Know when to walk away and know when to run…

Know when to walk away and know when to run…

So you missed a workout. It’s not a big deal, right? Well maybe it is. How do you know whether you should double up the next day to make up for the missed workout, bump the whole schedule back and skip your rest day, or forget about it and move on? I will give you some quick tips on how to make an informed decision on what to do in the event of a missed training session.

Some workouts are “key” workouts, and those should not be skipped entirely, and some workouts are recovery workouts, and if you have to miss them- doubling up another day is not an effective use of your time- or the following days workout. Here’s how you can tell the goal of the week and the goal of each workout.

The nitty gritty:
So how do you know? Ask your coach- in the event that you don’t have a coach to ask, you should know what the goal of the week is- and which workouts help you achieve that goal. For example, in the foundation phase you are working on building base, making a more efficient aerobic energy system. In this phase the key workouts are the long runs/rides/swims on the weekends usually- don’t skip these, they are key to a successful base building block.

The next phase of training is the Preparation period- where the goal is to work on power/speed right around your lactate threshold. Key workouts in this period are those tempo and steady state intervals. Longer blocks at higher intensity is the way to identify these workouts. Don’t skip them! They are the bread and butter of the preparation period and are imperative to a proper prep phase.

Specialization is the final building block. This period is typified by high intensity and short duration intervals- working on maximal efforts or the vo2 system- the upper limits of your anaerobic system, the sprints if you will. This block is comprised of power interval sessions, track workouts and swim sprint sets. Do your best to make each and every one of these workouts, they are short, but they are hard, that’s the point, that’s how you get faster!

Taper: In the taper block if you miss a workout, forget about it. The purpose of the taper block is to rest you before the big event. The worst thing you can do for your race is to double up a missed workout the day before the event. The double workout won’t make you faster on race day, it will just tire you out before the big event. When in doubt REST in the taper week.

A word of caution on missing workouts and juggling days around:

At certain points in training I want my athletes to go into a workout slightly pre-fatigued, and so I “block” the training, meaning I put two hard days back to back. At other points in the training I specifically want my athletes to have rest days between workouts to insure that they have a quality training day. In general I block the prep phase workouts to get more quality work in at lactate threshold and I space out the specialization high intensity workouts.
In foundation I vary from blocking to resting, depending on the athlete and the volume that they are able to tolerate. Be cautious in the foundation phase not to do too much too soon- that is how injuries occur. It is important to include rest days and to progressively build from one week to the next. That is why simply stacking missed workouts is not always the answer.

So in foundation don’t skip the long days, in prep don’t skip the tempo days and in specialization don’t skip the high intensity days. Other than that- its okay to miss a workout here and there- and if it is during taper, put your feet up and REST! You’ll be glad you did come race day when you cross that finish line at a personal best time!
Life happens, so now you can make educated choices as to how to juggle the missed workouts when the kids get sick, you get called in early or have to stay late to work, or the dog runs away, whatever the case may be, we know that training fits in around life, and for the most part we all do a pretty good job of keeping all the balls in the air, but sometimes we drop them, now you know when to pick them back up and keep going and when to call it a day.