and intense so those could be a great way to get in some harder efforts. Breaking your workouts up into doubles can help, even if you have to split them into two 20 minute sessions. You can get creative and if you get a lunch break, bring food that you can eat on the move and go for a walk! It might not be the training you are used to but it is something and the consistency will keep you in the habit!
If you feel like you are too far gone, take a deep breath! Accept where you are and slowly work your way up to becoming the athlete you were. This can be demoralizing. I have been there a few times and I understand how much it can hurt. The only way to make a come back is to start out where your body is in this moment. If all you can do is walk, then walk. Work up to short jogs for a few seconds and build off of that. Try introducing cross training to work other muscle groups too. Treat yourself with compassion and don’t increase your volume or intensity too quickly. When your workout feels too easy then you can increase time or intensity, but not both at the same time. If you had trained in the past your body will remember what to do and it will come back soon! The key to success is being kind to who you are right now.
If you are coming off an injury, move slowly towards your normal level of training. It requires patience and a lot of work to navigate coming back from an injury. Work with a physical therapist until you are healed and then have a plan that slowly gets you back to your normal volume. Some injuries can take months or years to fully recover from. Appreciate what you can do right now and your recovery process will be far more tolerable.
At the end of the day, your sport should be fun. Whether you are competitive or just out there playing don’t let your workouts stress you out. You will have some that are amazing and some you wish never happened. You will have phases of your life where every day feels like a PR and other times where each day is a struggle. Don’t give up on yourself! No matter where you are with your fitness, enjoy the process of working towards a goal. Be thankful for what your body can do for you. I have a couple of athletes who have degenerative health conditions that will never allow them to run again and I am amazed by how strong they are. I have seen them walk at races and make the cut offs. Seeing their excitement on being able to move at all, even when they were once able to run, reminds me that it isn’t about what you want to be but instead taking advantage of what you can do and appreciating it.
If you are looking for help with your come back reach out! I would love to help! I also offer self guided training options along with my one on one coaching.
Are you prepared to begin?
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