Episode 31: Fighting Fatigue - When to Push Through or Back Off

Should you toughen up and push through your training, or should you be smart and back off? Matt explores the concept of fatigue in today's podcast.

Fatigue is not a negative word. In fact, it's a part of growth and you should lean into it. It is earned from hard work and the adaptions can be positive, but you must make smart decisions in managing your fatigue. 

Context is everything when you're talking about this vital topic. There's a big difference between expected and anticipated fatigue (in a hard session or in a heavy block close to a race) and unanticipated fatigue (not responding to several light days, poor performance over several training weeks, persistent injury, and illness, etc.).

In today's episode, Matt takes a deep dive on both objective and subjective markers of fatigue. How do you know if what you're feeling is normal or not? A lot of it depends on where you are at in your season; what lens you are looking through.

He describes how to ease back into a regular training schedule after a few days of rest and even goes through multiple case studies to illustrate when it's appropriate to back off or push through a tough session.

Your training can’t be just checking the box of training sessions. Success comes with the decisions you make along the way and this episode will help you create a framework of decisions around your fatigue accumulation.