Do you make the same plans every week… only for half of them to fall through?
If so, then it might be time to change the plan.
As someone who loves to be active and train in a variety of different ways, it can be difficult for me to get everything done.
No… not difficult.
Impossible.
It’s impossible for me to do everything that I want to do without getting injured, losing my job, or both.
And that distinction between “difficult” and “impossible” is incredibly important to recognize because in the past I would make aspirational training calendars.
I’d create “what if”-style programs that were theoretically achievable if everything came together and the stars and planets all aligned.
Yet you know how often that actually happened?
Almost never.
More often than not these “what if” plans just led to me feeling like a failure because I wasn’t able to achieve all of the stuff every week.
Which also led me to push too hard on certain days and try to “make up” the stuff I was missing.
I’d create some big training day for squats on Monday and only get to half of it.
So of course I’d try to finish the rest of it the following day. That would both delay my recovery and take time away from the training I was supposed to be doing on Tuesday, which meant I’d get nowhere near finishing everything.
This would continue for the rest of the week until we got to Sunday and I’d have achieved only half the stuff I wanted to do while also being incredibly under-recovered.
Then I’d repeat the cycle the next week.
Not great.
And I did this far longer than I’d like to admit.
Hell, it’s possible I’m still doing this to some degree, but I think I’ve gotten it much more under control.
Like yesterday. Yesterday was Monday, which for me should be speed work and squats.
The speed work didn’t happen because of the ankle sprain, but I did go for a nice walk/run with the dog as part of the rehab.
Then I went to the gym and did 4 exercises.
Not 40…
Not 14…
4.
I worked hard, got everything done, and still had time to do other stuff in my day.
Today, my legs are a little sore, which is to be expected after pushing hard on a pendulum squat. So am I going to go out and force myself to run on tired legs and potentially re-sprain my ankle?
Absolutely not.
I’m going to do 30-40 minutes of moderate intensity cross-training and 4 exercises centered around the bench press.
Then I’m gonna call it a day and move on.
And the most interesting part?
I’ve seen substantially more progress since switching to a more “pared down” training system.
I’ve been getting faster and stronger in pretty much all metrics (dumb ankle sprain not withstanding) and I’ve actually been able to get some recovery on long-standing injuries.
Which shouldn’t really be a surprise.
I don’t train anybody else like I used to train myself.
I’m much more reasonable with their volume and they typically see a lot more improvement…
I just have a tendency to be less responsible when it comes to my own stuff for a wide range of reasons.
For one, I don’t coach a lot of people who love lifting as much as I do so it’s harder to find the right scheduling.
I’d also assume there’s a decent amount of hubris involved.
We often can’t do as much as we’d like.
If you don’t even get close to completing your training calendar every week, that should be a sign that something’s wrong.
It’s so much better to be consistent with less than it is to be inconsistent with more.
So figure out what you can actually do and create the calendar around that.
And if you’d like some help, I’d be happy to chat.