How do you know when it’s time to walk away from a workout?

I had an interesting week in that at least one of my workouts did not go as well as I thought it would and I had to walk away.   This led me to think about the rationale I use for quitting.

When you are in a training cycle for a race, which I am, it will stretch over 3+ months with 40+ workouts and 500+ miles.  You are going to have good days and bad days.  It would be great if you could get all the workouts done as prescribed but that probably isn’t going to happen.

The goal of the training cycle is to be as consistent as possible.  If you crash out of one or two workouts it probably won’t matter.  If you consistently can’t or don’t perform the work then you need to reassess if the plan is right for you or if the goal is compelling enough for you.

There are competing dynamics.  You want to push your body hard enough that it builds the strength and endurance to meet you goal but you don’t want to push it so hard that you can’t recover.  If you don’t make it to the starting line of your goal race you lose by default.

In reality you have to pay attention to your body.  You have to proactively do your strength training and stretching.  You have to go into every workout with the confidence and drive to get it done but be mature enough to know when to step away.

Here’s a rule of thumb that I go by.  You have to at least show up and attempt the workout.  You really can’t judge your ability to complete a workout by how you feel.  You will have awesome workouts that start with you feeling crappy.  You will have crappy workouts that start with you feeling awesome.  You have to show up to find out.  You can’t walk away without trying.

How do you make the call?

First thing you want to pay attention to are physiological signs that you might be over trained or under the weather.  Even if you’re not coughing up phlegm balls you can still have low level sicknesses that can affect your training.  I’ll get worn down my travel, lack of sleep and work stress that adds on top of the normal training stress and this might be enough to push me over the safety line.

If you use a heart rate monitor periodically check your resting heart rate.  An elevated resting heart rate can point to exhaustion or sickness.

Do you feel more achy than usual?

Do you have specific pains that just don’t seem normal?

Is your energy level chronically low?  (This one is tricky because your energy will ebb and flow throughout the training cycle.  Being low energy for a couple days straight for no reason might point to over training)

When you start the workout does your heart rate soar or is your breathing out of control even after you’ve warmed up?  Are your feet slapping the ground and your body feels sluggish?

It’s better to call off one hard workout, to walk away, then it is to screw up your entire training cycle or injure yourself.  If you’re in a weakened state you’re less likely to benefit from a hard workout and more likely to injure yourself.

You can make the call to cut that workout short. Now what do you do?

When you walk away from a workout you might feel like a failure and be down on yourself. This is an area where a coach can help.  If you have a coach they can talk you down, tell you it’s ok and tweak your plan to accommodate the bad day.

It’s usually a bad idea to try to make up a workout.  That typically just compounds your problems.  Just let this one go and move onto your next one.  Don’t try to add more to the next one to ‘make up for it’.  That never works and is just dumb.

Sometimes it is just the day or time of day that is giving you the trouble.  For example you had to get up at 3AM in the cold to do your workout and your body just couldn’t pull it off.  In this case you’re not sick or over-trained, you’re just struggling with the schedule and timing.

In these cases you might want to just do less volume, do it at a lower effort level or split it up.  Instead of 6 miles do 3 or 4 miles.  Instead of 6 minute miles do 7 minute miles.  Instead of 1600’s do 800’s.  Instead of that one big workout of 10 Yasso’s in the morning do 5 in the morning and then another 5 at night.

Sometimes you can shift the whole week and get the workout in.  If you had a Tuesday and Thursday hard workout you can instead do Wednesday and Friday.  Try to avoid doing back to back hard days.  That leads to injury, but you can be flexible in the spacing of your workouts.

Finally if you just can’t do the scheduled hard workout you can switch to an easier workout.  Instead of that set of hard intervals you can just run easy for 40 minutes.  This maintains the cadence of your training cycle but allows your body to recover a bit.

It’s ok to walk away from a hard workout once or twice in your training cycle.  As long as you maintain the overall training level and consistency it won’t negatively impact your goal race.  You have to keep your eye on the prize. It’s easy to get lost in the blur of workouts in a training schedule and lose perspective.

Sometimes it’s better in the long run to walk away.

Remember the checklist:

Don’t give up without at least trying.

Check your body to see if something is going on that you need to be aware of.

Don’t try to make it up or double down.

Switch the intensity or timing of the workout to mitigate the impact.

Try to be consistent to the plan over the course of the entire training cycle.

Stay safe, train smart.