376: The Key for Sustainable Progress

Creating Sustainable Success: Meeting Yourself Where You Are as a Runner

Today, we're diving into a topic that's incredibly important for runners of all levels: how to navigate the overwhelming amount of information about the right ways to train, eat, and live to maximize health, performance, and longevity.

With all of the noise and information out there now, it can be so overwhelming to figure out what the BEST things are for us to focus on.

So what's a runner to do?

In this week's episode, we break it down and help you understand how to achieve long term success and improvement.

Trial and Error: Learning from Experience

Hard days hard, easy days easy.

It's a well-supported principle in the health and fitness world, and it works for a lot of people. 

At the same time, it doesn't always work in the real world.

Recently, we combined a weight workout with a sprint workout for our high school athletes. The next day, several of our athletes complained of severe fatigue, and some even skipped practice. This experience reminded us that even well-established coaching principles need to sometimes be adapted to the specific needs of the athletes.

Training high school kids presents unique challenges. With factors like academics, social events, and family commitments, their capacity for training can vary widely. Recognizing and adapting to these external factors is crucial in creating sustainable training plans.

The same goes for us as adult runners. 

Life sometimes happens - while in theory it's good to keep your hard days hard and easy days easy, sometimes overloading too much hard on a hard day, especially when combined with the stress of our current lives, can push us over the edge.

It's important to remember that stress is stress, so adding too much will ultimately lead to break down.

Unrealistic training goals or jumping into high-intensity routines too quickly can lead to burnout or injury. It's essential to build sustainable success one step at a time.

Consistency and balance are key. Sustainable success isn't built from arbitrary, one-size-fits-all advice.

The Key to Sustainable Training: Meeting Yourself Where You Are

1. Start with One Thing: If you're not currently strength training, start with a simple 15-minute routine. As you become more comfortable, gradually increase the intensity and duration.

2. Change Up Your Runs: If all your runs feel the same, try varying the intensity. Make some sessions slower and one or two slightly faster. You don't need rigidly structured runs or exact paces. This change helps prevent burnout and keeps your training interesting.

3. Focus on Nutrition: Instead of going on a drastic diet, start by adjusting small parts of your daily intake. For instance, incorporate more protein into your post-workout meals. Once this becomes a habit, you can start to make other nutritional adjustments.

Building Habits for Long-Term Success

Creating new habits can be overwhelming, especially if you're trying to change multiple aspects of your life all at once. We find the technique of habit stacking to be incredibly helpful. This method involves attaching a new habit to an existing one to make it easier to adopt.

For example, if you want to incorporate strength training and improve your nutrition, start by establishing a habit of fueling post-workout. Once that's a natural part of your routine, you can begin adding strength training into your schedule. This way, new habits become less daunting.

Sustainable success in running and life is all about meeting yourself where you are and making gradual, manageable improvements. Avoid the pitfalls of jumping into overwhelming routines or adopting rigid diet plans. Instead, focus on creating small, sustainable habits that, over time, will lead to big changes.