I trained 4 days this week as oppose to my usual 5-6 days and all 4 of those training days have made my Top 4 List for toughest training sessions this Season. This award should hopefully give a simple explanation to my drop in training sessions this week – but I can put it even simpler: training has been unmerciful this week.
To be fair to myself, a lot of hard work has accumulated to this point and my body is starting to ask questions like “how much more are you going to push me?” I’m answering its question with another question, “can you take a little more please?” Well, my answer came on Tuesday this week when I could barely get out of bed. I’m sure that I could feel the electro-signals in my nervous system attempting to make their way from my brain to my legs but having no energy to make the lighting impulse. And even if they did deliver the message to my legs to get up and move, my muscles weren’t taking any calls. Dead, immobilised, that’s how I felt.
It’s taking me many years to learn how to listen to my body so why should I ignore it now. I’ve always believed and understood why recovery is as important as the training itself and if that means taking part in some unplanned recovery days then so be it. In any case, it’s better to be safe than sorry. The worst-case scenario being that I incur an injury because I never listened to my body. Now that’s a hindsight that no athlete likes to accept.
It’s not easy training for something big and it’s probably not worth accomplishing if the training required isn’t difficult. I guess that’s why I put myself through these tough training conditions. On one day I’m loading my spine with hundreds of kilograms of weight and on another day I’m repeatedly jumping over 5 foot hurdles with immense forces erupting through my hip, knee, and ankle joints. Okay, so maybe it’s not the most pleasant way to describe it but essentially that’s what is happening. This of course is the power of the mind at work, to be capable of taking your body through the depths of pain and fatigue without us even realising it. At least not now, maybe when we’re older!
So with 2 weeks till my season opening competition I can summarise that training for top-level competition against the world is not easy (understatement) and what is more, I wont be coming off the tough training for another 6 weeks. NICE!
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