5 tips for coping with the return from holiday without feeling overwhelmed

Summer holidays are very necessary and beneficial: you disconnect from work to connect with yourself, recharge your energy and make plans with friends, forgetting about obligations and… training. Don’t worry! You still have half a year ahead of you to prepare properly for the eDreams Mitja Marató Barcelona. So first, we leave you 5 recommendations so that the return from holidays is not so hard for you:

1. Take it easy, step by step: Get back into your shoes with workouts of shorter and lower intensity. As you are getting back into shape, your body will ask you to increase the duration and intensity of your training sessions.

2. Warm up and stretch well: Warm up and stretch, do it, really do it. It is crucial, especially in the first training sessions after the summer. You will regain elasticity, agility and avoid discomfort or injuries.

3. Strength training or practice other sports: While it is true that strength training should be done throughout the whole season, when you come back from a break it is the first step to avoid stressing the machine and to gradually adapt your joints to more strenuous exercise. By regaining muscle mass, you improve your endurance and your running performance. But if the weights and the gym are not your thing, you can get back in shape by practising other sports that are less damaging to your joints, by taking up cycling or swimming. Cross-training helps both physically and psychologically to get you back into your routine, as well as working on your strength and recovering your aerobic capacity.

4. Take care of your diet and your rest: In summer there are no schedules, few limits and little planning or restrictions. And that is good and necessary for our mental health, so don’t judge yourself for it. That’s why it’s important to gradually return to a balanced diet, sleep schedules and, above all, to listen to your body. Beyond the usual things, such as swapping ice cream and beer for vegetables and fruit, it is important to re-plan your daily menu, adapted to your daily needs, your morphology and your lifestyle. It’s difficult at first (we know it is  and you know it too), but you also know that your body will thank you for it once you want to get back to your physical performance. And so, you get acclimatized to face the training plan from November onwards.

5. Don’t get obsessed with it: Another tip that is very easy to say and more difficult to achieve. If the first week after getting back to your routine, you don’t manage to rest, eat properly or train as much as you would like, don’t worry, you’re human. The important thing is to be consistent and increase your challenge to your body progressively. Don’t stress if in the first few post-summer sessions you don’t reach your desired running pace. Set yourself realistic goals, adapted to your current condition, and you will make progress. Otherwise, rushing and overexertion will increase your chances of injury. So, patience and remember: Barcelona is waiting for you!