Restart Your Routine

Restart Your Routine
We all have taken time off from our routines at one point or another. These breaks in routine can be from negative events: injury, moving, death in the family unit. They can also be from positive events: getting married, having a child, buying a new house or starting a new business. My experience working with numerous athletes over the past few years has been an absolute pleasure. These are the steps in restarting your routine and getting you motivated.

Be Your Future You
Everyone knows we all use to be younger, faster, etc. Think less of how far you fell, begin thinking of how much higher you can get! We all started at somewhere and, for a lot of us, it was not pretty. This is why we remember our first 5k PR or 13.1 over the bad days we had along the way. Remind yourself this, the athlete you were fell down and quit. The athlete you are today got back up and had with the courage and motivation to restart.

Baby Steps
“From the Top!” I am sure we all are familiar with these words as they are told from a composer or choreographer teaching musicians, artists to restart the routine. Same should be true for restarting our own programs. Start from the top at the basics and take the small steps to progress. In order to build the most momentum you need to start at the very top of the mountain and gradually build the speed, strength, and endurance. A step I used with one of my athletes was counting the number of green training sessions in TrainingPeaks within the month over the yellow and red sessions.

Work With A Coach
Accountability is huge in helping you stay motivated. Working with a coach to set these baby step goals and keep you on track will help in the “long run,” pun intended. Your time is valuable, you can’t afford a minute wasted. Each session is an opportunity for building a better you. Using a coach is your behind the scenes conscience steering you in the direction of achieving your goals. Take the time to have a conversation with Paul or myself, we love talking about running but we love helping others to create their own great stories even more!

Keep It Fun
This might be the most important especially if the reason to stop training was from burnout. Our bodies can handle a lot of work. We all heard about Regina and Bruce’s Spartanathlon, Marc’s world record attempt, and Bob May’s mile a day for 30 days. I mean c’mon! All phenomenal tests of our bodies. It is our minds stopping us from doing something more often then our body. When we engage in a fun activity we feel good. When did you stop having fun? Think about what you do that makes you happy when you run, then ask yourself if you currently are doing them? Join the group runs. Start a blog. Run a different path. Try new shoes. Write 3 different runs/routes on a sheet of paper and put then in a hat and draw one out for you to do. Whatever it takes at all costs this should be fun, even if you get paid to do it!

Sum It Up
When you find yourself in a slump and you need to restart your routine stay positive and look to work with a coach to take fun baby steps to become the best future YOU!

Coach Macca