What’s the best way to start training again after falling off the festive-season-wagon

What’s the best way to start training again after falling off the festive-season-wagon

Did your training fall by the wayside over the festive season? And now you're wondering about the best way to start training again...

Devlin and Brad discuss the best way for you to get back into training, where to pick up on your training program and how best to find the motivation to get back on the wagon.

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But for now, if you want to find out what the best way to start training again is, then check out the podcast or video below!

 

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Brad Brown: Welcome onto this edition of Ride with Coach Parry, I’m Brad Brown; we’ve got our cycling coach, Devlin Eyden with us once again. Dev, welcome back, nice to touch base.

Devlin Eyden: Great to be back again Brad, looking forward to the question.

BB: Dev, this is a great question, I think this is something that a lot of people struggle with. Some people at the start of a new year, they have no issues with motivation and getting going, other people like me, not so much!

We had a great question in on the forum, on the Coach Parry online training platform about picking things up in January if you fell off the wagon in December. Then what's the best way to start training again?

What to do when you fall off the wagon

That’s what I wanted to chat about today. Dev, it often happens. We spoke about it before the festive season, what to do to keep ticking over and how to keep things going but life gets in the way and sometimes these things do happen. If somebody has fallen off the wagon, what’s the best way for them to pick up the pieces and get going again?

Do they simply pick up their training programme where they left off or is there a way to build up and get back to where you were as quickly as possible?

DE: Look, there’s definitely a way of getting back. Like you say, life happens and it is something that is quite normal. I think first and foremost we need to determine what we refer to by ‘falling off the wagon.’

Have we done absolutely nothing over the festive season or is it maybe that we missed a couple of sessions; we might have taken a week off because that’s also going to largely determine how quickly we can get back onto the training programme.

How to stay cycling motivated 

From a motivation point of view, firstly we need to look at just setting ourselves a goal, maybe setting ourselves a couple of goals as well. Something a little bit more realistic and when I say ‘realistic,’ a little bit more medium term where we’ve got enough time to work towards something again.

Then naturally a couple of smaller goals that we can start to measure ourselves, make sure we are still on the right track and still keep a little bit of interest happening.

Firstly, let’s start by picking out a couple of races, looking at a race calendar through the year, something that might interest us whether it’s a tour or a stage race or a one day race. Set those goals and then hopefully that gives a little bit of motivation and then the next thing from there is actually just get started.

Having a goal is crucial

Get out on the bike, do a training session. You’ll start to see that you’re actually feeling a little bit better from doing that training session and hopefully that kicks in a little bit of motivation as well saying right, new year, new start, let’s just get the ball rolling and from there you’ll start to find a bit of rhythm, a bit of routine again.

BB: Dev, I spoke about picking things up where you left off. That’s, I guess, one of the dangers too is trying to do too much too soon, particularly if you’ve taken off like a longer period of time where you were hanging out on the dark side.

You do need to be careful there that you don’t go and overdo it and then have to take more time off because you’ve picked up an overuse injury or something.

Be careful to build back up slowly

DE: Exactly that Brad. When you have taken a lot more time off, it just means, unfortunately, you’ve got to start much lower again. I won’t necessarily say you’re starting from absolute scratch, but something that starts slow and slowly builds your way, the correct way up as well and that’s why I say, if you are picking goals, make your main goal for the year, or goal race, whatever it might be, make it slightly further down the line so that you have got enough time to build up to that correctly without picking up any injuries as you mentioned.

Just be a little more realistic and understand, I think more often than not people struggle to come to terms with the fact that I’m not where I was when I finished the year last year and I was in peak condition and now why am I not hitting any numbers and why am I feeling so bad. You’ve got to understand that unfortunately if you fell off the wagon, that’s what’s going to happen.

Start slow, make sure we build up correctly, prevent any injuries and burn-out happening as well. If it was a week you might have lost in your training, I think then it’s a different story. You can just step back into the training programme a week back. Just start things one week in arrears and then slowly build up from there again.

Just keeping in mind, if you’ve got a goal, if you have been training and your goal might be happening in the next couple of months, if you’ve got a big event coming up, just make sure that you tweak a couple of things to make sure you’re still on the right track for that particular event.

Keep you goal front of mind and get a cycling training programme

BB: Absolutely. Dev, as always, great to catch up, thanks for your time today here on Ride and don’t forget, if you are listening or watching this and you want to get some help with your cycling, if you’re looking for a training programme, we’ve got an unbelievably interactive online training platform. We have got tons of training programmes, all dependent and across the spectrum with regards to different abilities.

All you need to do, if you want to check it out, head over to coachparry.com/cycling. You can get all the details there and we’re back in a week. Thanks for tuning in to find out what the best way to start training again is. Dev, thanks for your time, we look forward to catching up again soon.

DE: Cheers Brad.

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