How to Increase Performance (without training more)

The most common excuse people don’t make their dreams come true is lack of time. If you’ve just had a little more time, you would be a better road cyclist. You would be more valuable to your company. You would be a better father, and you would be a better husband, etc.

It’s no secret that I fully understand you.

I have a wonderful family with a wife and three kids ages 1, 4, and 6; I take care of a full-time job at the hospital, do some scientific work, support and help readers of my two e-books, and have 13.000+ readers following my blog. And, of course, I want to spend a little time taking care of my health (exercise). So during the last year, I have been experimenting with different training techniques to maximize the outcome of minimal weight lifting.

Both professionals and serious riders are competitive souls, even if it’s only competing with themselves and their personal bests. Thus, I quickly decided to aim for good results.
I ended up in 9th place in the National Championships in RAW Powerlifting. (Sorry, that’s not much about road cycling.)
So I have a good feeling of how stressful it can be to have ambitions and not have enough time.

So what have I learned?

I could probably have performed a lot better at each of my goals. Too many different plans made it impossible for me to maintain focus. You can say that I was too ambitious. And you’re probably right. But if I just had more time for training.

Nevertheless, I have learned a few great things that will help me a lot in the future, and I hope you will find inspiration to handle a busy life (even better) in the future.

Set Goals

During the last 365 days, my overall training goal has been participating at the National Championships in RAW Powerlifting without adding muscle mass. Having a clear deadline and motivating goal has been a considerable advantage.

Prioritize goals

I prioritized my goals to avoid harmful stress symptoms when things got busy. My family and work at the hospital have always had my highest priorities. Scientific work, blogging, and training have been secondary priorities on/off in different periods of my life. Doing everything 100% is not possible.

Schedule your training

Even though you decide that training is a relatively high priority, it’s wise to schedule your training and make a transparent deal with your family. For example, during the last four weeks before the National Championships, I wrote my training sessions on our family’s ‘to-do list.’ This statement helped me pay more attention to my training and made it easier for my family to understand what I was doing and when they should expect to see me (or support me). So it was a win-win.

Evaluate (and adjust)

Learn from your mistakes and take further benefit from your intelligent decisions. Use your evaluation to optimize your training routine and let your progress inspire you to train even more challenging.

So what now?
After completing my season goal (the first time I had a season goal since a marathon in 2002), I can now focus more on my blog and scientific work. Thus, I hope there should be more time for posting training tips in the upcoming months.
If you have any comments or questions, please drop me a line.