Some thoughts on how to recover mentally and physically from a training cycle.
Those of you who have hung out with me over the last 20 years or so know that I’m always training for something. But there are these periods between training cycles where I get lost. I’m a terrible person to be around when I don’t have a mission.
This happens in a couple places. First at the end of a cycle when there is nothing significant on the horizon. Sometimes during a cycle when you lose focus by either going too deep or losing your ‘why’.
It will be ironic and amusing to you then to hear me talking about how to manage those post training, in-between moments, again. Because, even though I know what is going to happen, even though I know it’s happening when I’m in it, even though my big brain is fully aware, I still get these post-cycle slumps that are mentally debilitating.
So, bear with me, or if you’re a nudist, bare with me, while I remind both of us again how to mitigate the effects.
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The symptoms are that your training feels pointless. You get down about yourself. You feel like it’s all been done and what’s the point anyhow?
N tactical ways to break out of a training slump:
- Break the pattern.
Slumps are the manifestation of a pattern. This is how it happens at the end of a big training cycle. The best way to break out of a slump is to break your current pattern.
What you don’t want to do is more of the same. If you’re stuck in a pattern, going deeper into that pattern isn’t going to help. You need to break the pattern. You may have to sacrifice a race or a short term goal but in the process you are being true to yourself, it’s ok.
- Focus on the present.
One of the patterns you can break is looking too far into the future and/or comparing with the past. The future and the past are simply manifestations of your mind. Stop letting your mind run wild on the ‘woulda, coulda, shoulda’s’ of life and be in the now.
To break this pattern you need to focus on living fully the season of your life that you are in. Appreciate it for what it is. Love it. Live with it and in it. It’s not good or bad it just is.
- Start a new streak
One of my favorite ways to break out of a mental slump is to start a streak. It doesn’t matter what the streak is, but this time of year I like to simplify and just run every day for a couple weeks or a month. If you can do this it really forces you to live in the now and stop thinking about the future.
A good manifestation of this is my 5 at 5 streak. Get up early, 5 AM and get out into the trails for 5 miles. That’s it. Just do that every day for a couple weeks and it will reset you.
- Turn off the noise.
Some of what causes a slump is you lose focus and lose contact with yourself. Living in the now helps with this but shutting off the noise in your life helps make space. When you go out for your daily run or ride don’t bring music. Make that morning 5 miler a focused moving meditation.
You will be surprised how much creativity you start to find in this thinking. Take a break from your news feed and your social media. Stop being that other avatar, the one that only exists in social media and spend some time with yourself. You’ll be pleasantly surprised.
- Invest in your mental health
No one is immune to mental slumps. Put a bit of focus each day on exercising your mental health as well as the physical. Do some meditation, whatever that means to you. Listen to some positive stuff. Bring positivity proactively into your life through journaling and other direct, mindful exercises.
Hey, we spend so much time focused on physical fitness, just spend a bit of that same passion on your mental fitness. It can’t hurt.
- Go to parties.
Long training cycles can be incredibly isolating. You spend all your time training, getting ready for training or worrying about training. There are other people out there in the world beyond your training. Find them. Have a coffee. If you must, invite them on one of your morning runs.
Meet people and for crying out loud don’t talk about your training. Ask about them and their families and their plans. Be a good listener. Suck up some of that social energy.
- Lift heavy.
Usually when I’m training, I don’t do any heavy weight lifting. I’m more interested in lean muscle mass for racing, not bulk. When you are trying to break a pattern think in terms of ‘opposites’. Do that thing you would never do.
It will take a couple weeks, and you may have to ask on of those big guys at the gym for advice, but do heavy weight, low reps exercises for a couple weeks or a month. Chest and arms one day, shoulders and back the next. Feel those muscles you forgot about.
- Do something different.
Dust off that mountain bike, or road bike, or mountain climbing gear, or yoga mat – whatever it is. Go out and hit it hard a couple times a week to remember what being alive and fit feels like. Break that pattern. Do something different without any thought as to how it is going to impact your training for a future race. Enjoy it.
- Say ‘yes’ to everything.
Got a friend that asks you to run a leg of a relay race? Want to run a 50k in the woods on a whim? Just say yes. Stop thinking about it and just do it. Don’t do it for the time or pace. Do it for fun. Do it with your friends. Do it for the T-shirt.
- Rest when you rest.
Take some time off and don’t feel guilty about it. Taking a sabbatical will fill you with energy and passion for whatever it is that you decide to do, or not to do, next. Don’t half-ass your vacations. Sure you can sneak out in the morning for a run, but be present in your resting, listen to it and live in it.
That will give you some ideas on how to get out of that mental slump you’re in. And as a bonus point, please, please, please stop judging yourself. No one else is jusdging you. We’re all dust in the end so cut yourself some slack and do what is true to you.