Don't be so all-in - you need time off to recover or do life...

This really is something I see ALL the time.

You know the one. Monday hits, you're buzzing, you decide THIS is the week. Ten classes booked in. watching your food, hitting your steps You're going full send.

By Thursday you're knackered. By Saturday you're sore, tired, and quietly dreading your alarm. And by the following Tuesday you're not at class at all because your body (and your brain) has basically gone on strike and your apple is now a bar of galaxy, (and usually this comes with some demonising of yourself , how your unfit, weak, no willpower or whatever negativity.

Or then there is hitting every session for weeks, so much so you're not doing much life, that every 6 weeks or so you take a week or 2 off to recover, catch up on stuff. A cycle of training then taking big chunks off, regularly through the year.

Sound familiar? Yeah. Thought so.

Here's the thing nobody tells you

Going all in isn't actually commitment. It just looks like it for about five days or a month or 2.

Real commitment is boring. It's turning up twice a week, every week, for the next six months. It's the mundane, unremarkable, nothing to post-about consistency that actually changes how you look and feel. Not the one mega week/ month that leaves you flat out on the sofa for the next seven days eating your bodyweight in biscuits with a house that's not seen a hoover and 4000 tasks you've not done.

I'd genuinely rather you came to two classes a week for a year than five classes a week for a fortnight and then I don't see you again till January.

Why we do it anyway

I get it, I really do. It feels good to go hard. There's a bit of a buzz to being "all in". Classes are fun , our mates are there and its social. Racking up classes is great - But ONLY if your body can manage them and your life is still flowing outside.

Fitness is something we do to enhance life not to over take life.

So what does sustainable actually look like?

• Pick a number you can ACTUALLY keep up. Not the number that sounds impressive, or that your best mates doing. The sessions a week that you can realistically do most weeks, forever, beats five that you can only manage in short bursts.

• Build in the boring bits. Sleep, food, a rest day that's actually a rest day. Recovery isn't the bit before the "real" work, it IS the work.

• Expect the wobbly weeks. Life happens. One quiet week doesn't undo anything, and it's not a reason to go extra hard the week after to "make up for it." Its also not a reason to sack everything off.. play around with something new so you're still moving if need be.

• Celebrate the mundane stuff. Still turning up in November, or when your mates left? That's the bit that actually matters. That's the bit worth being proud of.

  
  

The honest truth

Fitness isn't a sprint you win and then you're done. It's just... a thing you do. Forever, ideally.

So it needs to fit into an actual life, one with work, kids, dodgy sleep, birthdays, and the chaos of life.

You don't need to be all in. You need to be consistently, sustainably, boringly in. Week after week. That's it. That's the secret 😉

I'd rather see you two times a week for life than every day for 3 months then nothing.

Id rather see you twice a week and see you really going for it, recovered and full of energy that 6 classes chugging through, dragging your body down.

Allie x