Life is busy.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re busy with kids, work, family, social engagements, overtime or trying to find time to clean the gutters… which you were supposed to do last April, but Aunty Susan came to town for Michael’s 50th birthday and stayed with you for a week, and of course her flight got delayed and she just had to book business class on the next available flight cause they were on special, and you know that if she didn’t then Cousin Janice will give her that look we all hate and start talking about how successful, even though we all know she means rich, her little Johnny is, and Aunty Susan was so busy complaining about it that she totally failed to help with the dishes even once while she was staying at your place, which obviously made your wife angry and was also your fault and now she can see that’s where you got it from. Anyways, that was 2 months ago and gutters are not yet cleaned, though in hindsight you’re not actually sure what the F$&% any of that has to do with the gutters. It made perfect sense at the time.
Come to think about it, that’s around the same time you stopped training…
So how do you shake them Aunty Susan Blues? How can you stick it to Cousin Janice? What will you wear to Michael’s 50th?
I can’t answer those for you (well… I can, but you probably won’t like what I have to say. I’m not known for being overly diplomatic with such issues). However, I can help with the training part.
In this blog, I shared some tips to help you keep your skills sharp when you can’t get to training. Now I’d like to look at establishing the routine again… How do you get back to training regularly?
Them Aunty Susan Blues
I recently became a dad. I won’t harp on about it, but one thing you can say about parenthood is that it is ridiculously time-consuming.
So here I am, used to training 1-2 hours a day, and teaching martial arts for another 2.5-4 hours a day on top of that, and I’m struggling to find time to work out.
I’m lucky that martial arts are my livelihood – if I want to get by, I HAVE to train. But at the same time, sometimes I get so stuck in teaching and running the dojo that I don’t actually get to train outside of the classes that I teach.
And not having enough time to train is something that we all face at one point or another.
Before we go on, a disclaimer: there is no fast, easy, 5-step program to get yourself motivated to train. If there was, then more people would be regularly training, and more often.
The Holy Trinity of Failure
My experience is that the 3 issues that come up here are:
- Time – actually finding the time to train is not always easy. The blog mentioned above offers some ways to get a little practice in when you don’t have time but there may be other issues here. When I was a (spoiled little) teen, and my parents would ask me to do chores, I’d always say something like ‘I don’t have time’. I remember mum saying once ‘if I gave you $1,000,000, would you find the time?’ I begrudgingly did the dishes. Damn her tricksy logic! Question is… Are you putting training as a high priority? When I felt training was really important (for example before a grading or competition), I always found time to train, even if it was late at night or early in the morning. When other things seemed more important, then I didn’t find the time. Simple as that. This is totally up to you. A couple of things you can do to help:
- Make a list of your priorities and put training where it needs to be at the time. Monitor that list every day or every week and reshuffle it as needed. What things are not really important that are maybe taking priority over training?
- There are a lot of great time management tools out there that can help you understand how to better manage your time. I really like the Eisenhower Matrix as a tool (I also wrote a cool little variation of it, you can read about it here).
- Motivation – it doesn’t matter how much free time you have if you’ve lost the will to train. Again, this is something we all go through. There are times you just don’t feel like it, for whatever reason. Is it a one-off, or a regular thing? If it happens once in a while, it’s totally normal. Maybe you just need a rest day. But if you are regularly hating the idea of training, then maybe you need to change something. Could be that you are over-training and your body is telling you to rest. Could be that you are plateauing, and need a way to invigorate your progress (more on this here and here). Could be that you need to look at switching over to something else or cross train for a while (more on this here). Remind yourself why you love training in the first place! Again, writing this down in a diary or somewhere you can see it is helpful.
- Momentum – this is a tricky one. Establishing a routine is really important. If you’re constantly scrambling to find the next window of opportunity to train, you won’t get far. This is really a combination of the first two – make sure you are motivated to find a regular time to train. You must have continuity and make training a habit again. If you’ve got the first two down, you’ll keep the momentum going!
Done is Better Than Perfect
For me not wanting to train is a bit of a rare case. I ALWAYS want to train. And when I don’t get to train, I enjoy planning my next workout and thinking about how absolutely awesome it’s going to be.
I’ll do some boxing, and some BJJ, and some self-defence, maybe some weights too – It’ll be perfect!
It’s gonna be such a great workout, I get tired just from thinking about it… So instead I put on Netflix, order a pizza and take a nap. Oh yeah, and make mental note to work out tomorrow instead. And so another day went by and my perfect workout never happened.
For me, the hardest thing is to get started. When I’m already moving, when I’m at the dojo, I know I’ll manage to get through it. The point where I know I’m done and I’ll actually go through it, for me, is when I’m in the car.
So how do you get started? How do you get in the (sometimes proverbial) car? And how do you do it over and over again?
Here are some of my favourite things to help. Spoiler alert – they are pretty much the equivalent of setting up an 80s movie training montage. Here we go:
- Ritual – I have a little routine that I go through before training, whether that’s at home or on my way to the dojo. It’s a little ritual and is almost like a mental warm up. It gets me into the training headspace and gets me focused on the task ahead. For me, it involves doing some breathing to clear my head, putting my phone on airplane mode (go on, the world won’t end), visualising my next goal or opponent and keep that in my mind while I’m warming up. Once I get through the warmup, I’m in the right mindset and ready to throw down!
- Get your groove on – we all have tunes that we love working out to (if you don’t, get the album Immersion by Pendulum and thank me later). Make sure you have a playlist which gets you in the mood for working out. Play it while you are driving to training or when you are getting ready for your workout at home. Keep it updated – if you find new songs that get you excited and adrenalized, add them straight away!
- Suit Up! – if you train a lot, chances are you have a few uniforms, or a few pairs of gloves, etc. But there are always one or two items that you just love putting on. Maybe they are super comfy. Maybe they make your butt look great. Maybe they have a special significance – a grading, competition, training camp, or a gift from someone special. Take it with you to the dojo and use it! If you are working out at home, put it on and do your workout. It will help get you in the mood.
- Visualise – I’m a goal-oriented person. I am well aware that the process is what’s important, but I need a goal to help me get my butt into gear and to help me focus on the right part of the process. When I struggle to get back into training, I think back to my goal and run through visualisations of me going through the process and achieving it. For example, if I’m preparing for a grading, I’ll go through it in my head and think about how much butt I’m going to kick and how awesome it’s going to be. It always helps to get me revved up and get me itching to get started with my training session.
Last point – we all have off days. We all need to take some time off every so often. We all have workouts where you didn’t perform well or felt off your game. I can think of plenty of the latter. In fact, pretty much every BJJ session I’ve done in the past 12 months falls into that category (including this morning… grumble grumble).
But guess what – I still go. At the end of the day, doing something is always better than doing nothing.
There’s no such thing as a perfect workout; Done is always better than perfect.
Stay safe, stay tuned.
Osu/Oss
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