Staying Motivated in the Off-Season
Last week, I polled my Instagram followers about what topics they wanted to see covered during the coronavirus pandemic. Across the board, the most requested topic had something to do with staying motivated. Every athlete that I work with has had at least one race or competition canceled. Some have had entire seasons canceled. Keeping up with training when it will be months until the next time you toe a start line can feel impossible. So what should you do?
Everybody has a different pandemic experience, even as athletes. The runners I work with have had races canceled or postponed but can still get outside to train. On the other hand, swimmers I work with don't have a pool to train in and are scrambling to figure out how to maintain as much fitness as they can. The most significant piece of advice I would give to any athlete who brought the topic of motivation to me would be to figure out what will work best for you, given your situation and how you are handling everything going on. We can’t look at sports in a vacuum- we have to address tons of other factors that will affect your ability to train right now. The most important thing, even more than staying fit, is taking care of yourself.
There is a difference between capacity and motivation. Capacity is the ability, capability, or fitness to do something. Motivation is the general desire or willingness of someone to do something. Just because you have the desire to do something does not mean that you have the mental or physical ability to do so. The main thing that will lower your mental capacity here is stress. Now, this is a judgment-free zone, so I am not going to judge whether you should or should not be stressed at the moment. Many people say that because they are not healthcare workers or directly impacted by the coronavirus restrictions, they have no right to feel stressed or anxious. I’m in the camp that every single person has the right to feel stressed. You have permission to feel however you feel.
Before I get into how to find or stay motivated in the current climate, I want to reiterate that you might not have the capacity to keep training as you previously were. If you find that you need to take a break from training 2-3 hours a day to feel like a functional human, that is okay. It is better to rest and recover than to push through and end up burned out in several months. Speaking of burnout, this is a great time to mention that training for long periods when you lack capacity and/or motivation is a direct path to feeling burned out. It will always be better to take a short break or down period now to avoid a longer one later.
So capacity is not the problem, but you can’t find the motivation to train? Here’s where I tell you that motivation is tied really closely to goals. It makes sense: you are motivated to train for the goals you set for yourself. For a majority of people, their goals in sport are now pretty far off in time. It will be at least a few months before we are back to competing. For some sports, it could be the better part of a year. Long term goals aren’t going anywhere. Your goal to qualify for the Boston Marathon still exists. Your goal to break 25 seconds in the 50 free still exists. Your goal to play in college still exists. But even though those long term goals aren’t going anywhere, I recommend not planning far into the future. We don’t know what will happen in 1 week, 1 month, 1-year thanks to coronavirus. This can feel really scary and overwhelming, which just leads to feeling stressed.
Some solutions? Take it one day at a time. Concentrate on what needs to be done today. Improve your core strength, work on your balance, improve your imagery skills, learn how to do that new trick. Set realistic goals and accomplish what you can. The best thing you can do when setting daily goals is to tie them back to your why and long-term goals. It will help you feel more connected to your long-term goals, and like this time isn’t a waste (because it’s not!). Another recommended approach is to find new challenges to complete in the interim on the topic of goals. These can be strength related, non-sport related, speed-related- it’s up to you. So far, I have implemented challenges to hike for 4 hours, gain as much elevation on hikes as possible in April, and practice yoga 3 times a week for 4 weeks. What matters most to me is that I genuinely want to do them.