As an athlete I was always trying to compete as much as possible. Always asking my coach
"can I race this weekend and next weekend, oh and by the way can I skip this practice and do a race mid week too ? ".
Of course my coach would roll her eyes and say "Belinda No, it's not within the periodization plan and you'll burn out, or get injured and you wont peak when we need you to."
She was no fool. She knew what I was up to.
My response upon hearing this would be to sulk or grumble. Maybe throw my water bottle. In my youth I was not the easiest athlete to work with. No surprise there really.
So why is it you think I wanted to race every weekend ? The answer is because it was easier !
When you train correctly as an athlete and prepare for competition the way a great coach should prepare you by training in the right heart rate zones at every practice to achieve optimal performance, competition becomes something of a pleasure. A joy. Almost a relief from the brutal execution and hardship you go through during practice to increase your ability to tolerate intensity to achieve a new level of performance.
If you are not doing this both physically and mentally every time you turn up to practice ( on the hard days that is, recovery and aerobic are meant to be just that) then how on earth do you expect to move your performance forward. You can not wait for that to just happen on game day or competition day.
All the work, all the thinking, all the focus , must be completed before the event so when you arrive there your body performs almost on auto pilot because it has experienced before in. practice (possibly harder) and because of this it is so much more enjoyable.
This is why I only wanted to race and not train or practice. The training was brutal, the racing was pleasure.
Get the work done first, grind, fine tune the process, then let the magic happen !
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