One Life, One Training Plan
I’ve talked about the importance of pursuing sustainable life goals in many different areas. I’ve also talked about the multidiscipline challenge I’m taking on this year.
At this time of year, many people will be starting out with new training plans. So I wanted to take the chance to bring all these things together to talk about the importance of having a single training plan that takes in every aspect of your goals. This builds on what I’ve said about periodised training.
It’s really easy to find fitness programmes online. It’s harder but still possible to find drills and schedules for improving your memory. And of course it’s really easy to find eating plans.
And each of these can be great if they abide by the golden rule — is this something you can sustain for the rest of your life?
The problem is that a fitness programme might be sustainable in itself. Or a plan for writing a book. Or a weight loss and then maintenance plan. But this ignores the fact that we are complex beings with complex lives that have more than one element to them! So while you may be able to stick with these things separately, add them together in the context of a single life and you may soon find you need 28 hours a day and god tier willpower. And that’s a recipe for not sticking.
So I wanted to share my integrated schedule at the moment to show you what it looks like.
There are some key underlying principles. It’s more important to understand these than to do what I’m doing, of course, and then figure out how they apply to you.
- If you want a balanced life, you will need to dedicate less time to each part of that life than a training plan devoted to just that one thing would tell you.
- To avoid injury and burnout, split your training into blocks, and in each block maintain everything you do but specialise on only one thing at a time, and rotate what it is you’re focusing in on.
- That last principle applies within each area. It also applies across areas. One block, you might focus your physical training on flexibility, but you might at a more general be really working on your language learning skills.
- Measure the progress of trends not workout to workout. Anything shorter and you will burn out.
- That last point is fine, because this is about the rest of your life. So the fact that progress might be slower than your peers who are just focusing on one thing is absolutely not a problem. As is always a good rule, don’t look at the progress you’ve made in 10 weeks, look at where you all are in 10 years.
- Compounding doesn’t just apply to money, it applies to training progress. This goes with the life-long approach. You may seem like you’re making very slow progress with your endurance, or your coding, or saving, or weightlifting individually. But as you slowly improve each, the different types of training, and the habits you form to accomplish them, will start to feed each other and the benefits will compound.
My spouse and I have signed up for an endurance challenge in January. We’re doing a virtual hike of the Pennine Way, 432 kilometres or 268 miles (in the spirit of it, this will be mileage on top of what I get just doing day to day stuff). So my focus is absolutely on endurance for this month’s block. But the weekly plan below shows how I fit that in to an integrated plan for the week so that I can sustain not just the separate parts of the plan but the overall progress.
Eating. This is very simplified in order to be sustainable. I track 2 things only — calories, so that now I’m at my ideal weight I can maintain it; and protein (about 0.8–1 gram per pound of bodyweight) so I can slowly build muscle while maintaining weight. I eat around 2500–2600 calories a day over 3 meals (with an extra 300 or so on long walks). I focus on eating lots of low calorie dense foods like veg and salad, and low fat protein, so I am always full. I tend to get as many carbs as possible from potatoes because they have a low calorie density but I’m not fussy. I’ve been doing this for 18 months now. Because I’m never hungry I don’t find it hard to stick to.
In terms of supplements, all I use are protein powder (I like Decathlon’s cookies and cream isolated whey protein), which I mix with my porridge; and a fish oil that has lots of DHA and EPA.
Monday — memory drills; reading up on the history of memory; 1000 words writing; mobility and flexibility
Tuesday — weights (upper body, compound movements — based on bench, barbell rows, military press. 5–8 sets for each of chest, back, shoulders); 2.5 km run at lactate threshold
Wednesday —squats and high intensity fitness workout (focusing on battle ropes, heavy bag, kettlebells — avoiding mashing my legs);15km walk; speed cubing
Thursday — mobility and flexibility; 15km walk; memory drills; 1000 words writing
Friday — weights (upper body, compound movements — based on bench, barbell rows, military press. 5–8 sets for each of chest, back, shoulders); reading on the history of memory; speed cubing
Saturday — 30km walk; reflecting on the past week so that I can make tweaks for the following week; writing blog and newsletter materials for the following week
Sunday — 30 km walk; detailed planning for the following week and setting up my journal for the week to come; 1000 words writing
Most of the sessions are short and intense — weights sessions will last around 30 minutes; fitness 20–30; memory sessions and cubing 30 minutes. 1000 words of writing takes me an hour including planning time. That means weekends aside I will spend 2–4 hours a day actively training at most, split between before and after work and lunch hour.
Reading takes as long as I have available and am able to focus, and a reading session will included notetaking and assimilation so that much of the research for my writing is already in accessible format for me.
In addition, I try to spend 10–15 minutes a day on what I guess you might call some kind of meditation, split between breathing exercises and mindset refocusing.
I use a time blocking method to schedule these in, and build them around my work and home life. I also time block within my working day. Importantly, because — again — this is all part of a single life that has to work as a whole, I use the same journal to block and plan my working life and home life as these training sessions. That’s not just important to me to make sure the jigsaw fits together. It’s also vital because my ADHD means if I don’t see everything in the same place I don’t stand a chance!
Obviously, this is just me, and is based on 5 decades (still getting used to saying that!) of experience of the way my brain and body work (and have often failed to work!). I won’t say your mileage may vary — it will vary. Just as mine has varied from the thousands of pieces like this I have read. But pretty much every one of them has provided me something that I could use as a jumping off point to take something of value for application to my life, however many alterations it went through along the way.
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