How to deal with a slump

Posted Ella Villas Articles

Have you ever felt really good, and come of a series of productive workouts, and then you wake up one day and everything is just… off?

Like your body is creaky and tight and you feel crappy all the way down to your bones?

I had one of these yesterday. Ended up doing a short jog on the beach and enjoyed the evening sunshine.

These can easily throw people off their training game. It can become setback… if you let it.

Here’s another way to look at these kinds of days: they’re a gift.

It may be hard to convince yourself of this when they happen. But, just like getting a cold, or having an injury, the “slump” days are also your body telling you something. That something is often, “it’s time to slow down” or “stop and smell the roses”.

These are the days to have zero expectations. Continue on, get to the pool, but give yourself permission to wear fins, or even grab a kick board and do some relaxed kicking that day, without being goal-focused.

In Tri Swim Success, we have a very specific, step-by-step process of getting your freestyle ready for your next triathlon. And it’s great to see our athletes sticking with the program and getting things done, accomplishing goals and taking minutes off their old race PRs.

But all of them also have the slump days. They just deal with it in stride, and treat these days as a reason to dial it down a bit- instead of getting frustrated and angry with themselves.

Take the slumps as a gift. Even if they last a few days, you will likely be back even better than before, if you can get back to the concept of self acceptance.

Accept your current state, fully. Accept your level of health, fitness, and speed. Accept yourself down to your core, even the things you can’t stand.

The idea is, you must accept first, then you can move forward to your goals.

This is literally the “path of least resistance”, even though, it may seem hard to do at first.

To get on the path to overcoming your struggles in freestyle and moving faster and more fluidly through the water, join Tri Swim Success today:

Tri Swim Success Step-By-Step Online Program

Befriend the water!