The Rut Principle
raptitude.com
raptitude.com
Nope, it's common advice not to try and make up missed runs or miles.
This is actually one of the ways people get into ruts: they fall behind their plan a little and "need" to catch up. But needing to catch up makes them overwhelmed, so they actually fall behind a little more, leading to a downward spiral.
Fitness, like weight-loss and hobbies and other things, is very long-term. Years or decades long-term. So the short term - days weeks, even a month - barely matters. Yes, you can literally spend an entire month not exercising and you'll barely lose any fitness (like maybe a month's worth, doesn't mean you should).
Working out is a routine. A rut is also a routine of not working out. The key to not falling into a rut is to maintain the routine of working out. Even when you're not working out, whether because of laziness or injury or something else, you can still maintain the routine. For example, you can just do stretching or go for a small run - anything which convinces your mind you're still in the routine of working out. And if you do find yourself falling off of the routine, get back into it, not by doing a huge workout or anything, but just start working out again as if you never took time off. Not meaning to belittle anyone or sound rude here, getting back into a routine is hard - but in a way it's also not hard, because you put in the same amount of physical effort the day you're back into the routine, as the next day and every other day and so on.
If you approach every day with the mentality "I plan to workout today", you don't get into ruts. Because it doesn't matter whether you skipped yesterday or the last week or you're on a 500-day streak, you planning to work out today is the same.
This is the crux to doing and learning anything. Just a little bit of practice everyday, don't get competitive, don't pressure yourself and adjust to your lifestyle. Be fully engaged in the doing and don't allow the mind to wander. You will automatically develop a beneficial routine.
A bit of a tangent, but as I've gotten into my 30's it's been interesting to observe how easy it is to "reactivate" a routine. For instance, at various points in my life I've been quite in to going to the gym, bouldering and biking. During pandemic I took some time off of almost everything, and it took a little mental effort to motivate myself to go back to the gym, but the first time setting foot inside my body already knew what to do, and two days later I found myself packing my gym bag almost automatically. And now that it's summer after the first bike ride, I find myself getting on the bike almost automatically after work is finished every time the weather is right.
* When I'm in a rut, one of the things that keeps me in the rut longer is trying to force my way out of it. The fastest way out of a rut is to embrace it and forgive myself for being in it. Knowing this and being able to do it are apparently two really different things, because I have spent a long time trying to apply this knowledge and I'm still not there yet.
* When I genuinely enjoy doing something, I never have to put effort into avoiding falling into a rut.
* So, falling into a proper rut usually means that something is wrong. I stopped enjoying it even though I didn't want to. Maybe I'm tired, maybe I'm really stressed out, maybe I just need to do something else for a little while.
* I'm often unaware or unwilling to accept that something is wrong, so the battle against my own nature begins. All of my natural coping mechanisms for dealing with this are wrong.
* A lot of ruts are caused by chasing a long-term, external goal, for longer than I really want to achieve that goal. Running a half marathon, while not my thing, is a great example; it's something you train up for by running a lot. If I were running because I enjoyed running, then one day I could probably do a half-marathon and I would probably mostly enjoy that too. But if I were to run because I wanted to do a half-marathon, then one day I would not enjoy the running and that's when the opportunity for a rut happens. (While not a runner, I have been an on-and-off again long-distance hiker and peak bagger; when I just went out for fun, I did it a lot and was in great shape. When I decided I should train up to bag all of California's fourteeners, it stopped being fun and I stopped doing it.)
* Most highly successful people, whether they're athletes or developers or just my more accomplished friends, have gotten there by doing something they enjoy. Sure, they've had challenges, but overall they just did the thing they wanted to do, and found success at it. I cannot be as successful as them at their thing, because I don't enjoy their thing the way they do. I'm not ever going to be Peter Croft or take-your-pick-of-role-model-of-the-day, but if I could find my thing, then I might get to be my better me.
I could very well know, on an intellectual level, that I will enjoy doing something, because I enjoyed it plenty of times in the past, yet somehow not "get" it until I physically start doing the activity. It's as if my "body" needs to be reminded. Add to this the concept of activation energy, and not having a well established plan, and I can spend my day doing things that are both "bad for me" and not even particularly enjoyable.
When you set the date for getting back on the horse do it no matter what. But give yourself permission to do the bare minimum and suck at it.
Ruts are largely fear based.
It isn't lapsing for a week if you were in a rut in the lead up.
Staying in that rut isn't a healthy way to live either. The alternative is to get out of the rut. Blaming fear as a roadblock is a separate issue, entirely.
I find it much harder to do that during normal time because there are pressures in every direction.
Then set a date after vacation and get back on the horse no questions asked
More specifically, if possible continue your routine on vacation. Your routine is what you do every day.
I feel enlightened reading this. Will definitely keep this in mind as a handy reminder to help me understand my occasional ruts and remember the solution.
Thanks for the motivation :)
As for myself, training for a half-marathon certainly isn't something enjoyable and certainly not something I'd have high motivation to do. Even if something got me started down that path, it wouldn't take much opposition to stop. And, I certainly wouldn't do it more than once.
If the task that were something inherently enjoyable, but now you didn't want to do it, that would be more like a "rut".
But exercising consistently is extremely hard to start doing for many, many people.
And for good cause. You're expending energy in a way that doesn't aid short-term survival. You're designed not to do this.
It requires a hard override of instinct from the prefrontal cortex and related executive function areas over your autopilot brain. That makes it, almost by definition, really hard to do even if you want it really bad.
No, wait. I'm going to make it my home page.
You already consciously committed to not wanting to do the second half, and from there it's easy to slip into not wanting to do the first half either.
The marathon stands alone as the iconic event; it is not defined as a truncated ultramarathon.
While the half marathon (like any distance) is a serious sport at the competitive level, to the ordinary recreational runner, it just represents an easier version of the marathon.
People of all kinds decide to try the marathon for all sorts of reasons, and for many people, the goal is simply completing. That goal is much easier when the distance is cut in half.
Many a recreational runner can knock off 21 km over an extended lunch break, and then shower and get back to work like nothing happened.
There's always something harder or more prestigious to do -- for many people a half marathon is enough of an accomplishment that they don't feel the need to progress, in the same way that many feel that many think a marathon is enough and they don't need to run an ultra.