We've all had a day where nothing seems to go right. Where you feel like you're running on 50% (if you're lucky). Where you just don't feel any motivation to do a damn thing. No matter how optimistic you are, or how consistent you are with your schedule, or how much you enjoy training... you will have a day where you just hit a wall and struggle to break past it. On such days or times in your training, how to break these walls becomes important in order to grow both physically and mentally. There are various situations and kinds of walls that inhibit athletic progression. Let's address some of them here;



-A lot of times when we train for a specific activity, we do similar routines and exercises for months and even years without end. This can cause a plateau in progression creating a wall for performance, or an inability to do more or produce more effort.
When your body does similar activities over and over and over again, your body eventually builds itself and adapts to the activity to make it as easy as possible. Your bodies own way of saving itself undue stress in order to be more efficient. This wall is hard to break down because you need to switch the routine up dramatically, not just reps and sets, but exercises as well. New exercises will make the body switch gears and begin to prepare for the new stresses in order to try and adapt itself this can trick the body into letting you build again on the even greater foundation that you set before the wall was hit. A week or so switching up the routine can do the body a lot of good.

-Very difficult routines can create more than just stress on the muscles they also fatigue the mind. This is different than a typical tired feeling as your mind is cognitively driving your muscles and is tired from the excessive amounts of activity in the routine.
Mental stress is a very tough wall to break. If there is one thing that I have learned over the many many years of training, it's that the mind is more powerful than we give it credit for. The mind can drive the body beyond what we think possible. That being said, it is important to test your mind as much as the body. During competition or intense workout sessions, completing visualization practice and positive mental talking works wonders on overall performance. Practice seeing yourself succeed and meeting your goals, the more you see it and tell yourself you can, the more likely you will.

-You start working out more often and by the end of the routine or the week, or come game time, your body doesn't seem to respond as quickly or actively as you are wanting it to. A feeling of running out of gas.
Simply this wall is broken with nothing more than food. When you up the intensity and frequency of exercise, the body needs more in the tank to use. You burn more calories and therefore you need more calories for use. Tracking your diet, counting calories, eating good foods, all these things will give you a better outcome to your performance. Make sure the quality of the fuel you put in is such that will support a quality performance.

One of the hardest parts of getting into triathlons has been the development of real endurance. Not just being able to do the distance but push yourself through the distance. I have found myself hitting walls and having to quickly overcome them. I feel that's where adding a little extra interval training these past couple months and the walls have ceased. Keeping my training constantly moving forward and progressing the different phases has been a great feeling. Workouts like 6.5 miles every mile faster, Bike for 2 hours of 15 minutes high intensity and 10 minutes low intensity, as well as swimming a 25m pool with hard and light intervals has made progress constant since the addition of this style training, and I truly feel that every phase has improved. Just under 2 months left! The Journey to Calgary is getting real!

As a final note:

Pay attention to your body and pay attention to what you can do to overcome the walls that keep you from your goal. There's always a way over or through these walls and you can always excel!

Every Day... A Little Stronger