Being smarter

I have written several times in the past of the struggle I have had with the athlete mentality and the frustration it can cause. I experienced that again today.

What do I mean by the athlete mentality? Well it is that feeling that you get that you should be training. Good athletes know that there is a time to train and a time to rest, but despite that many still struggle with the rest part, I know I certainly do. It can be hard to take an afternoon off when you feel deep down that you should be exercising. It comes on like a feeling of guilt and it can be a hard one to shake.

For me it came on today this afternoon regarding a gym session. I had plenty of time and energy to fit in a gym session up here in Darwin. It had been part of my plan to do so. However, I am getting ready for a 90 minute race on Sunday and so I am also doing a light taper this week. Deep down I know I shouldn't be doing weights this week. Strength training and taper week don't go together. I know all this but still I struggled to shake the feeling that I should be heading to the gym. The rational, educated part of my brain knew that resting was the right call, but the exercise part of me just wanted to get working.

This is one of the reasons I am such a fan of having a plan for training. Whether that plan is one that you create or a coach creates for you if gives you something to focus on. It is easy to feel good about not training when you know it is part of a well thought out, great plan. When you just train by gut feel it can be too easy to be led by the gut rather than the head and end up doing training that just doesn't make sense. If I am honest a lot of athletes have lousy instincts when it comes to training. We have irrational fears about losing fitness which lead us to train too much, or too hard, or when we shouldn't, I know this because I get exactly those irrational fears.

In the end building a plan for the rest of the week is exactly what I did to put my irrational fears to bed. I have mentioned before that despite being such a strong advocate for having a plan and training to it, my own exercise plan is fairly lose. That works well for where I am in life at the moment, but it makes things like planning a taper difficult and it means I often end up doing it by guess work which is fraught with irrational dangers. So today, to stop myself listening to my gut and instead make myself listen to my head I built a plan for the rest of my taper in TrainingPeaks. Building it in TrainingPeaks allowed me to see just where I would be on race day if I executed my planned training week. What I saw is that by missing the strength session I would end up at the same point fitness wise on race day, but a bit fresher (and with less muscle fatigue). When you frame it like that missing the gym session and resting was a no brainer. Putting the plan together made the decision simple (probably should have done it sooner).

In the end our gut feel and our instincts can be good things, but they can also be vulnerable to our fears and insecurities and can lead us to make silly decisions. Sitting down, thinking our decisions through and making a plan is always going to help us train smarter, eventually leading us to better results.