January Check-In: What’s Working, What’s Hard, and What I’m Adjusting

I mentioned earlier that I start every year (and most major milestones) with a review process, and while I might not do this every month, I thought it would be good for my personal accountability to share how January went for me and what shifts I will make in February.

Overall I feel like January went very well for me, but there are a couple items that need some continued attention.  One aspect I feel the least happy about is how I'm handling the "checking out" during the day - I still feel like this happens a bit too frequently for longer periods then I'd like.  But I feel like my approach of slowly reducing the durations will help in the long term as I know SOME of those checkout times are necessary as they provide a mental break.  The other aspect I'll put in this bucket is protecting my time, but I'm not sure I've really had enough opportunities to evaluate how successful I've been with this, so it will continue to be an area of awareness for me to monitor.

Quite a few things have gone well for me this month and I feel like there's some good momentum starting to help pull me forward.  Two that I definitely feel have positive impacts and are helping in multiple ways are a better adherence to a strength training plan and getting an additional 15 minutes of sleep on average per night.  Neither of these are monumental shifts, but helping build the foundation for a strong year as I'm noticing it in my training on my way back from injury.  Speaking of, I also had a great day at the Houston Marathon (deciding to switch to the half marathon was the right choice) and that confidence has allowed me to shift my race goals a little bit and be more aggressive targeting my ambitious performance targets.

I feel like I've built up some pretty good momentum, so for the most part I want to continue what I have been doing as we roll into February, but I do have a couple things I'm going to layer in. I want to build on my success with strength training in how I shifted that mentally and apply that same "trick" to some of the "un-fun" parts of running a business. There are a handful of items that I have been putting off for way too long, and I need to get them resolved. So I'm putting the same criteria there - I need to get them at least started before I allow myself to start any new "fun" task. I know, again that sounds a little vague but hopefully you can relate to the concept and the idea here is to keep myself accountable. The other aspect that is continuing to evolve is my actual business scope, and I've announced some of that already but that will continue to evolve over this next month. I'm very excited about the quality of service this will allow me to provide, but there's also significant work to be done to make sure I have everything in place to ensure not only the success but a smooth process for my clients.

January isn’t about proving anything — it’s about paying attention.

What’s working deserves reinforcement. What’s hard deserves adjustment, not judgment.

Progress comes from reflection followed by action — again and again.

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How to Measure Progress (Even When the Scale or Stopwatch Won’t Budge)

Iron sharpens through challenge — not repetition.

Plateaus aren’t roadblocks. They’re invitations to refine your approach, dial in your habits, and train with intention.

Let’s break down how to progress with purpose.

Progress is one of the key metrics we all pay attention to as we train, and we primarily focus on two types of progress - quantitative and qualitative. However, I will admit, for myself and many of my clients, the fixation on the quantitative (numbers/metrics) can be overpowering and dominate the thought process. That's not to say focusing on numbers is a bad thing, for the most part they can be a great metric as they're usually very cut and dry. You either hit that metric/goal or you don't. However, these only tell part of the story and shouldn't be used as the sole metric for gauging progress. You'll want to pair those metrics with some qualitative guides to help you understand HOW you're hitting those numbers. For example, if one of the metrics you're tracking is how much weight you're squatting, it is very easy to keep track of how much weight you load onto the bar (or hold in your hands, or how many body weight squats you're doing). But you'll also want to keep track of qualitative things like how easy/hard those reps feel, how you recover from that workout, how is your range of motions (think squat depth) is improving, and the list goes on from there. Pairing the numbers with the feel gives you a more complete understanding of how you're progressing with your squats, in this example, and a better grasp of when you might actually be hitting a plateau. Many consider plateaus when just the numbers stall, but if you're able to do the same weight but it feels easier, that's not a hard plateau, you're most likely very close to being able to increase the weight.

There are many reasons why you might be hitting an actual plateau where not only are the numbers not moving, but the workouts don't feel any different and they mainly will fall into 3 types:

1. Too much training or not enough fueling - these essentially get to the same problem, too much training load that the body can't properly recover from and as such never adapts.

2. Too little training which doesn't challenge the body enough such that it needs to adapt.

3. The wrong kind of training, an extreme example of this would be doing lots of speed work during your marathon training

So what does it look like to pull out of a plateau, it first starts with understanding IF you're actually in one and then figuring out which of the above three buckets your training falls into. Some of the solutions are simpler to figure out, for example an over training imbalance can be helped with either adding in a de-load week or an increase of calories. Starting with that honest assessment of where you currently are not only with training, but fueling and your other stressors will help narrow down the challenges to work to adjust. My recommendation would be to pick one aspect and make a small change to see if you notice things moving in the right direction, then lean in further. As an example, if you feel your fueling may be off, look to add a small snack, or slightly larger meals, to add around 100-300 calories a day for a week, and see how that impacts not only your training but how you recover and feel. Another option if you're feeling truly stuck, and assuming you don't have a calendar restriction (like a race in 3 weeks), would be to pivot to something completely different for a few weeks. This will provide a radically different stimulus and force your body to respond and adapt.

Sometimes it can be hard to be objective about progress, and it helps to have someone else to observe and discuss your current training. While this is the exact purpose of having a coach or trainer, you can also look to other training partners, friends, relatives, etc to get some feedback on not only the training but how they view your recovery and mentality. This outside viewpoint may be the missing piece in helping crack the plateau challenge.

Plateaus aren’t a dead end — they’re a sign to adjust.

Progress comes from intention, not intensity.

Change the stimulus, fuel well, recover well, and track your trends — and your progress will keep moving forward.

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