To continue training or not?

WARNING: If you're a 'CrossFitter', this article may go against your philosophy.

Whilst not particularly gifted in the realms of sprinting, I possess a large amount of determination and I can be stubborn. That sounds reasonably admirable I think, but please read on. For the majority of my time as an athlete I have been self-coached. I have written my own programmes, which were based upon the assumption that I was fully healthy, and my mentality was, if something was written on a piece of paper I was going to follow it to the letter, no matter what. I refer to this, quite arrogantly, as having too good of a work ethic.

I have worked under the misguided premise that if I outworked the naturally more talented sprinters than myself, I would close the performance gap. I have seen these better athletes skip reps, sets and sessions, and so surely, if I were to simply complete the set session for a given day, I would be one step closer. I may feel a slight pain behind the knee, or in my Achilles, but I was going to finish the session, or run to the point where I was forced to stop. Meanwhile, the more talented athletes were either not training enough to develop any pain or discomfort in the first place, or if they were, they stopped before it developed into a serious issue. Therefore, whilst I felt sorry for myself for three to six weeks, waiting for my hamstring to recover fully, they were stringing sessions (or parts of sessions) together with some consistency. Consistency of training, I’m sure many will agree, is an important factor when performance improvement is concerned. To make things worse, I may not have been able to resist the temptation after two weeks to head to the track to ‘test’ my hamstring, at which point the inevitable happened. I got re-injured and missed a further couple of weeks of sprinting. I explain to my athletes it is better to miss a rep or two at the end of a training session as opposed to several weeks of training. It’s a similar idea to that of delayed gratification.

Staying injury free can contribute significantly to performance increases.

Now whilst I may have just come across as a bitter blogger (I have now written two articles), spending my time writing because my composition of slow twitch fibres allows me to do a better job of that than sprinting, I do have a point. I should also point out here, that I am aware, whilst these athletes are more talented than me, that they do work incredibly hard, and reach intensities in training that I am unable to attain. Returning to my point though, when is the right time to call it a session? American coach, John Smith reportedly pulls his athletes out of sessions once technique begins breaking down. Not only does this mean that all training runs are done in a way that reinforces sound mechanics, it could also prevent any issues from developing that could result from poor mechanics. British sprinter, James Dasaolu explained, in an interview after the Zurich Diamond League meeting, that he does not run if he has any issues whatsoever. One of the things that has reportedly attributed to his improved performances, since he began being coached by Steve Fudge, is that he is injured less frequently. In the gym in which I lift, I was speaking with an Olympic weightlifter who was telling me about Khadzhimurat Akkaev, a successful Russian weightlifter, who at the first sign of any discomfort, would apparently end his session. More anecdotal evidence to support my argument cans from an extremely successful 400 metre runner, who once told me that he believed forced rest led to the best season of his career. He saw it as a blessing in disguise. However, would resting by choice not be more ideal?

As with most things, I think there is a balance. If any time you were to feel any type of untoward sensation whilst training, you may never get any training done! However, when I read Henk Kraijenhoff explain that keeping an athlete healthy is fifty per cent of the battle, then it makes sense to listen to your body and rest if you need to. If you were to look at this concept as a spectrum, at the one end, you would have athletes who try and train ‘no matter what’, and at the other end, you may have athletes that look for excuses not to train. I have started to learn whereabouts I am on this spectrum, and subsequently, this year I have reduced my training load by possibly twenty per cent, allowing me to train more consistently. However, I can still do a better job of applying this knowledge, so that on more occasions, I am willing to stop training before I am forced to stop. I have began to make the appropriate shift towards the middle of the spectrum, the region in which most athletes should be. The question is, from which point on the spectrum do you need to move? Do you need to be more aware that pain or discomfort are signals to rest? Or are you minimising your adaptations by not getting enough work done?

How convenient is training?

The depths of the British winter seem like a bit of a distant memory to me now, and I'm happy to keep it that way. I would wake up at 6.15, in the dark of course. After a thirty minute drive, I would be at school for 7.30, ready to prepare myself for a day of teaching. At around four o'clock, I would then drive for forty-five minutes for training. By the time I had finished training, it would be usually around seven o'clock and I would begin my forty minute journey back home. Then I would cook, shower and do all the things that needed to be done to make sure I was ready for the same routine again tomorrow. Reflecting on this, I became frustrated that I drove past a track five minutes away from school, and still have a further thirty-five minutes of driving before I reached 'the' track. This was beginning to make less and less sense to me. If I was gifted enough to be a full-time athlete and warrant funding, meaning that I had an extra eight hours in my day, then sure, the extra travel time would have not been an issue. I could have been travelling to a superb facility, to receive superb coaching. However, this was my dream, not my reality. I was travelling to train with a friend, provided we both happened to arrive at the same time, at an outdoor track which was likely no warmer or lighter than the track I had driven past over half an hour earlier.

Compare this to my current situation. I travel twenty minutes to work, twenty minutes back. Living in an area of Dubai called Sports City, I'm sure it's not surprising to learn that I am close to some sports facilities which include a track and a gym. In fact, I could, or perhaps should, walk to training, given that if it wasn't for an apartment block behind mine, I would be able to see the track from my roof. I'm sticking to my reasoning that the dry, desert heat would drain me before my session. I am lucky that this is an affordable area in which to live, and I am also lucky the gym that has recently opened on the same site as the track is a brilliant facility. I am also lucky I am not a long jumper, given that the state of the art track was built without including a pit (if you're not familiar with how things are done in Dubai, this may surprise you).

My point?! 

I used to think that due to my desire to succeed and improve, I didn't care how far I would have to travel if I thought it may help me. I didn't need any down time. I didn't need things to be easy, simple or convenient. However, if like me, you aren't a full time athlete, running world class times, you will likely need to spend at least a few hours each day working to provide yourself with your basic human necessities such as shelter and food. I would suggest keeping your home, your place of work and your training venue as close together as possible. A former coach, whom I still hold in very high regard and speak with regularly (FaceTime makes the world a smaller place), described to me the location of his home, employment, track and gym. He explained how keeping them all within a five mile radius saved him time and money.

I understand it is not always possible to have things so close together, and changes don't necessarily need to take place on such a large scale. Advising readers to either hand in their letters of resignation, call a removals company or terminate a coach-athlete relationship would be ludicrous. A helpful change could be as simple as preparing and having food with you, so you don't have to go home or to a shop between work and training, thus giving you a little time to focus on another task, or to relax. It may be worth considering if there any changes you could make in order to make training more convenient. After all, if stress is multi-factorial, it could keep those cortisol levels in check!