What to Modify in Training When Things Change or Don’t Unfold as Expected - Coach Tip Tuesday

A work task takes longer than you anticipated.

You get a call from the school nurse that your kid is sick and needs to be picked up.

An appointment starts late and takes longer than scheduled.

Your day is more mentally draining than you expected.

I could go on and on.  Any of these (and many more things) can happen over the course of your day to derail even the very best-laid of plans.  And this doesn’t only happen over the course of a single day; the timeline can be longer than that.  You can imagine and expect that a day or a week or a month is going to go a particular way and learn along the way that it’s unfolding very differently than you anticipated.

The Myth of Certainty

The only certainty in life - and therefore in endurance sports - is uncertainty.  Yes, this is absolutely a paradox.  But it is true.  We don’t like to admit this out loud.  Humans like to imagine that we are in far more control of our lives than we actually are.  Endurance athletes - who often have Type A qualities (if not full-blown Type A personalities) such as ambition, competitiveness, drive, organization, the ability to work well under pressure, and urgency - have an even tougher time stomaching the truth that they are not as in control as they think they are, sometimes going as far as to deny it outright.

The very same qualities that enable endurance athletes to set goals and to endure over the long run to pursue said goals can - again, paradoxically - be the very same things that limit them or cause issues in their training, racing, and goal achievement.  Precisely because endurance athletes are high-achieving, goal-oriented, and driven, they can have a hard time exercising patience, grace, and adaptability when things do not happen the way they want or expect.

Yet adaptability and the ability to be flexible (mentally and physically) are arguably the most essential qualities for endurance athletes to, well, endure.  To endure means “to exist in the same condition”, “to experience (pain or suffering) for a long time”, and “to deal with to accept (something unpleasant)”.  Essentially, to “endure” means to exist in a state of discomfort and to understand that a desired result will take a long time to achieve.  Only by adapting to what actually unfolds in their lives and their training can endurance athletes chart the safest course toward their goals that will give them the highest probability of reaching their desired outcome.  An inability or an unwillingness to adapt can significantly increase the risk of injury or unrealized goals.

I often tell the athletes who I coach that while their goals are set in stone (because they are so important to them and they are the North Star that guides how we plan their training and workouts), the path to get to those goals is not set in stone.  Rather, that path is set in sand; it is movable, changeable, and fluid.  It adapts to the obstacles it encounters along the way so that it can still ultimately reach the intended destination.  Embracing this truth - that adaptability is critical to success - is so important for endurance athletes of all abilities, regardless of whether their primary sport is running, triathlon, cycling, hiking, or swimming, and no matter what ability level they are.  

Why Endurance Athletes Need to Accept that Modifications are Necessary

Whether they are a runner, a triathlete, a cyclist, or a swimmer, all endurance athletes will encounter a situation where they need to make a decision about whether or not to consciously change something about their training as it was originally planned.  As mentioned earlier, some athletes will deny that modifications need to be made, will double down, be stubborn, and try to do their training as planned, even if their day, week, or month is not going how they originally anticipated.  Others will attempt to double up or make up something with the false notion that either of these options is the same as completing things as they were originally planned.  Other athletes will give up on training entirely when they can’t do something as they originally envisioned they could. 

It doesn’t have to be this binary - this all or nothing.  I’ve seen time and time again over the years that the athletes who are the healthiest and the most successful over the long-term (aka many seasons or years) exhibit two important qualities: Consistency and adaptability.

I’ve long touted the benefits of consistency for endurance athletes.  It is, in my humble opinion, one of the three most important things any endurance athlete can do for their training and performance.  One of the most important mechanisms to implement consistency is adaptability.

Adaptability is the quality of being able or willing to adjust to new conditions and to cope with unexpected circumstances.  In addition to this quality being necessary in day-to-day training and over the course of an entire training cycle, it’s critical for athletes on race day itself.  Adversity will always pop up in one form or another both in training and on race day.  (Perhaps most especially on race day.)  Practicing being adaptable in training is key because it enables athletes to hone this skill and therefore to be prepared to be adaptable to undesired or unexpected circumstances on race day, thereby giving them a better chance of successfully managing said race day adversity.  

While endurance sports training is centered around our goals (and, for many athletes, around a race where they are seeking to achieve their goals), endurance sports training is not only about preparing for race day.  Endurance sports are a constant mirror and training stage for life itself, and thus the skills and qualities we develop in endurance sports training have carrying and staying power into our daily lives as humans.

A hard truth that all athletes learn over time is this: When something unexpected pops up in an athlete’s life, changes will happen - both in the athlete’s regular life and in their training.  Learning and embracing the skill of adaptability is so important because this gives athletes more control over which changes will be made.  A refusal to acknowledge that something needs to change or doubling down on what was originally planned will not stop a change; it will just reduce - if not outright remove - an athlete’s control of the change.  Endurance sports provide a nice vehicle for endurance athletes to learn this important human life lesson.

What Modifications Should Endurance Athletes Make to Training When Necessary?

While most endurance athletes can recognize when something isn’t going how they wanted or expected in their training and racing, understanding and knowing what to do about it is more challenging.  How do endurance athletes know what modifications or changes are best to implement in their training or on race day?

The truthful answer is one that almost no one likes to hear: It depends.  Many, many people (influencers, athletes, and coaches alike) will attempt to provide clear and definitive answers to this question because a clear and definitive answer is what most people are seeking.  So, a lot of people give an answer that they know the person or their audience wants to hear, which may or may not be the full truth - aka what they need to hear.

When things are unfolding differently from what was planned or expected, determining which modifications and changes to workouts and training are best depends on a wide variety of factors, to include (but not limited to):

• What circumstance is necessitating the change
• How impactful the circumstance necessitating the change is on the athlete - both mentally and physically
• What the athlete’s recent training looks like
• What the athlete’s training history and experience is
• What the athlete has going on in their personal life at the time
• What the athlete’s goals are
• What training phase the athlete is in
• What the potential costs and benefits of a particular modification or change are to the athlete and their training

As a result of there being so many factors to consider, athletes often default (especially when they are on their own or when they are self-coached) to an “all or nothing” mindset because this is a simpler and - at face value, easier - thought process and pathway to take.  It is complicated (and at times, time-consuming) to evaluate a wide range of options and attempt to self-select the best option.  It is impossible to actually know which choice will be the best one; all we can do is choose the option that we think is best, and then see how that decision unfolds.  This uncertainty can feel overwhelming and crippling to athletes.  In the face of that uncertainty and that amount of mental work, many athletes will disengage and default to the simpler and easier “all or nothing” pathway.

As a coach, serving as an evaluator of situations like this is one of the main roles I play for the athletes I work with.  When something doesn’t go as planned, many of them reach out and ask what they should do.  More times than not, I offer a recommendation that differs from what they would have self-selected or - if we’re all being honest here - what they want to be doing.  I am a third party when it comes to their training; while I care deeply about each athlete I work with, their training, and their goals, I am not as biased as they are about these things because my emotional investment in it isn’t - and can never be - the same as the athlete’s.  This is because it is utterly impossible for any human to be unbiased about their own life or circumstances.  I also have the benefit of 15+ years of experience working with hundreds of athletes.  All of this means that I can quickly (and at this stage of my career, usually accurately) assess the options at-hand and make the best recommendation for the circumstances I see in play for an athlete.

You Are Not a Failure or Disappointment

When life happens and things unfold in ways that athletes didn’t expect, I often hear some version of “I’m sorry” from them.  I’ve seen that when things do not go as people want, athletes often go into two rather unhelpful mental spaces.  The first is one where they are overwhelmed and feeling like they cannot do everything.  The second mental space is one of disappointment - usually in themselves - and where they fixate on everything they didn’t or couldn’t do.

I have a rule that I enforce with all of the athletes who I coach: They are not allowed to say “I’m sorry” unless they have done something that they should be remorseful for.  Life happening is not something to be sorry for.  Life just happens.  And it is okay.  I also remind them to consider what they would say to a friend or someone who they cared about who found themselves in the same situation as they are currently in.  Would they be telling that person that they are disappointed in them or telling that person that they should be apologizing to another person for life happening?  No, no they would not.  

You are not a failure or a disappointment if life unfolds in a way that you did not expect.  When and if this happens, all it does is showcase that you are a human living out the human experience.  In the context of endurance sports: Any plan for endurance sports training - whether it is personalized Coaching, a Custom-Built Training Plan, or a Training Plan - is planned with the best information that one has at the time about what will happen in the future.  It is the best prediction of what training will be most appropriate, but it is not a guarantee that it will be the training that is actually most appropriate.  When that information is updated based on real-world happenings and experiences, it stands to reason that the training should also be updated to align with what is most appropriate given the new information.

A common phenomenon that I’ve observed among athletes since I started coaching is that they absolutely do not like altering their training schedules once they see them.  For athletes who follow Training Plans or even Custom-Built Training Plans, this can become quite an issue since these training options plan out training many months in advance.  But this dislike of modifying training is not unique to athletes who follow Training Plans or Custom-Built Training Plans.  Even athletes who are on Coaching (where training is written in shorter batches, such as one week at a time) do not like altering their training once they’ve seen their plan.  Once athletes see what the plan is, they start to think that that is the only plan that there “should” be.  They cannot see or imagine that something else might be best.  As an extreme example of this behavior: I’ve had athletes forget to tell me that they can’t do workouts on a given day.  Instead of eliminating those workouts, athletes often try to double up or to cram the workouts in on the remaining days of the week, falsely thinking that they must get in all workouts that are on the schedule because all workouts are necessary, regardless of the fact that I didn’t have all of the relevant information at the time that I planned their training schedule.

But once again, this is not true.  In a situation like this, if I had known that an athlete couldn’t do a workout on a given day, the original schedule I wrote would have looked different than the one I delivered and that they saw.  The “best” training an athlete can do or the training that an athlete “should” be doing is the most appropriate training for an athlete at a given point in time based on the totality of circumstances going on in their life and in their training.  It is fluid, it can (and should!) change based on learned and/or new information.  

What are the Most Common Workout Modifications?

When things change and a modification to training is appropriate based on a new set of circumstances and a new set of information, there are many options for said modifications.  Here are some examples:

• Adjusting the duration of a workout
• Adjusting the number of intervals of a workout
• Adjusting the intensity of a workout
• Adjusting the premise of the workout (for instance, switching to Rating of Perceived Exertion (RPE) instead of using power, pace, or heart rate as the basis of the workout)
• Changing the workout type (for instance, swapping in a swim or bike for a run)
• Eliminating a workout or workouts

One of the most common things that athletes encounter due to unforeseen circumstances or happenings is that they end up being short on time to complete a workout.  When this happens, something is very often better than nothing.  Considering and then implementing one of the aforementioned modifications is a good place to start.  

When they are feeling pressed for time, many athletes will cut Warm-Ups, Cool-Downs, or “extras” such as strength training and stretching.  Eliminating strength training can be more costly over the long-term than athletes can often appreciate, so this isn’t a change I often recommend.  I also typically do not advise cutting Warm-Ups, Cool-Downs, or stretching since all of these elements set the stage for the “sexier” and more fun aspects of training (aka the Main Sets or the primary sport workouts).  While seemingly innocuous in a one-off situation, changes like this and failure to consistently engage in these supporting habits over time can snowball and (negatively) impact what you will be able to do in later stages of training.

Another common thing that athletes experience due to unforeseen circumstances is a high mental stress load.  As I’ve talked about so many times over the years: Stress is stress.  The body and mind knows when it is under stress.  But the body and the mind are absolutely horrible at distinguishing the source of that stress.  So regardless of whether stress is imposed on the body due to a hard day at work, a fight with a spouse, a difficult situation with one’s children, a lack of sleep, illness, or a workout, all the body understands is that it is experiencing stress.  When athletes are experiencing a high mental stress load, a common coping mechanism is to shut a lot of things down, including doing workouts.  While this may be an appropriate response, I have seen that adapting to this experience by modifying (not eliminating) workouts and training often results in better outcomes - both accutely and over the long-term - for the athlete.  Considering one of the aforementioned modifications is a great place to start for athletes experiencing a stressful situation or day.  The most common modification I recommend and deploy is to adjust the duration of a given workout, followed by a change in type of workout.

The Bottom Line

When unexpected things happen in life that impact your endurance sports training, take a breath.  It is okay.  There will always be things that pop up unexpectedly.  The best thing you can do is to cultivate and grow an adaptable mindset that enables you to roll with the punches instead of fighting them.  This will lead you to a higher chance of remaining consistent, reducing your chance of injury, having a calmer headspace, and reaching your goals over the long-term.