Sports Psychology for Ultra Endurance Athletes - Motivation to Train

In order to be fit for ultra endurance events you need to be able to train frequently (and sensibly) over a long period of time. The longer the event the longer it will take you to get fit. Staying motivated can be tough, especially if you are not making the progress you would like. Here are some tips to help you keep getting out.

Why are you training?

A key to being motivated is to tap in to what motivates you not just on the surface but on a deep level. The event goals we have often tap into deeper goals that help define us as a person. It's these deeper goals that are often key drivers to behaviour, so being clear about them can be a great driving force.

A good way to think about this is to think about you goals in the following way:

1. The Goal: I want to complete x event (in x amount of time).
2. The Deeper Goal: I want to prove to myself that I can do this
3. The Deeper Deeper Goal: I have never felt confident or sporty; completing this would help me feel more confident in my ability as a cyclist/runner.

Being clear about all these goals and having them somewhere as a reminder can really help you stay motivated and focussed on the why for you.

Chunk Down

Ultra endurance events in particular are big goals and can feel over-whelming. It can be a good idea to 'chunk down' and develop some stepping stones or mini-goals that feel more achievable.

For example someone wanting to run a 50km (30 miles) event might break it down as follows into increments of 5km (3 miles), so they start with just completing 5km and build up gradually to 50km. Someone wanting to cycle 100km (60 miles) might it down into increments of 16km (10miles).

Process Goals

Process goals are 'things to do' to help you reach your mini-goals; they help develop good routines and training patterns. Examples might be:

• Train each Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday
• Train before work on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for up to an hour
• Train on Saturday for at least 2 hours
• Do one long endurance session each month to push the distance.

Routines

Developing training routines reduces the amount of thought you have to put into getting out the door/on the trainer. It also reduces the likelihood of being sabotaged by other things if you choose a time to train that is usually free from disturbance.

Having a think about a routine that works for you, and fits into your current life commitment, trying it out and then adapting it until it is perfect is a good way to make sure you keep up training frequency.

It is surprising how, even a small amount of training frequently over time can build good fitness, far better than sporadic training for hours at a time followed by periods of inactivity.

Make it Social

If you are a social person, making your training a social event can really help your motivation. It also makes you accountable, as you won't want to let down your training pals.

Social training is a great way to keep your easy sessions easy; if you are chatting as you go along you are going at an easy enough pace. Equally for harder sessions some people find they can push much harder if they are training with others than they might if they were training alone.

At Endurance Bike and Run we have coffee rides on zwift on Tuesday and Fridays so clients have a couple of days per week where they can have a social ride.

Attitude to Training

Changing how you view training can make a big difference to how motivated you are to complete it. If you see it as 'another task' you 'have to do' your motivation is likely to be far lower than if you see it as 'your treat' and the time of day that you can have completely for yourself.

It can be good to keep training fun so that it is something exciting that you look forward to. In my experience athletes who are having fun train harder and get more out of their sessions. Going on your favourite routes, listening to music as you train, going somewhere in nature or even making it into a game using an app can all help keep training fun (e.g. Zombies, Run).

Take Regular Easy Days and Recover Weeks

It's very hard to be motivated when you are tired and a significant drop in motivation could be a sign that you are over-doing it.

A good way to stay motivated is to stay fresh and ready to train by taking regular easy days (at least one or two in each seven day period) and regular recovery weeks (every third or fourth week). This will help your body adapt to the training stimulus as well as keep you motivated.

Dealing with Setbacks

It can be easy to lose motivation when we get setbacks in training - maybe we didn't quite make all our process goals or we missed a mini-goal target.

Setbacks happen in all aspects of life and being flexible, reassessing and starting from where we are now rather than where we think we ought to be helps us to stay on track even if the goalposts have moved.

Setbacks can be very upsetting, it can be helpful so see them as an opportunity to learn adjust our goals a bit to match our current fitness levels.

Having an objective person to help us deal with training setbacks so we can reassess can be helpful. If you think you would benefit from some guidance from a professional coach you can book a free 20 minute consultation with no commitment to see how we can help you.