Right now I’m in a marathon block. Most of my training focus is on running, the volume, the pace work, the long runs, all of it built around getting to a start line in the best shape I can. But if you’d asked me what my focus was at any other point over the last twenty odd years, you’d have got a completely different answer.

My training journey started with Calisthenics at the age of 16 with nothing but a pull up bar in my door. At 18 I was working as a doorman. Back then it was all about being as big as I could possibly be. Early 20s, that shifted, I wanted to be leaner. By my mid 20s I was deep into calisthenics, and stayed there until around 33, when the goal changed again and it became all about getting stronger. At 36 I got into running and endurance properly for the first time. There have been periods of rucking in between, building leg power and load carrying strength. Now, at 41, I’m trying to balance all of it, building a capable body that will last and help slow the ageing process, with a few marathons run in between.

Training should be something you do for life. But your goals throughout that life will, and should, change. Nobody stays 18 forever, and nobody should train like they’re still 18 forever either. The version of me stood on a door at that age needed size and presence more than anything else, that was the job. The version of me now needs longevity, resilience, and a body that will still let me play with my son, run, lift, and move well decades from now. Same person, completely different brief.

Life is short, and also the longest thing you’ll ever do

Life is short. It’s also, somehow, the longest thing you’ll ever get to do. You change enormously across it. The person you were at 18 wants different things to the person you are at 41, and the person you’ll be at 60 will want different things again. If your training goal has stayed exactly the same for the last decade, that’s not necessarily discipline, it might just mean you haven’t grown much.

None of those versions of me were wrong. Starting with calisthenics is something I believe everyone should do. Wanting to be big at 18 made sense for the job I was doing. Wanting to be lean in my early 20s made sense for where I was in life then. Calisthenics gave me a body that moved well and looked the part in my mid 20s. Getting stronger in my early 30s built a foundation I still lean on now. Running has taught me more about discipline and patience than any of the others combined. Each phase built on the one before it. None of it was wasted, it all stacked.

The deload isn’t weakness, it’s the plan

You can’t train hard all year round with no periods of slower training or rest. Bodybuilders call these deload weeks, a planned period of reduced intensity that lets the body actually absorb the work you’ve put in. Skip them and you don’t get stronger faster, you just break down.

Life works the same way. We can, and should, work hard. But working too hard for too long, with no planned periods of easing off, often means lying to yourself about how productive you’re actually being. You’re not doing your best work in hour eleven of a day that started at six. You’re just there, present, telling yourself it counts. I’ve done this myself, sat at a desk long after the useful output had dried up, because sitting there felt like the responsible thing to do. It wasn’t. It was just tired decisions dressed up as effort.

By building periods of lighter effort into your week and your year, you actually protect the periods where you go hard. The rest isn’t the opposite of the work, it’s part of it. The same way a deload week lets your body absorb months of training, a genuinely lighter week at work or at home lets you absorb everything you’ve been carrying, so you can go again properly rather than limping through on fumes.

It works within a single day too

This isn’t only about the long game either, the yearly training blocks or the seasons of life. It works exactly the same across a single day.

Periodise sections of hard, focused, uninterrupted work. Then build in periods that are less full on, a coffee, a walk, whatever your version of a reset is. If your work requires calls or meetings, batch them into their own period rather than letting them fragment every block of focus you’ve got. Work hard, always, but know when to lean into that and when to ease off a bit. We’re not robots. Nobody does their best thinking or their best training in a constant, flat, unbroken state. We do far better with structure, with clear periods of effort followed by clear periods of recovery, whether that’s within a day, a week, or a decade.

Life will never let you periodise perfectly

Life is never perfect, and it rarely lets you periodise exactly the way you’d plan it on paper. Sometimes work needs more of you for a stretch. Sometimes your family does. Sometimes, and this is the one people struggle to admit, you need more of yourself, more rest, more space, more time to just think.

That’s exactly why building periods into your life changes everything. Not a rigid schedule you fight to protect no matter what, but an awareness that different seasons call for different focus, and that’s not a failure of consistency, it’s what consistency over a whole life actually looks like. Train hard. Work hard. But plan your deload, in your training, in your work, and across the decades, because the goal was never to peak once. It’s to still be capable, still adaptable, and still moving forward, for as long as you get.