Balance

Balance

ˈbaləns/

noun

noun: balance;

1. 1. an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.
2. 2. a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

verb

1. 1. keep or put (something) in a steady position so that it does not fall.
2. 2. offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another.

 

“What we should all be striving for instead of perfection is balance.” Jacqueline Stone

 

I know that most of us have heard, over and over about having balance in our lives. In sport, it’s important to have balance, not just so you can get through training, but so that you can have an enjoyable life outside of training. It’s easy to get caught up with training while neglecting other areas of your life. But, it’s also easy to get so focused on responsibilities, that you neglect your training.

I can’t stress how important it is to have balance in your life, so everyone around you still enjoys your company while you are training. Aside from being tolerated by your friends and family, it is important to have balance within your training. Many triathletes do not balance out their training, and they focus too much on one or two portions of the sport. Balance in training and recovery is very important. A lot of times when people talk about balance in training they are talking about swim, bike and run, but they forget about transition training, rest, sleep, nutrition and strength training.

When you are building your plan, your coach is building your plan, take the time to see if there is time built in for these other important areas. If you are doing all this training to get faster, and you have slow transitions, or you bonk due to the lack of nutrition, you have wasted all that hard work, because of the lack of balance in your training.

I recently had a talk with a college swim coach, about recovery. He was concerned about the lack of focus on sleep and recovery. A lot of athletes, and some coaches often do not allow for easy days, and they underestimate the importance of a good night’s sleep. This leads to a failure to complete the prescribed hard workouts.  If you’re going to build a lot of hard training days, you need to build the correct amount of recovery, easy days, and sleep. We also chatted about nutrition. He finds that it is a challenge to get college athletes to focus on eating the food that they need to fuel their bodies for the level of training they are doing. I assured him that I understood, and it is not just college kids who struggle with this. It is hard for everyone to make good choices when they see their friends eating pizza, drinking beer, and enjoying dessert. Of course, balance is key with nutrition, as well. On its own, nutrition could be the topic of another post.