If You Listen, It Will Come

Besides playing off of the awesome movie "Field Of Dreams," what am I talking about? I am talking about listening to your body when training! Many of us become so wrapped up in our training plans that we forget about the most important aspect of training and performance. That is, How we are feeling and how the body is working!

We feel the need to hit every single yard, minute, heart beat, watt and interval...we become obsessed with going as good, if not better, every time out the door. When we do this, we almost always self destruct and become frustrated.

Regardless of which training protocol you are following, what your performance management chart says, what you think you "should" be able to do on a given day, you have to remember that we are not machines. Training is a small piece of the the total amount of stress that we place on our bodies in life. In many ways our bodies do not differentiate between training stress and work stress, or family stress.

These outside stressors like work, family, sleep quality, etc. cannot be measured. For this reason, we have to be flexible when it comes to our training. If you are suppose to do a workout one day and there are signs that you are already over reached, you may need to change or eliminate the sesssion. This is NOT a bad thing, you are not failing because you didn't execute every single detail of the training plan...you are simply being smart and listening to your body.

When you do listen, your best performance will most likely always follow!

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Injury Rehab

I also have a few athletes that are coming back from injuries of the past. Many of them want to feel good as soon as they take the required time off. They want to be just as fit, fast and pain free right when they come back.

It is important to remember that after time off, even if you are "heathy," it takes a bit of time for your body to adapt to the training again. With this comes pain, many times at the point of your old injury. This is nothing to freak out about and is normal. The important part is to be proactive with your self care, stretching and massaging regularly will be a huge help, in addition to being even more flexible with your schedule. The more you do this, the faster you will get back to where you were before you were knocked out.

OK, I will check in after Spirit of Racine this weekend!

Blake

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