by Jonas David
I listened to my body and hated it. I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep going, feel strong, not mess up my scheduled-out week, continue with the overall plan, and not feel like I’m losing performance. I didn’t want this wrench in my perfectly planned day. But instead, here I am doing 30 minutes of recovery on a bike instead of smashing away at a VO2max workout. My body was thanking me, but my mind was frustrated, trying to figure out what I did wrong and the annoyance this caused. In truth, “listening to your body,” something as a coach I often tell my athletes, is not a feeling of zen and peace when the moment comes, it’s much more complicated, filled with frustration and doubt and self-deception. As an endurance athlete I want to push myself, push through emotions of not wanting to work, the low dips in motivation, and keep grinding when things get tough. But what is too much? Only you can really answer that, but I’ve found that understanding your own fatigue, how it creeps up and the early symptoms, is crucial for the consistency, longevity, and performance of an athlete.
Most of us are familiar with the usual symptoms of fatigue including muscle soreness, heavy legs, and generally feeling sluggish. But while those are straightforward and easy to spot, other symptoms, like low energy, feeling unusually unmotivated, slow to get out of bed and wake up, are harder to catch. It’s easy to attribute them to faults in our character rather than our body’s first signs of too much stress, and as endurance athletes familiar with discomfort, we push through them. We find small excuses for slow mornings, but may fail to categorize them under signs of fatigue.
I recommend becoming familiar with signs of fatigue, and practicing making mental notes of them. When I listen to my body, it’s rarely one massive red flag that keeps me from doing the planned workout, but many small worries that grow into a decision to turn around. I recognize signs of my fatigue, and methodically rule out all other possibilities as I work towards my planned workout. This morning, it looked like this:
I woke up feeling unusually groggy and slow to wake, even with 8 hours of sleep, but went through my normal morning routine on days I have a hard workout planned: a cup of sugary tea planning the details of the workout, and a bigger breakfast of pancakes and fruit. I really didn’t want to get out to the gym today, treadmill workouts being the bane of my existence, but after some procrastination and realizing it’s the last of the set planned for the month, I pushed myself out the door to the gym, though taking a mental note of my continued low motivation. I took 20 minutes to warm up, and after 5 minutes of active stretching, I still felt tired, noting that the 5 minute L3 section of my warm-up was harder than usual. My mind kept wandering, and I couldn’t focus on my warmup. I simply ascribed it to low motivation, and got onto the treadmill to do my VO2max intervals. I couldn’t even do 4 minutes of a workout I did all 20 minutes of last week. I called it done.
The whole morning was frustrating, but looking back on it I did what I needed to. I ruled out my most common causes of low energy: no tea, no breakfast, and no warm-up. Once those were ruled out, it was pretty clear I needed to back down and give my body rest.
I’ve used the mantra “No Kitchen Bailing,” for many years. I give myself the no-judgment option to bail on my workouts under the condition that I needed to be out on the trail or snow and have done my warm-up before I bailed. 90% of the time, I find that it was the warm blanket on a cold winter morning, no morning tea, or the commute to the TH that bothered me the most. I would get through my warm-up and feel back to normal, ready to pound out a workout. But I also have bailed many times. I figure if I get all the way here and something is still telling me not to go, whether those are my heavy legs, my distracted mind, or a very real want to be anywhere else, I listen to that. I trust myself that I wanted to be out here running and exploring the trails, that it is part of who I am. So if my mind and my body are telling me not to go out on the trail today, I listen, knowing that my motivation will bring me back soon.
In the end, while it may feel like a step back or that you are losing performance, listening to your body will actually gain you performance. Your body is at the limit, and what it needs is rest and recovery to adapt to the previous stresses. When you come out of that, you’ll be fitter than if you pushed through and loaded on even more stress to an already fatigued body. Through patience, active internal listening, and ultimate failures, you’ll eventually develop the skills to be able to listen to your body. While it may never feel amazing to bail on a workout, you’ll find your performance more consistently improving giving yourself the rest you need.
