A strategy to enjoy summer and hit your performance goals.
The lively energy of the summer season often rubs off on your lifestyle: restorative, cozy vacations are replaced with active outdoor getaways, and calm conversations over wine are swapped with loud late-night gatherings. It’s tempting to substitute your reliable workouts with intensive training for a new, demanding race, too.
It’s the time to push your limits — but it may not be the moment to go full-throttle. Instead, utilize the power of small goals.
Say you’re feeling particularly ambitious and decide to sign up for your first marathon, taking place in September. You have nearly three months to build up your endurance, practice your fueling strategy, and fortify your body with strength training — that’s plenty of time, right? At face value, maybe. But once your weekends fill up with weddings and kids’ activities, evenings with al fresco dinners, mornings with yard work and household chores, plus full weeks of vacation, you might not be able to spare the two-plus hours for long, zone two runs regularly.
“If you start off big and you try to work toward that goal, people tend to get into this rhythm where they're consistent for a week or two, and then they actually fall off because that goal is a little bit too lofty,” Candice Williams, Ph.D., a licensed mental health counselor previously shared with Equinox+.
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Redirect your energy toward smaller-scale, yet just as gratifying challenges. Can you increase the time spent on your feet each day, extending your runs another 10 minutes and adding a pre-breakfast walk to your routine? Can you compete in a 5K at different vacation spots each month, attempting to shave a few seconds off your finish time each go-around? Can you do your usual three-mile runs on an uphill trail rather than a treadmill — and still maintain your pace?
Then, practice self-discipline — without forgoing self-compassion. The former is what drives you to take the steps necessary to achieve your goal, like waking up at the crack of dawn to jog or driving 20 minutes to a trail instead of hitting the pavement outside your house. It’s the motivation that allows you to experience growth and self-improvement, mentally and physically.
Self-compassion, however, is what keeps you on track when the going gets tough. Give yourself a bit of grace when your training is taking up more brain space than usual — and those sessions are causing more stress than pleasure. “For the individual to sit back and actually think, ‘I embarked on this as something challenging but also something rewarding and fun, and it's no longer there’ — I feel like that's a huge sign [you need more compassion],” Lennie Waite, Ph.D., C.M.P.C., a sport psychology consultant and former Olympic athlete based in Houston, previously told Equinox+. “Unless your job is your sport, then there should be an element of enjoyment and fun in it. That should be the core driver.”
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Check in with yourself regularly, ensuring you’ve booked enough recovery days and decided how you’re going to devote your energy between work, leisure, and your fitness goals — without spreading yourself too thin. Acknowledge the potential barriers (lack of childcare, happy hours that stretch to midnight, to name a few) and decide how you’re going to approach them, even if that means paring down your training for the week. Crucially, avoid “all-or-nothing” thinking. “If you gave up or avoided something yesterday, today choose to adapt, adjust, and work with discomfort,” Caroline Silby, Ph.D., a sport psychology consultant for the U.S. Figure Skating National Team and other organizations, previously shared with Equinox+.
It’s not “going easy” on yourself. It’s being realistic about the time and energy you’re able to dedicate toward your fitness this summer — then designing a path that empowers you to be successful while enjoying all the season has to offer.