Does your job impact your training?

[sander]

Great topic. I am struggling at times to get in the amount of training I would like to do, because of job demands. I am lucky that I am located in Europe and many of my colleagues are in the USA, so doing a (not so early) morning row is viable. The downside of that is that work related calls can go on until 11pm sometimes. I am lucky that I can be flexible with my start and end times, as long as the job gets done.

Business travel is a pain, though. I used to go running outdoors as much as possible on business trips, but on my EU trips I try to travel extremely light, so I do hotel room or hotel gym workouts.

Most of the Masters rowing scene where I live consists of fitness instructors, teachers, trainers, police, etc, where some amount of physical exercise is part of the job. My office job is certainly a disadvantage here.

[Edward4492]

Sander, just clicked onto your training blog; pretty fascinating stuff. I'm particularly impressed by your 1000m time at your recent 1x race. I have to assume some of this speed is due to the high current? Our 1000m erg PR's aren't that far off (I'm at 3:21.3 on the erg). I can't imagine going that fast in a 1x OTW. I'm a novice in the boat (just logged my first 1000k OTW) and I'm improving. But my best target for 1000m looks to be about 4:30; I row on very flat water with virtually no current. Curious what kind of times you produce on flat water. Pretty obvious you're an experienced, skilled rower.

I'm attempting to solve the work/job time problem by getting up at 4:15am three days a week, I can squeeze in 7-8k before work, shower, and be in on time. That plus one or two nights a week and weekend sessions should give me what I need. But at 60 yrs old, I have to be careful not to run myself into the ground.

[Andy Burrows]

Nice thread. I used to have to commute 2hrs+ each way for work so it was motivating to go to the gym after work as it would mean I would miss rush hour traffic and my commute home would halve, so I would get home almost the same time as if I didn't go to the gym but I would have got a work out done and spent less time shouting at traffic.

Now things are different, both myself and my wife like to train lots still but we have a 1 year old and a 2 year old. Wife works 3 days a week and I work 5 days a week (45hrs a week), fortunately I work from home 3-4 of of those days so to make it work now I erg at home straight after work so about 5:30pm, for a max of only 40mins, I am then finished in time to help bath and bed the kids with story time etc. That's all done by say 7pm at the latest, then the wife goes off and does her training, sends me a message when on her cool down and I start the dinner and then we get to eat together at about 8:30pm and get a couple of hours before bed to enjoy being an adult (which mainly means drinking wine). Works for us quite well.

[sander]

Sander, just clicked onto your training blog; pretty fascinating stuff. I'm particularly impressed by your 1000m time at your recent 1x race. I have to assume some of this speed is due to the high current? Our 1000m erg PR's aren't that far off (I'm at 3:21.3 on the erg). I can't imagine going that fast in a 1x OTW. I'm a novice in the boat (just logged my first 1000k OTW) and I'm improving. But my best target for 1000m looks to be about 4:30; I row on very flat water with virtually no current. Curious what kind of times you produce on flat water. Pretty obvious you're an experienced, skilled rower.

I'm attempting to solve the work/job time problem by getting up at 4:15am three days a week, I can squeeze in 7-8k before work, shower, and be in on time. That plus one or two nights a week and weekend sessions should give me what I need. But at 60 yrs old, I have to be careful not to run myself into the ground.

That was helped by the current very much. My standing water OTW times are between 3:40 and 4:00 depending on the wind.

[Edward4492]

Thanks Sander, very impressive OTW times. Looks like I have some work ahead of me!

[Citroen]

When you've just spent ten days abroad (get home tomorrow) and this Sunday you fly out for another five days in a different country then it does have an impact.

Hopefully I'll keep my feet on the ground in June.

[batanos]

I should consider myself lucky, since I work as the head coach of a very well equipped gym network (C2 is a basic equipment in all of our gyms), so I have a couple of gyms that I can attend anytime for free. Funny part: I never train in those gyms (or in any gym for that matter, since I built a nice little home-gym for myself). Reasons: since most folks know me, training time is doubled by socialization ('Hey how are you?' - '...ck off I'm training!' - type) which I really hate; and secondly training is my passion, coaching others is my job, and I like to keep them separated.
Still, it's obviously a requirement to keep myself in good shape, so I train almost every weekday in the morning (job is constant pm shift) while the kid is in the kindergarten. The only sessions that suffer are the weekend ones when I do a seminar and after teaching e.g. kettlebells whole day I'm not in the mood to lift them for an hour when I arrive home. Nowadays these are great opportunities to do a quick rowing session