Over the past two months since having moved to Georgia and started my job at King’s Ridge, finding a routine that works and is sufficient to create positive results in my training has been extremely challenging. Some of the luxuries that I enjoyed in Dallas I no longer have afforded to me here in Georgia. Luxuries like mid-day naps, specific training preparatory meals, arranging work around training, and ultimately having the ability to give your training sessions priority over most other things in your life. Since moving back to Georgia and taking the job that I love at King’s Ridge, most of those luxuries have disappeared.
What that means is I have to get a little creative. Over the last two weeks I figured out a couple things to help delegate and arrange my lifestyle as it currently sits to provide for the best training results possible. Most of it just comes down organization. The reality is that between the hours of 7:30 AM and 4 PM I’m not training. What’s more I’m teaching which ultimately is an emotional and psychological job. The strain it puts on my psyche was one that I did not expect and one that often carries over to my workout. Managing my emotional investment in situations that don’t warrant it was a massive revelation for me. I need to be able to be emotionally involved in my training. ย If I’ve been emotionally involved all day long in situations and circumstances that don’t necessitate emotional involvement, that hurts my ability to be emotionally stimulating for my workout. Don’t hear that I am emotionally turned off when teaching. Far from it. However, there are other parts of the day that do not require an emotive response or engagement. I’m careful in those situations
Secondly, and I know this is an obvious one, I have to get good sleep. One of the hard parts about being a new teacher is that much of the curriculum and material has to be original and created from scratch. That means an abundance of extra work that many teachers don’t have with experience and years of teaching under their belt. In my shoes, that means a couple extra hours per night developing lesson plans and curriculum and formatting the class to meet accreditation standards. This is work that will dissipate over time but for the time being is a necessary requirement. Combating this reality is a matter of organization and time delegation. Managing my time well so that it is not wasted allows me to be in the bed at an appropriate time. On days that I do this poorly, I could find myself up working till midnight or one in the morning. That makes a 5AM alarm clock much more detrimental to my training than if I going to bed at 9PM. ย Organizing my day such that school requirements, athlete requirements, and specific meetings all mesh together for the best possible time management situation is critical to my growth as an athlete and performance in my training. This sounds easily done but may be the hardest aspect of my life right now. What’s more, I believe it to be the one thing that is holding back my training the most.
The last piece of my training that I have found to be more critically important than I used to is calorie consumption at appropriate times. Previous to now, I would eat at a specific time in order to prepare for training. Moving into the school system, they decide when you eat and what you eat. Luckily we have an awesome food service at King’s Ridge that provides a plethora of options to choose from. However it does not prevent the reality that I eat lunch around noon and don’t train until 4:30. For a couple of weeks I did not realize that the energy deficiency during training was coming from a lack of calories. What’s more, the right type of calories is not coming into my body at the appropriate times. Now, at lunch, I make sure to prepare a sandwich and grab an apple to eat on the way from the school to training. The extra calories have proved to be a piece of the puzzle that I was missing. Add a pre-workout drink high in branched-chain amino acid and with a small stimulant and I’m all set.
It took two months to figure this part out but I think I have begun to get this piece hammered down. As I already said, I do think that the sleep or lack there of has been the biggest handicap in my training so far. With these three things now realized, I’m anxious to see what the next couple months leading up to The University World Championships looks like. If the past two weeks are any indication, it could be aย meet for the record books.
For the majority of you out there who this is your reality day in and day out, I would encourage you to take a look at these three factors. Emotional investment in your day-to-day job, sleep intake, and nutrition are all massive pieces to the output you’re able to garner in training. I recognize now that not everyone of us has the luxury of regulating their life around their training. However, with specific calculation and an overabundance of discipline, your training can be done well.