Training Tip Tuesday #17: Training Hard is Easy

This is a re-post of a blog I wrote 4 or 5 years ago. I was thinking about this time of year and what it means for so many of us with big goals as we are in the throes of heavy training. I was thinking about the importance of recovery and then I remembered this post I'd written. It's a bit dated (I'm not in school any more) and the grammar leaves much to be desired (not that I have better grammar now), but it's still applicable. It's a good reminder that we can only train as hard as we can recover. Enjoy...

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“Training hard is easy, recovery takes courage and confidence.” –Matt Dixon

My friend, Jody asked me if this quote spoke to me-

Sort of, yes, I guess. Its just true. That’s all. Anyone can train hard. Training is fun, pushing yourself is fun, doing more is fun. But to balance hard training with adequate recovery takes not only courage and confidence but intelligence as well. Training doesn't make you faster. When you back off and let your body recover from hard training is when you get fitter and faster. That being said I believe in hard training. You have to train hard to excel. But if your body can't handle the hard training because recovery your is off then its useless. You’ll get sick, burnt out, overtrained, injured, whatever. Trust me- all of the above have happened to me. Recovery is everything. Its nutrition, hydration, sleeping, stretching, taking the elevator instead of the stairs. Could I train harder if I didn't have school? Sure. School is a stressor and it takes away from my recovery. Sitting in class is horrible for my hip flexor injury. But school is also necessary so I have to learn to balance that. The person that will perform the best is the one who can best balance quality workouts with adequate recovery. Not the person who trains the most- the one who trains the smartest. Right now I'm training hard, like really hard. Harder then I’ve ever trained in my life but for the most part I'm nailing my recovery and my body is able to handle the workload. Later in the semester that may not be the case. As school gets more intense I may not be getting the sleep I need or other factors may play a role and I would have to respond by adjusting the training workload accordingly.

The thing is, like the quote says. To recover takes courage and confidence. You have to have confidence in yourself, your fitness and the plan. Just because someone else is training harder than you doesn't mean its right for YOU. You have to take the ego out of training. Its hard, really hard but its necessary to be able to do what YOU the athlete need to do for YOU. Because as an athlete its all about YOU.  Training is selfish. You have to be selfish. You don't spend all those hours sweating and hurting for another person. You’re doing it for you. The best athletes in the world know what’s best for them and could care less what other people think. They just put their head down and train hard- then recover.

A lot of people may read this quote and say, “what are you talking about? Training hard is hard!” And their right. I’m not saying training is easy, or should be easy. It isn’t and it shouldn’t be. More often than not it sucks. There’s a lot of times in the middle of a workout where I look at myself and go “Why the heck am I doing this? This is NOT fun.” But why do we keep doing it? Because we love it. We love pushing ourselves, challenging our bodies, we strive for excellence and at the core its because we want to win. At our heart we all want to be winners. Each person can define what “winning” means for them but we all want to win. To be the best. So then training hard is “easy” because we choose to do it and we love to do it and we have an end goal we’re striving for. Recovering isn’t so much fun. As an athlete you don’t feel like your “doing” anything when your sitting around letting your body absorb the work. You may think its no big deal to make sure you get enough electrolytes or that there’s no such thing as the “30 minute window” for refueling and restoring glycogen stores after a workout. That’s fine. Maybe you don’t want it bad enough. You care enough to train hard but do you care enough to recover even better? Do you crave success enough to back off when its time to back off? How bad do you want to win? Everyone your going to line up against on race day is training hard. But who’s recovering the best? If I can train just as hard as everyone else but recover even better. If I can cover all the little intangibles that people overlook then I can win. I can beat them on race day. And that’s what I want. That’s what any athlete wants.

Time to get on the trainer…

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