Training expectations
The importance of recovery and time management for your fitness journey
“I don’t get it; I haven’t made any progress in the last 15 years. I’m 47 years old, I sleep 5 hours a night, I argue with my wife, have three kids, I’m stressed out and I’m angry and tired all of the time.”
I had a lot of conversations over the last years with people trying to better themselves and the quote above sums up the problem beautifully. It can look like a joke when you see it from the outside, but this is the reality for many people – and they cannot see it themselves. Every single statement in the quote is a variable that is working against you from the get-go, and then you want to stress your system even more with training and you expect a positive result. The easiest way to think about training and progress is like an equation that goes something like this:
Adequate Stress + Adequate Recovery = Increased Fitness
There needs to be a symmetrical relation between stress and recovery for you to make progress. So how does this apply to your daily training regime? Two difficulties seem to affect people the most. The first is “How?” or “What to do?” This is a strategic problem, wherein you need to address your goals and dreams and plan accordingly. We made an article on this subject on our site if this topic interests you. The second one and the one we are going to cover in this article is training expectations.
A lot of people get discouraged because of their lack of perceived progress. There are a lot of variables to cover on this topic, but I think there are two perspectives that stand out the most.
The first one is unrealistic expectations and the second one is inadequate lifestyle management to facilitate recovery, which hinders progress. We often see a combination of the two and we will dig deeper into specific variables later in another article, but for starters--let’s look into these two scenarios.
Unrealistic expectations due to your genetic potential
This is a big one and is important to get out of the way from the start. There are two pitfalls that we often face when attempting to fulfil our potential, and these are; aesthetics and performance. People have an unrealistic expectation of their physical potential and cannot assess their genetic potential properly. This makes them dream too big and get disappointed when they do not get the results that they wished for. This can manifest itself in many ways.
Often people work to achieve a distinct physical appearance that they have seen in a superhero movie or a magazine. But there are so many physical attributes that you are born with, and that you cannot change, like height, bone structure, how your muscles express themselves when trained, waist size, etc. We can, through training, improve our strength and physical appearance dramatically, but we cannot make ourselves look like someone else. The same logic applies when we talk about performance. Everybody is built differently and the distinctive blend of bone structure, muscle fibre types, height, cardiovascular system, and limb proportions, makes every individual unique. If you take a teenager and assess their vertical jump height, you get a really good assessment of what their power potential is. If a kid has a massive vertical jump, they will be able to build a massive squat or do well in sports where explosive power is needed. But there is a trade-off, this kid will have a hard time making the podium in endurance sports like a marathon or Ironman triathlons. The point is, you need to be realistic about your physical potential. Everybody can improve roughly the same, but the starting point is different, so the result will differ too.
Unrealistic expectations due to stress and recovery management
At this point in your journey, you have made a realistic goal that is in line with your genetic potential, you have made the optimal training structure, and you are not making any progress. You feel beat down, cannot sleep, and feel semi-depressed most of the time. These are clear signs of inadequate recovery. Here you need to assess your daily routine and figure out what the problem is. Often, we see that there are competing problems. Here is a quick checklist for you:
Your overall health?
Stress levels?
Injuries?
Does the training schedule fit in with your work and family life?
Is it sustainable?
Age?
Remember the equation. There needs to be a symmetrical relationship between stress and recovery to promote increased fitness over time. If you have inadequate physical stress, you will not see progress, and if you fail to recover from the physical stress you inflict on your body--then you will feel like shit, and will not get anywhere.
This is why you need to make a holistic assessment of all of the bullet points above. Every one of those variables will hinder recovery and needs to be accounted for. When making a training plan, you need to remember, that consistency is king. You need to account for all of the variables that can hinder recovery and build your training structure accordingly. This is where a coach can be very valuable--helping you create a structure and assess your progress. It is often easier to assess a program from the outside – like the quote at the beginning of the article. A good coach will know if you should do more or less work depending on your lifestyle and progress.
If you want to do this yourself, then autoregulation is a good approach. Here you make a training plan that fits with your goals and lifestyle (you can read our article on training structure for inspiration). You execute your training and assess your progress, monitor how you feel daily, and make the necessary changes as you progress. You can use devices like the watches from Apple or Garmin or a recovery tracker like the one from Whoop. There are many other devices out there, but these are the ones I know and can recommend. Another way to autoregulate is to go by feel. If you feel good, train hard, and if you feel like shit, take it easy or take a rest day. Do not be a slave to your program. Work toward developing a more nuanced approach over time and remember consistency over time is what matters.
I hope this can help you develop and achieve your goals faster, and in a more enjoyable manner.
Get after it and good luck
Lennart