How To Train Your Husband, Part I

In the spirit of just pitching straight into things, I asked my husband if I could coach him for a month. This would have benefits for both me and him. On my side, it would act as a “test run” to get some insight into whether coaching was something I really would enjoy. On his side, he hasn’t trained for a long time but is starting with a real coach in February with a big race in the fall as his goal. A prep month would go a long way to getting him ready for that.

Success is not a foregone conclusion. My husband is a strong and accomplished triathlete, but his training has suffered the last couple of years from work-related stress and injuries. We have quite different personalities from an athletic perspective. I tend to be pretty gung-ho about seeing how far I can push myself, happy to cross that red line as a way of figuring out where it is. He on the other hand prefers to advance more cautiously, which I can find hard to understand. We went out for a run together a few months ago. We set out nice and easy, but he soon started walking, complaining of discomfort from lack of fitness. I’d seen this before and knew that cajoling him into running again hadn’t worked, and so – motivated by frustration – I thought I’d try the “tough love” approach instead and yelled at him “JUST SHUT UP AND RUN!”. Suffice it to say we did continue running, but in opposite directions. I clearly have a lot to learn.

So, with this experiment, I really needed to figure out what does work – what are his limiters, and how do I practically overcome them to get him to his goals. That started with a conversation about what a successful January would look like and what difficulties he’d had in the past to start training consistently again.

My husband was clear on his goals, so these were straightforward to list:

1. Achieve some consistency of training again – specifically, two workouts per week for each swim/bike/run and strength
2. Complete swim workouts of no less than 30 minutes each, and be able to swim 500-600m steady continuous
3. Be able to run a minimum of 5 miles continuously, i.e., no walk-run
4. Do not, under any circumstance, buy cheese

Now for the limiters. First question – what is your motivation? Why do you want to be doing triathlon in the first place? In the kind of sporty circle we move around in, I think it takes guts to answer that honestly. Doing an Ironman – or two, or three, and maybe even two or three per year – is business-as-usual for people we know. We all like to swap stories of how hard we’ve been training and how dedicated we are. It can easily become a part of our lives to which our core identity feels inextricably linked. To my husband’s credit, he said he’d thought long and hard about quitting…ultimately choosing not to because working out is something that brings him real joy, pure and simple.

Second question – given that the motivation is there, what is stopping him from working out? Why doesn’t wanting to get out the door in workout gear translate to actually doing it? Apart from the specific practical challenges that each person uniquely faces, in my experience just the entire mental and physical effort to shift from inertia to exercise cannot be overstated. The human body is like a car engine – once up and running it hums along, but if stopped for a while, the parts get stuck and become resistant to movement. If you’re busy, tired, and finding that workouts increasingly just cause physical misery, getting out the door is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. With a few additional questions, I came up with the following list of blocking points and ways to overcome them: –

1. Make time for workouts by getting stricter on work hours. My husband is a true professional, successful and respected as someone who gets the job done well. Admirable as that is, it cannot mean he allows it to destroy his work-life balance
2. Re-establish good workout routines by ensuring workout kit is prepped the night before. This routine is something my husband clearly associates with feeling good as it was a habit of his during his last successful training block. As minor as it seems, I wrote the time he needs to set aside to do this directly into his plan   
3. Keep injury concerns off the table by ensuring a full warm-up routine and emphasizing flexibility as much as strength. For a run or strength workout of 1 hour, I specify the first 30 minutes to be foam rolling, dynamic stretches and/or form drills. That ratio should lessen over time
4. Overcome negative self-talk – this is a big one for him. “What’s the point, I’ll never get my fitness back”; “I had a tough day at work, I really deserve to kick back with a beer”; “My muscles are sore, I’m going to get injured if I work out”…I turned to Sports Psychology for Dummies for help which advised to find a positive mantra to replace the negativity. We landed on “one step at a time” which I put as the title for all his run workouts and remind him of every time he heads out to train
5. Keep motivation front and center by emphasizing the key objective of each workout is to have fun – go play! Mountain biking, running off the main central park loop, all welcome. No watches, heart rate monitors or power meters allowed

As of tonight, we’re about a week in to training and I would say it’s going fairly well. Luckily for me my husband’s a good sport and of course wants my experiment to be successful, which is a bit of a cheat, but I’ll take it! Results to follow.