Are you feeling beat up? Feel like you might have an injury coming on?
A lot of us try to push through these things. We don’t want to lose fitness, we don’t want to lose ground on our competitors. The problem is we try to push through instead of taking a day or two off early, then we end up needing weeks off later.
Most of us know the difference between normal aches of training hard and the pains that indicate a potential injury. When you feel that potential injury, if it doesn’t get better with some combination of reduced training and self care within a few days to a week, it’s time to get serious.
I’m always giving the runners I coach this reminder. You can take a few days off now for something that doesn’t feel right or you can let it get worse and take weeks or even months off later.
The trade off is pretty simple. I plan to share more next week on what you lose when you need to step away from training but the short story should be pretty obvious. If you wait and have to take more time away, you lose more and need more time to get it back.
So, if something doesn’t feel right, take the time off now. If it’s just a little ache from a hard workout, you can probably train through but, if it seems like a potential problem, better safe than sorry.