Staying consistent with training is easier when life is predictable. But amongst work deadlines, family demands and motivation dips, the key is flexibility, rather than perfection.
Smart adjustments to your running training when you're not able to give it your all, allow you to maintain sustainable progress and avoid increased stress and burn out.
How to Adjust Your Training When Life Gets Busy
You can modify your training load rather than stop entirely, depending on how you're feeling. When life gets in the way our Not Feeling 100% feature lets you adapt your plan as needed.
Go to Plan tab > Manage Plan > Adapt Your plan > Not feeling 100% > Add Adjustment and follow the prompts.
You can adapt your training by:
Reducing difficulty: keep the same runs, make hard sessions easier; long run is conversational.
Doing your long and easy runs only: remove speed sessions; long run is conversational.
Doing short easy runs only: swap everything for short, easy runs (distance by ability).
Why It’s Important to Adjust Your Training When Life Gets Busy
Busy periods often mean:
Less time to relax
Increased stress
Poor/reduced sleep
Lack of proper nutrition
All of which lead to an overall reduced recovery capacity.
While running can provide a great outlet after a stressful day, sometimes you just really don’t have time. Pushing through training during these moments can increase fatigue and your risk of complete burnout. Adjusting your plan keeps training (and real life) manageable.
When To Consider Adjusting Your Training
1. When Life and Work Commitments Take Over
If you can see early in the week or month that work or life commitments are starting to stack up, it’s worth reducing your training volume or shifting your harder sessions to days that feel more manageable.
Trying to force a tough tempo or interval workout on an already busy, draining day can feel uncomfortable, and you don’t want the resulting fatigue to knock your confidence – it happens to all of us!
A helpful tip for office workers trying to balance running and work: consider using a standing desk at the office or at home.
Standing periodically throughout the day can help reduce tightness in your back, neck, and shoulders. Set a reminder to alternate between sitting and standing so you can avoid carrying workday tension into your runs.
2. When Sleep Drops
If lots of commitments are leading to long days and you’re getting less than 6 hours of sleep, or considerably less than your usual amount, consider replacing your sessions with easy runs only.
Prioritising low-intensity running, mobility, or pure rest can be what your body really needs at these moments.
If you are lacking good quality sleep, trying a light mobility session in the evening such as yoga, pilates or a stretching routine can help your body relax and can promote relaxation and stress relief.
3. When Stress Levels Spike
Being overly busy can spike stress levels and lead to you feeling tense and overwhelmed. When stress levels spike your body also reacts with physical symptoms.
As well as feeling mentally drained, your heart rate may increase and lower energy levels can make your training feel a lot harder than it usually does. In these moments, stick to easy running or take a rest to avoid burn out.
High life stress + hard training = higher accumulated fatigue. When your body is under stress, whether it’s mental or physical, the recovery systems (immune system, muscle repair, hormonal balance) don’t distinguish where the stress came from, they just know they have more work to do!
So if life stress rises as a result of business, your capacity to handle a high training load decreases. Even if you’re mentally tough and motivated, sometimes it really is best to have a break.
What This Means For Your Training
When life gets busy, your running training shouldn’t add pressure, it should adapt.
The best ways to do this are by:
Reducing volume
Shifting harder sessions to calmer days
Focusing on easier runs
Don’t think of adapting your training as a setback. In the long term, prioritising recovery during a busy period helps you protect your progress and sets you up to come back stronger when things settle down.