We are now in that part of the season where the demands seem to be constantly high – racing comes thick and fast and the focus and intensity required in training sessions appears equally demanding and never ending. It is hard to show up session after session and deliver your best every time. This can be particularly true when you are fitting training sessions in around work or study schedules and other life events. Most people do not have the luxury of being a full time athlete and the demands on your energy can feel high. You are also now getting pretty regular feedback about your performance in the racing that you are doing, and depending on how that is going, it can either feel like a boost to your training and your confidence or a drain.
You are going to have days, where quite frankly, you don’t feel like it. Maybe you’re really tired, or you have lots going on in your daily life, or perhaps you are just really mentally fatigued. However, it is these sessions that are perhaps the most important for training our resilience and our ability to show up and fight even when the odds are stacked against us. To do this requires a strategy, otherwise it is easy to either drift through a session and not make it count or loose the session entirely. So, here are my tips for maximising what you have available to you and the session in front of you:
- Show up – get yourself to the session. Put your training kit on and get out of the door – this is often the hardest thing to do when you are not feeling in a great place.
- Remember why you are doing it – take a moment to think about your objective. What is your goal and why are you setting out to achieve it. That can help you refocus on what is in front of you.
- Try and take a moment to remember that we don’t get time back – once a day is over, it’s over. You can’t repeat it or have another go, or make up for it in some other way. That moment has passed. Remembering this is often really hard, but a bit of reflection on this point can give you a nudge of urgency, especially if your goal is a fixed point on a calendar.
- Break the session down – don’t try and convince yourself that you even need to do the whole thing – make a deal with yourself to do your very best on the first set, or the first 2 minutes. Get through that and then repeat the deal – get through the next set, the next 2 minutes. And do this to work your way through the session and bit by bit you will move towards completing it and keeping you on track towards your goal.
- Try and shift your energy – if you are down and closed off this will radiate to the people around you and even your coach (if you have one). How you approach the session will have a huge impact on what you manage to achieve within the session. So, like above, even if you have to do it set by set, or minute by minute – do a deal with yourself to have an open and positive energy. This then becomes self-perpetuating – the session will be better and then you may actually feel genuinely better as a result. If nothing else, if you are in a team and/or you are being coached, it will absolutely help your teammates and your coach to get the most out of the session as well.
- Take a moment to remember who you are trying to be – what behaviours and characteristics are you trying to embody. Every action you take is a vote towards that person, so remembering this can help you take another step towards that person.
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