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?
There is certainly an ebb and flow to life in general and to my training. Your idea of a timed 200 fly is really intriguing. Just as there are days when I'm dragging my butt everywhere, there are those where I feel like I'm hitting a high point. Pulling off a 200 fly sounds like a great idea for those occaisions.
Go Jaegermeister Go! Bonus round: some time when you're in the middle of swimming a 100 fly in practice, decide to make it a 200 instead. You'll be glad you did.
There is certainly an ebb and flow to life in general and to my training. Your idea of a timed 200 fly is really intriguing. Just as there are days when I'm dragging my butt everywhere, there are those where I feel like I'm hitting a high point. Pulling off a 200 fly sounds like a great idea for those occaisions.
Go Jaegermeister Go! Bonus round: some time when you're in the middle of swimming a 100 fly in practice, decide to make it a 200 instead. You'll be glad you did.
