By Coach Alison Steiner Miller
The holidays are behind us and we have entered the most fraught time of year. The headlines are everywhere:
- “New year, new you”
- “30 day reset”
- “X miles a day challenge”
- “Gym January.”
There’s so much pressure to set resolutions and make big life changes, and much of it revolves around health and fitness. Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE LOVE LOVE a big prickly goal, a resolution, a pipe dream. But the widespread expectation of making a change specifically on January 1st can backfire, especially for endurance athletes.
It’s easy to see how this happens with beginners. I work with a lot of newbies, and I love their energy at the start of the process. They’ve picked a big goal race, and they are excited to get started, full steam ahead! It’s especially tough for triathletes who want to suddenly start adding a lot of swimming AND biking AND running to their schedule. Or a runner who is looking at a training plan where the first long run is 6 miles but they’ve never run more than a 5k. This is where a chat with a coach to explain progressive overload and meeting you at your current fitness level can help avoid the pitfalls of doing too much too soon.
But, the more complicated problem that I see over and over again is actually with experienced endurance athletes. It is commonly recommended to take some reduced load time after a big event or a full season of racing. And even if you have a plan to maintain a base level of consistency, or maybe you are working on an area of opportunity through the postseason (yay you!), it’s not hard to get swept up in all the madness of December (kids out of school, holiday parties, travel, houseguests, flu season, bad weather, or all of the above) and let your training take a back seat.
Then comes January: cue the panic.
Maybe you took a look at your calendar and counted the weeks to your early spring race. Or maybe you went for a run and were disappointed by your pace or alarmed at how hard it felt. Either way, that panic causes many of us to fall into the trap of jumping right back to full base training load to make up for lost time. And that is a pretty good way to wind up injured come February or March.
There’s good news and bad news here.
The good news is that it is generally true that the fitter you were before your break, the quicker you will bounce back and regain your fitness. The bad news is that even highly trained athletes will experience physiological changes that impact fitness after a week or more away. Just because you have done something before does not mean you can or should do it right now.
It can be a blow to the ego for athletes who are used to nailing tough sessions to start at reduced volume, intensity, and frequency in order to rebuild their fitness in a smart and safe way. Especially when this happens at a time of year when everyone’s social media feeds are filled with the splashy New Year’s resolutions, challenges, and short-term victories.
Make those resolutions. Dream those lofty dreams. But don’t let the world’s big January energy eclipse your slow, deliberate, decidedly un-sexy progress on your way to that big goal. And maybe turn off your Strava feed until February.
January doesn’t need more discipline—it needs better planning. If you want a personalized, sustainable approach to getting back into training without burning out or breaking down, coaching might be the next right step. Let’s talk about where you are and where you want to go.