Reality-Check-For-High-Achievers

By Bernard L. Gladieux, Jr.

Like many things in life that are habitual and enjoyable, regular, daily exercise, especially the aerobic kind, can sometimes lead down a primrose path. Even seasoned athletes can wander off track when too much of a good thing takes over

Hurt? Sick?
Be honest. If you have had a nagging cold since Valentine's Day and can't seem to get over it, you might just be running yourself into the ground. While your sedentary, overweight, nicotine addicted neighbors and in laws do seem to get sick more frequently and for longer than you and other people who are fit, it is clear that unusually heavy training (as for a marathon or for a similarly prodigious effort,) does suppress the immune system. High intensity training also produces a dramatic increase in the severity and frequency of stress injury. The best way to deal with either of these untidy consequences of overdoing it is simplicity itself – under do it for as long as it takes to escape from whatever symptoms are troubling you – including undefined malaise. Take time off to do something restful, easy, healing. Take a yoga or a stretching class; take up daily meditation for a while. You will know when you have rested enough.

Improving?
If you have gotten in the habit of improving ever year as in stronger, fasterand more enduring, congratulations, but don't expect that your "J" curve improvement profile will continue forever. If you are in your 20s, 30s, or 40's you can, indeed, expect to get better with care and training. But your rate of improvement will gradually diminish; recovery will eventually take longer and injury will stalk your every indiscretion. While it is true that careful training can produce remarkable performance well into the 60s and beyond, the only athletes who make it in the long run are those who keep a healthy grip on reality, work hard and take rest when it is due.

Enthusiasm?
Do you still have it?   Or has your training gotten to be a bore and a burden? Do you still look forward to your daily encounter with the elements and with the nitty gritty drudgery of it all? If you feel yourself developing the slightest sense of dreariness, take at least a little rest, and aim yourself off in another direction. Just because you always have been a runner or a rugby player, doesn't mean you have to be one until you drop from boredom, injury or exhaustion. Walk, fly kites, fish, bowl – anything as long as it engages you and makes you feel better.

Learning?
Are you still adding to your store of wisdom and understanding about your fitness efforts and existence? Are you still improving or looking for ways to improve your techniques and style to make it more efficient, smoother, easier? Are you still exploring your limits – the boundaries within yourself? The core of serious fitness training must include major doses of aerobic, endurance activity that, by definition is a deeply physical experience. And it is in the nature of this experience that we are released to a clear, static-free state where original self discovery can take place. If that process has become clouded or elusive for you, it may be a warning signal of trouble ahead. It is time to make a fresh, new start.

Guilt and Anxiety?  
Most habitual athletes know the feeling of malaise that comes from missing a workout. For most it is just one of the downside effects of routine training and passes quickly once you are back on schedule. But if the malaise turns easily and regularly to feelings of fear, insecurity and self-deprecation or depression, it's time to work out a new perspective for yourself. That will take some serious thought about what to expect from yourself and what it is that you expect a new, well exercised you, to feel like.

Goals?
Do you still have them or are they in the process of changing? Do they really make any sense at all? A 41 year old, three and a half hour marathoner/triathlete asked Runners World a couple of years ago what he ought to do to achieve his goal the next year of running 12 marathons, three of them in under three hours. Veteran marathoner Bill Rogers suggested a more realistic and saner goal of running no more than two marathons in a year, allowing ample time for building strength, and endurance with adequate time to taper and recover. Whatever your goals, be certain that they make sense for you, that they are attainable and that the costs and risks are worth it.

Fun?
If you are still having it, if your training, your racing, or whatever else you do is your play and your bliss, you can't be far off. If it is still a game that makes your day, however hard you work at it and however seriously and good naturedly you take it, you are likely on the right track.

Fitness training is, after all, something you do freely and only for yourself, no one else, so stay in contact internally and with the real world and have a good, realistic time of it.

By Bernard L. Gladieux, Jr.
President, The Pressure Positive Co.