Routine

MUSINGS FROM A COACH - 23 SEPTEMBER '25

Routine.

I used to think that "routine" meant you do the same motions, processes or activities the same way every day. What would always come to my mind is an "older person" who's a slave to their routine - having to do the same thing everyday or else they would feel lost, out-of-control or even anxious. "Yuck!" I thought. "Not for me!" I'd say.

Until I started seeing "routine" show up in "super agers", successful coaches and elite, world-class athletes. What changed for me was how I defined what "routine" meant.  

Routine is a "quiet consistency" of doing things that benefit our quality of life.

That could be bettering our overall health with exercise, sleep and nutrition habits. It could be improving our mental health with quality time with family, good friends and even by ourselves. It could also be focusing on becoming more efficient in our work life - maximizing our professional potential, achievable goals and ever-increasing knowledge. And it could be used in supporting our athletic journey - which by nature - includes just as many struggles (if not more) than successes.

And that's where I'd like to focus for a bit - our athletic journeys. It's easy to see "routine" in daily training with elite athletes. They have to be organized and be good with time management to fit all that they have to do for even just one major workout session (nutrition planning and execution, equipment prep and check, recovery processes, etc.)

But what happens when an elite athlete suffers an injury, an illness or anything that "breaks" that routine? It's a rough mental challenge when an athlete realizes that all their previous goals need to be pushed down the road, old performance benchmarks must be reduced and even their livelihood comes under fire.

Well the great ones find a way back, and they do that with "routine". They must build a new routine that forgets about the old performance marks, race schedules and goals. This routine must be focused on recovery - the small increments of improvement that looks nothing like what they were doing before their injury. It's incredibly challenging and is fueled by their same competitive spirit, but must completely rely on this new routine: day in and day out. 

I'm going to pull a great paragraph from Brit Cooper's article in Triathlete Magazine, Lucy Charles-Barclay: A Comeback is Made of Many Quiet Days That Nobody Sees that describes Lucy's incredible career challenges and comebacks.

"What they didn’t see were the weeks, the months – even the years – that led to that moment: the setbacks, the rebuilds, and the quiet consistency of someone doing the hard work outside of the spotlight. What they didn’t see was the slow, deliberate climb back – the choice to keep going, day after day, and to keep believing. Every world-class athlete has gone through this."

There's no better example of how "routine" can be a good thing. And I think for all of us "age-groupers" out there, we should keep this in mind when we hit a bump in the road - I know I will!