How do you modify your workouts when life is sucking all your energy?
Typically, my training is the way I sustain myself and the energy balance is strongly positive. There are times, however, where there are inescapable events/conflicts/illnesses etc that confound our best laid plans. Times when as I get through a day the floor behind me seems finely polished from my glutes dragging across it. It seems to me fruitless in these stretches to try to maintain the intensity or quality of my training. And as I "mature", it seems recovery times are longer from either life's bodyblows or from a hard workout.
Often its a victory just to get to the pool and get wet. My response of course depends on where I am in a competition cycle. Fortunately, I'm in a flexible phase right now as I'm going to miss both long course nats and the open water season. Today, I decided to do some longer sets and completely ignored the pace clock. I focused on my stroke, and my turns, and intuitively gauged my effort level as my workout progressed. I'm happy to say that after a few 500's the expected endorphin surge was felt, and I was able to finish with some harder 300's- again without a pace clock.
What strategies are you using both in and out of the pool to endure the inevitable energy vortexes?
You may not like this answer, because it is very hard to do if you always drive yourself like I do, but I take a week off from exercise. I will do stretching and light yoga, but don't swim, do weights or aerobics. Since I love to work-out, there never is a problem getting back to it, in fact, it feels sooooo good on the first day back because the muscles are rested and the energy level is high. So I take an extended rest every couple months or so. Sometimes I forget, and I find myself dragging, and when I think back I find I have missed my rest days, and have been going hard for 3-4 months.
You may not like this answer, because it is very hard to do if you always drive yourself like I do, but I take a week off from exercise. I will do stretching and light yoga, but don't swim, do weights or aerobics. Since I love to work-out, there never is a problem getting back to it, in fact, it feels sooooo good on the first day back because the muscles are rested and the energy level is high. So I take an extended rest every couple months or so. Sometimes I forget, and I find myself dragging, and when I think back I find I have missed my rest days, and have been going hard for 3-4 months.
