Do you remember the good ol’ days when you used to wake up and be excited to train? The times when setting a new PR was as satisfying as waking up on Christmas morning. I certainly do, sadly there will come a time when life gets in the way and your training sessions won’t be as awesome as they once were. Sometime last week after yet another lack luster training session of mine I sat down for about 30 minutes and thought about my training since my last meet. My training frequency has stayed the same (four days a week) yet each session seems progressively lazier, as if my head just isn’t in it. So I’m sitting there thinking what’s different, what is different now compared to a few months ago? So I made a list of the things that are different in my everyday routine that could potentially be causing my sessions to be as awful as watching a Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s marathon.
- No Training Partner: All 3 of my previous training partners are off doing internships with their respected teams University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, and the New York Jets. My training partners kept me on track and pushed me which made training fun. We were able to give each other feedback and make fun of each other which always led to good sessions. But I haven’t always had training partners and my training was still productive so what was different then? Music
- Music: It’s clear that if I don’t have a training partner I need to bring back the old days and put the ear-buds in and zone out. I need to be focused on the task at hand and I clearly can’t be trusted to do that when people who are not my training partners are around. They just become an unneeded distraction, not intentionally, just happens. Listening to music on my iPod will block out all the distraction, get me jacked up, and allow me to focus on the task.
- AM Training: For as long as I can remember I trained in the morning before I did anything else. It wasn’t until recently that I started training in the afternoon. And looking back on the situation I am much better suited to train in the morning. It sets the pace for my day. It clears my head and it allows me to take my time rather than rush to get in a workout. I also work better if I get my training out of the way early, I can just focus on work after instead of worrying about getting my training in.
- Food: Recently my nutrition has taken a back seat, out of pure laziness than anything else. My mentality used to be eat to train. I would eat 5 meals a day and I would feel awesome during training sessions. Lately I have been skipping breakfast, A- because I have been lazy and B- because of dumb people in the fitness industry, but more on that in my next point. It’s definitely time to get back to my old eating habits. I AM THE PEANUT BUTTER KING!
- Fitness Professionals: Even a professional strength coach like me can still fall victim to fitness propaganda. You’re probably asking what do other fitness professionals have to do with your training. That’s a good question, and the answer is a lot more than I should have allowed. There is so much crap written by people just trying to sell you stuff that it’s almost impossible not to succumb to it at least once. And sadly it almost made me doubt my own knowledge base. Then I woke up and realized what a bunch of BS it all is. I know this point kind of got off track but it’s something that I realized I didn’t used to let impact my training/nutrition so it’s important that it not impact it now.*
You may be asking what the point was to writing all of this. The goal of all my posts is to get YOU to train better or to help you reach YOUR goals. The best way to do that is to learn from others mistakes so you can in turn avoid the same pitfalls. Hopefully this post has allowed you to evaluate your own training, figure out what the problem is and helped you to get it back on track. The points I listed above are all excuses to not have a good training session. An excuse is a problem that can be rectified, I chose to do so. Will you?
*People I'm currently reading to block out internet BS Mark Rippetoe, Jim Wendler, Dan John, Dave Tate, and Louie Simmons.