Goals take time and one key problem is people do not allow enough time to achieve or work towards their goals. If I said in 2012 when I couldn’t swim and set a goal for that year to win the European Aquathlon Championships in my age group I would of just got injured and given up; so goals take years and good planning. Runners are the worst as they always tend to do too much too soon and cram all their training in a short time-frame. One of the common things I see with people is that they over train; many people believe they need to train every day because if they don’t they will lose their fitness. That’s not the case – rest is key in your training program and to improve your body needs to recover and rebuild to get stronger. I am not saying weekly rest periods, I am going along the lines of at least a day or two of full rest each week. A good training program will have a recovery structure in place and this is also a common mistake people make. People training all year round don’t get enough recovery weeks in or even a rest from training to rebuild physically and mentally. In my training I have one day rest a week at least, that means no training at all. When I have a big race coming up I taper the weeks leading to the race. At the end of each season I have 2 weeks off training and slowly come back.  Injuries can be hard on you and they are mentally tough as you just want the injury to get better and carry on with what you love doing. Sometimes a few days rest does the trick and does nothing to your fitness, even a week off helps and again doesn’t really affect your fitness levels. I have had a week off in the past with injuries and gone on to PB in a race – the key is to listen to your body. After a week of no training your fitness starts to drops and if you have two weeks off you lose a lot of your fitness. However the common mistake is people get injured and they jump straight back into their training instead of building it back up. Many people do not stretch. Stretching keeps muscles flexible. We need that flexibility to maintain a range of motion in the joints. Without it, the muscles shorten and become tight and will cause injuries. I stretch every morning when I wake up, after exercise and every evening before I go to sleep. This should be an important factor in your training and daily activities.  Over training – most people over train and I did this in the past. People get fixed on times and having to run a certain pace and I see it all the time things like “ bad run aborted today” , “pace went well for the first few miles then struggled and dropped off” etc. Sound familiar? That’s a sign of over training – a bad run can’t keep happening every day. I always go by hard days hard and easy days easy. My hard days are hard and that’s only twice a week with the easy days taking up four days of my training. For example, people run their long easy runs too hard – long runs have a purpose to make you more efficient but you need to run slow. So I run nearly two minutes slower per mile then my 5k pace, legs should feel fresh the following day and in theory should be therefore able to train hard the following day. It does amaze me the amount of people I tell as a coach you are running to fast in your long runs and they don’t believe me and get injured. Doing the slow runs too fast is very common amongst runners as they believe that running faster will make you go faster. That is the case for speed sessions but if you are running fast all the time the body breaks down and even running at a moderate pace is wrong and hinders your progress. The problem is that running slow isn’t natural for people, I run slow a lot and you can read my old blog about running slow and heart rate running HERE  Doing training because it’s on the plan when you’re not feeling great or unwell is not a good sign. You need to listen to your body and be flexible with training and prepare to adjust, don’t feel like you have to do it. I have been out for runs where I haven’t felt great so I have stopped, cut short or even run at a slower pace. An unplanned run won’t make much difference to your fitness. Just be prepared to change things round as many things can get in the way with training in daily life. Not looking at mistakes or changing training up is a common mistake. Lots of people do the same training they did the following year for and expect a PB. For example because you followed a marathon plan one year and done well with it, it doesn’t necessary mean you will improve this time round. The body gets used to your training and if you don’t change it around and push yourself you will plateau and perhaps even go backwards. Copying what others do and trying to do what they do will likely not work for you – what works for them may not necessary work work for you. So it’s important to change your training up so it suits you and build into it.  I hope this has helped, these are some common mistakes people make in training, I have done them in the past and it’s important to assess and change your training up regularly. Just because it worked before doesn’t mean it will work again. About the Author
Our guest author this week is Yiannis Christodoulou. Here's a little more about Yiannis...
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