Mentally and physically managing in #Lockdown
2020 – Who would have thought it? Well actually if you listen to the conspiracy theorists, people from Nostradamus to Dean Koontz predicted we would be here! In reality I don’t think any of would seriously have ever predicted something like this .
But are we a complacent generation?
For over 70 years we have experienced almost continued ‘good times’, strong economic growth, a reduction in massive world wide conflicts or debilitating illnesses. Just think back to My Grand Parents generation and before, in a short period of time there was
– WW1
– Spanish Flu pandemic
– Wall street crash of 29/30
WW2
So maybe we should not be so surprised about where the world is now, but more thankful about how the good times were. This then leads into the question of how do we cope?
Our whole world has been turned upside down, we are stuck in the house almost 24/7. All semblance of normality has gone and its very easy to get lost in times like this. We have all heard it described as groundhog day between Chrstmas and New year – and that is about right in my eyes!
Many people have commented on the situation and there is a multitude of useful information and help to get us through this, I want to put my spin on this, thinking specifically from an athletic performance point of view
Andy's top 10 Covid Coping strategies for the athlete
- Plan and refocus – the first half of the season may be a write off, but we have every hope to get it back later on. So re-write the plan.
- Embrace the extra build period, use it to focus on endurance, depth and skills.
- Back off a bit – You don’t need to be on the performance knife edge as we are not racing AND you don’t want your immune system too compromised in-case you do get ill.
- If, like many of us you are working from home, use it to split sessions, to both keep it interesting and make the best use of time
- Think long term, your athletic career will be way longer than just 2020, see this as another obstacle to overcome and refocus your medium and long term goals
- Maintain structure – even without specific race goals I believe its so important now to maintain training structure
– Keep the engine firing through the range (zones)
– work on strong sub threshold base work, Z3, Z4 , Sweet spot really can help here
– Mix it up and keep sessions interesting (see some recent posts on IGTV)
– Try to keep to your usual ‘routine’ if you can, this will help coping in giving you some semblance of normality! - Maintain enjoyment! For a lot of my athletes we schedule a ‘freestyling day’ to just go out and enjoy them selves and de-stress from the stress of life and of consistent structured training
- Keep your hand in racing, have a go at some ZWIFT races, my god they will work you hard and it can be a nice distraction and something to look forward to when there is nothing else on.
- Focus on your diet, we’ve all seen those great meme’s of the sign in the fridge that says ‘YOU ARE NOT HUNGRY YOU ARE BORED’! It’s so easy to just eat for the sake of it! Don’t!
- Focus on your mental health
– Check in on friends
– Plan training virtual meetups
– use DISCORD or the phone when training together
