An Exercise for Christmas

Christmas can be that time we were can finally say… And breathe.

This can be the best thing to start with, but once you’ve watched Love Actually for the third time or caught up with that relative you speak to once a year, do you sometimes get a little restless?

If so, I’ve got an exercise you can do that works really well at this time of year…

Evaluating your running year

The calendar year 2021 is nearly complete, you’ve got more time than normal, so what better time than now to take stock of how things are going. This can be also be the perfect starting point to set you up for 2022. Its not a complicated exercise and all you will need is a pen, paper, and ideally some peace and quiet.

Here are three areas for you to look at:

What did the stats say?

Days run, days missed, total volume, injuries sustained, seasons bests etc. Be as detailed or minimalist as you want with this in plucking out the relevant data that you are able to extract. Don’t go crazy or else you’ll hit overwhelm, so focussing on the key metrics that mean something to you.

Stuff you were pleased with?

What went really well? What were you delighted with? Did you PB? Avoid injuries? Enjoy yourself running? Brain dump as much as possible. Its important to remember that even if you weren’t pleased with your year overall, there WILL be plenty of positives you can take, and take them we will do.

The stuff you weren’t as pleased with?

Again, be honest with yourself. What weren’t you as happy with? What would you like to try and improve on next year? Just like above, brain dump as much as possible.

You should be able to come up with plenty of points for these lists, and from there they can form an ideal starting point for which to set some goals in 2022 (which we’ll cover in the next article)

This article was written by John Beattie – Elite athlete and Founder of Move Better Run Better