How to Adapt Your Training On the Fly

Performance Resource for Athletes and Coaches

How to Adapt Your Training On the Fly

Introduction
Too often these days people can get overwhelmed, frustrated and feel like they aren’t doing a “good job” if they aren’t getting all of their workouts in to the letter. I can assure you that this is not the case, but if we don’t know how to adapt our training during these times, then it is likely to occur. Here are some simple tips and strategies to help you adapt on the fly and make the most out of the time you do have available to train when on the fly.

Key Workouts
In an ideal world we would all sleep 7-8 hours, train for 3-4 hours a day, eat perfectly, take naps and go to bed by 10pm. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen very often, if ever. So, when all else fails, if you get your KEY WORKOUTS in for the week, you will at least know that you are doing enough to maintain or even improve your fitness.

For most of us, our key workouts fall on Tue, Wed or Thu and on your long day/days on the weekend. These workouts usually consist of intervals or specific drills during the week and your long days if you are outside on the weekends. If you are stuck inside, your workouts should be kept brief, i.e. 1.5 hours or less, and very specific. Your key workout in the gym is your leg and core day. If you are only going to get one gym workout in for the week, make sure it's that one. And lastly, always make time to stretch. It only takes 5 minutes and is critical to performance, recovery and injury prevention.

Scheduling
If you miss a workout on the day it falls in your training plan, either skip it and don’t give it another thought or get it in when you can that week if it is a time of the year when workout sequencing is not critical. If you have a coach, I would encourage you to contact them to find out how to adjust your schedule to accommodate your situation. If you miss a KEY WORKOUT, it is better you get that in, than skip it and do the easier stuff unless you are just happen to be worn out from stress and fatigue. Then it would be best to take the day off or just ride easy to rejuvenate your body, mind and spirit. When you are really tired, either riding easy or taking the day off and pushing that key workout until the next day can be a good call. In the early part of the season, specific scheduling is not as critical and we need to keep our training fun for it to be effective long term.

Adjusting on the fly
For most of us, we are keeping the workouts during the week to the meat and potatoes to help us get in effective training while keeping our lives balanced, but sometimes the workout may be longer than the amount of time we have available to train that day. In that case, here’s what you will need to do to adjust it on the fly so that you get in a good workout, even with a minimum of time.

Cardio and bike workouts
Too often people skip workouts entirely thinking that if they can't to it perfectly, than why do it at all. I find the following to be a better approach. Give the following recommendations a try in the following order.

Cut your warm-up and cool-down in half, but still get it in
Cut your workload in half by doing 1/3 - 1/2 fewer sets
Cut the rest periods in half
Cut the interval times in half

Please go about it in this order as it is designed to eliminate things in their order of importance. Of course, this is only to be done in case of emergency, in which case it will allow you to still get in a quality workout. Contrary to popular opinion, something is still better than nothing, for our heads as well as our fitness!

Strength & conditioning
The gym is another area where we can save time in a pinch. When you have time, get the complete workout in, in its entirety. However, when in a hurry, simply follow the suggestions below for augmenting the workout effectively. Remember, this is to be done only when you are in a time crunch.

Start by cutting the warm up and cool down time in half
Make sure you are super-setting exercises and performing circuits whenever possible
Do 2 sets minimum so that you are at least maintaining and then do more next time
Just do the key exercises for your core and legs such as squats, lunges, dead lifts, etc.
Leave the stretching for another time later in the day or in the week

Summary
As you can see, there are many ways to adjust our training to help us get it in and avoid the negative energy that we create for ourselves when life throws us a curve ball. The goal is to make the training we do be effective and fun and avoid it becoming a pair of handcuffs or a source of stress. Give some of these suggestions a try and let me know if you have any specific issues you may be having with your training program and we'll work on it together to come up with a solution that leads to success.