Listen to Your Body

One of the most difficult but also one of the most important things I have found while training is to listen to my body.

If you feel pain while training or fatigue then it is very important to either reduce your effort level or stop the session completely. The body is one big computer with nerves and receptors working relentlessly to detect injury and inflammation in the body; if you feel pain, this is your body telling you something is wrong and it’s time to stop.

Don’t forget that one missed session will not hinder your progress, but training through pain will cause more damage and could potentially affect you for a longer period of time by causing a more substantial injury. It would be a shame to let all your hard work get undone by being stubborn – listen to your body!

Don’t worry about what other people are doing

In this day and age, social media even affects our training. It is very easy to get home after a training session and look through Strava only to discover Ironman Jane has completed twice the distance that you have and stolen your QoM while she was at it.

What you fail to recall at this point is that she has already completed two Ironman events previously and is aiming for a sub 12 hour race time, whereas you have far less experience and just want to complete the event without passing out before you cross the finish line!

You both have very different goals even though you are both preparing for the same event and it is important to remember that this will affect the type of training you will be doing in comparison to others. Preparation for events such as Ironman is personal to each individual depending on their goal, time constraints and level of fitness.

Believe in Yourself

A huge contributing factor to success in endurance sport is mental attitude and believing that you have the ability to complete the task at hand. Improving your self-belief will increase your chance of success because it will help to improve self-image, eliminate negative feelings, as well as improve motivation to train and these factors all contribute to improving performance. Here are a few ways to boost self-belief and confidence:

• Surround yourself with positive people who instil a feeling of confidence within you by being supportive and encouraging.
• Use positive self-talk to motivate yourself by telling yourself, “I can…”
• Control negative emotions, for example, anxiety, by using relaxation techniques such as listening to music and meditation so that you eliminate negative trains of thought.
• Visualise yourself achieving your goal. In your mind’s eye see yourself crossing that finish line or beating your opponent; remember how this makes you feel when you actually take part in your event and try to replicate it.

Stretch it Out

Flexibility is one of the components of fitness and for optimum performance you need to maintain a good level of flexibility in the muscles. If you neglect muscular flexibility while training the muscles will become stiff and tight which will reduce their range of movement and this can cause improper muscle action which leads to a reduction in performance and potentially an injury.

How to reduce DOMS and muscle ache after the gym

To recover properly after a training session you must have a stretching regime that involves stretching out all of the major muscles in the body and if you have soreness in one specific area, spend extra time stretching these muscles. After a training session this improves blood circulation which aids with the removal of lactic acid and delivery of oxygenated blood to the muscles which helps with healing of micro tears in the fibres caused by exercise; this reduces the feeling of delayed onset muscle soreness (D.O.M.S) which allows you to train with greater effort the next day.

Get to the Gym

As tempting as it is to spend all of your time solely focusing on actually doing your chosen sports activity, you must make time for strength and conditioning training because it will be a vital way of maintaining and improving your physical performance. Weight training needs to accompany aerobic activity for a variety of reasons, here are some key benefits:

• Improves Strength: weight training strengthens muscles which are directly used in your sport and by building them this will allow you to exert greater force and therefore making you a more powerful athlete.
• Reduces Risk of Injury: another benefit of strength training is that the chance of becoming injured decreases due to connective tissues such as tendons and ligaments become strengthened. This is beneficial because as you train and your muscles become larger, there is more mass to support and more force exerted onto the ligaments and tendons and this increases the risk of them straining or tearing.
• Improves and Maintains Bone Density: the stress put on your bones due to the pulling action of muscles and tendons causes the bones to adapt and become denser to reduce the risk of stress fractures which is a common overuse injury in impact sports such as running.

Fitting it all in

An average week for an Ironman in training can include anything between 12-18 hours of swimming, cycling and running. Initially, this seems like an impossible amount of time to dedicate to a sport as well as being able to juggle a job, family and social life at the same time!

The key to managing your time properly is to create a weekly timetable and stick to it. For example, schedule a session for the morning before you go to work or during your lunch break; by planning ahead you are more likely to actually do it. Also, plan in social activities as well as training, if you plan ahead you are far more likely to feel inclined to do them, this will help you to organise your week so the amount of “dead”, unused time in your days is decreased.

How to make a training plan and actually stick to it

Remember, “quality not quantity” can be applied to your weekly training regime by incorporating higher intensity sessions which take less time to complete but provide the same, if not more benefit than junk mileage at a lower intensity. This will help you to condense your training down to fit it in during the week while still benefiting as much as possible from the time you spend training.

Recovery Time

To get the most out of your training during every session, you must allow your body time to recover properly. After every session, you should consume carbohydrates as well as proteins.

6 of the Best Post-Workout Snacks

Carbohydrates will replenish glycogen stores, a stored form of glucose found in muscles and used during periods of intense physical activity; by replacing the stored form of carbohydrate, this allows for better performance during the next session because you will have more energy stores which your body can use for training.

Consuming protein post workout will help with the process of protein synthesis within the body to repair muscular tears which occur during training when they are put under stress.  This allows the muscles to grow and become stronger which will help you to improve in your chosen sport.

Taking time out from sport allows your body to adapt and change after the stress it has been put under, for example, the cardiovascular system becomes more efficient by the heart becoming stronger and being able to pump more blood per beat, increasing stroke volume, which means more blood can be delivered to the muscles in a given time, and more capillaries grow to allow more blood flow to the working muscles. This helps to create a body which is more suited to your chosen sport and will reduce your feeling of fatigue so you can perform to a higher standard.

The most important lesson of all is to have fun and enjoy what you are doing, so good luck with your sports goals, look after your body and mind but don’t forget to “smile every mile”!