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Self-Care: Refilling the Cup...

Saturday, 01 April 2017 23:10

By Deanna Pomfret (teamusa.org)

My friend called me one morning to confirm that we were meeting up for a run. She’s the mother of three children who were giving her a hard time that day. She said “It’s not even 9 a.m. and my patience cup is empty.” We went for our run and afterward she said, “OK, it’s full again.”

If you put your ability to adapt to training into a cup, it would be similar to my friend’s patience cup. Stress is stress. Stress happens for many reasons like when we get sick, deal with difficult people, train and race. Our brain and body go through a chemical hormonal process that helps maintain health and adaptation to both physical and mental stress....

This stress response helps us adapt to training stressors, which are good because they challenge our current ability and help us grow. However with too much challenge and not enough recovery, we don’t grow. Sometimes people get burnt out or injured or have stale performances. Unfortunately there is only so much we can handle when it comes to stress and we need to recover so our cup can be refilled.

The cool thing is that your training and adaptation cup doesn’t ever have to be empty if you make good choices. Keeping strong is more than showing up for a hard workout or training for a triathlon or marathon. It’s more than going out there and pushing hard or going long. The harder we push, the more we challenge ourselves, the higher our risk of injury or burnout. You can get faster or go longer without beating yourself up and risking injury which disrupts your training and gets in the way of growth.  READ MORE