[ 🏃🏽♂️ ] Balancing CrossFit with a Physically Demanding Job
What do to if you want to do it all.
📍 On (most) Mondays, we revisit one of the listener questions we’ve answered in a previous episode. It’s been edited for clarity & brevity here.
Question
from Beth:
Having previously trained in CrossFit for seven years and been competitive for four of these, I burned out a few years ago and had to stop training altogether.
Since then, I have worked hard to recover physically and mentally and gradually return to physical activity and training.
Last year, I managed to train in CrossFit 3-4 days a week and swim two times a week, alongside physical hobbies such as hiking, biking, and gardening.
However, since I began a physically demanding job as a full-time gardener and landscaper at the end of last year, I have been struggling to train alongside it.
I want to return to training as I really miss it, and it helps me physically and mentally. However, I am struggling to know how to integrate it back into my job without completely exhausting myself.
How would you advise returning to training while working a physically demanding job without risking burning out again?
Answer
BEN: Beth is a go-getter.
I love this. Her way of getting back into things is three to four days a week of training, plus swimming, biking, hiking, and landscaping.
I’ll give a quick answer, and you can ask for follow-ups.
Do CrossFit five or six days a week.
If the goal is holistic health, you're gonna get that.
Plus, with all of the moving you're doing, you don't also need to be hiking and swimming. You 100% do not need that from a physical adaptation standpoint.
PATRICK: From the perspective of trying to kick ass into your 90s.
BEN: Right. Because she’s already doing it.
She’s doing the high-intensity thing and then doubling up on the endurance.
Also, she’s got a demanding job. It really is.
After I coach my classes and work out, I sit at a desk for six hours. I do nothing else. I'm the one who needs to also go for the 90-minute walk at night. That's for me. That's not for you, Beth.
I also need to go for a long run on the weekends. I also should get in the pool, not you.
So, what is the sustainable version?
It is five or six days a week of CrossFit, and you keep your job.
PATRICK: You know the follow-up question.
BEN: Ya. You like doing this stuff. You want to do the hiking, swimming, biking, and training.
PATRICK: Yep.
BEN: So if you like it that much, then yeah, you're going to have to figure out how to weigh and measure everything.
And you have to ask: What are you going after?
I don't have that answer.
And no one's going to have that answer for you because no one's going to be able to go, “Well, your job is this demanding. You're on your feet this much and doing this many steps. That means you’ve got to take away from this thing, this thing, and this thing to be able to do that and that and that.”
So it will be a game of you trying to put all the puzzle pieces on the table and get them to match together without having any extra pieces left over and without trying to smush everything into whatever available time you have.
There's no smushing in.
You won't be able to do everything you're doing, so something has to give.
My suggestion would be, don't let CrossFit be the thing you stop doing because, for the kicking ass in your nineties and holistic health, that's the most beneficial thing you're doing.
So that's where I started.
But if you're like, “Nope, I'm not giving up the day or two in the pool, and I'm not giving up my long hikes,” then it's really obvious.
You’ll have to give up some of the CrossFit stuff.
PATRICK: Thinking about Beth and others in this position, what advice would you give to say, okay, look out for this, because it might be a harbinger of overtraining or burnout if things don’t change.
Because she mentioned it a couple of times, she burned out the first time and is worried about burning out again.
So what are the signs she can or should look out for?
BEN: The honest answer is that it's different for everybody.
For someone like Beth, it's when she's no longer excited to do those things, when they become a chore, when she's not excited to go on those hikes, when she's not excited to go to the gym, or when she's lethargic at work.
But for somebody who’s used to being on the couch, that's not the answer because they won't like those things - until they do.
For those people, you can't go, “Hey, when you aren't excited to go to the gym, you know you’re going to the gym too much.”
They're like, “Cool. I went once. I didn't like it. I'm not excited to go back tomorrow. I'm over-trained.”
But, yes, the answer is one of overtraining, and the signs of overtraining are multifaceted.
It can involve everything from increased appetite to lower appetite, more tiredness, restlessness, and inability to sleep. Honestly, being moody is probably the most common.
But the biggest one for me that I've been able to use as a telltale sign for my athletes is their eagerness to train that day.
I always asked them three or four questions when they came in, and one of the ones I leaned into the most were:
How much sleep did you get?
Where are your stress levels?
How excited are you to train today?”
So, I would start with those and adjust what you’re doing accordingly.