Training When Work Is at Its Worst

The deadline moved, you are behind, you are answering emails at ten at night. An hour in a gym seems a luxury.

Do not give that hour up.

Training will not fix the deadline. But the thing making the week unbearable is rarely the work itself — it is that the stress has nowhere to go. Your body has mobilised for a threat it cannot fight or run from, and it stays mobilised. Training gives that an outlet and an end point, which is why people walk out of a session with a different relationship to their stress.

Now, let's be clear, a bad week at work is not the week for a personal best. Your capacity to recover is already spent on something else, and stacking a maximal session on top leaves you flatter than you arrived. This year for me has been incredibly tough and that hasn't meant missing sessions. But it has definitely meant dialling down the efforts to be able to cope not only physically, but also emotionally with the challenge.

So train, but take the session as programmed at an intensity you can finish, and be kind to yourself. You don't need to be a hero. You turn up, the hour is decided for you, and coaches here are emotionally intelligent enough to know when to push you and when to just keep you moving.

Two practical things.

One session a fortnight is better than zero. On your worst week aim to hold an hour. Just keeping the habit of training is incredibly valuable and makes coming back much easier.

And do not use the session to think. The reason an hour of training resets anything is that for most of it you cannot hold a work thought and a barbell at the same time.

Protect sleep over the session. A bad week costs you sleep first, and someone running on five hours gets less out of an hour of training and takes longer to recover from it. If something has to give at eleven at night, give it the email rather than the bedtime.

Some weeks you will not get there at all. A walk at lunchtime and a decent bedtime will do more for a brutal week than a session you resent.

One thing I will always say. If this was your loved one, would you rather they protect their health or their career? You are that loved one. Prioritise what you need to be happy and healthy.

If work is the reason you have never started, that is the most common reason we hear and a solvable one. Free, no-obligation fifteen-minute call with Jeremy or Beth. crossfitchiltern.com.