It usually starts small. One session gets pushed to tomorrow. Then tomorrow is busy too, so it slides again. By Saturday you are staring at three sessions you need to fit into a weekend, none of them happen properly, and the whole week turns into a write-off instead of a week where you got most of it done.
BLUF: A missed session is rarely the problem. The damage comes from how you react to it, so use a simple set of rules instead of cramming, chasing and guessing.
Your plan is written in an order, on purpose
So, firstly I would say this… if you have a well written training programme, the week is not a random list of sessions to be ticked off wherever they fit.
The sessions sit where they sit for a reason. The hard work lands where you can absorb it. The easy work lets you recover from it. That rhythm of stress and recovery is what actually builds fitness.
So wherever you physically can, plan your week around the plan. Protect that order.
But life happens. Kids get ill, work runs over, sleep falls apart, the car breaks down.... and so here is exactly what I tell my coached athletes what to do when it does.
If you need to move a session
Move it, and get the work done.
The one rule that matters here: never stack two hard days on top of each other (unless already planned like that).
If I wanted you doing two hard days back to back, I would write it like that. When you slide a hard session onto an existing hard day, you are not simply doing more training, you may be doing worse training. The quality of both sessions could drop, and your recovery takes the hit.
So, what that means is this. When you move a session, look at where it is going to land.
- Moving an easy session onto another day? Usually fine.
- Moving a hard session? Make sure the day either side gives you room to recover.
- Two hard days colliding? Separate them, even if that means one slides further.
The goal is to keep the shape of the week intact, not just to get the minutes in somewhere.
If you miss one session
Ok, no worries. Move it and make it work.
Find a sensible place for it. If that means it lands in next week, fine. One session rolled forward is not going to derail anything, as long as it goes somewhere it fits rather than somewhere it clashes.
Do not panic, and do not try to claw back every lost minute by Sunday night. One session is a ripple, not a flood.
If you miss two sessions
Talk to me before you move anything.
This is where athletes get themselves into trouble on their own. Two missed sessions start to pull against each other, and the instinct is to force both back in somewhere, which usually means stacking or overloading the week.
So, the key message here is: ask first. I will tell you whether we move both, or which one, or whether we simply let one go. That decision depends on what the sessions were, where you are in the block and what is coming next. It is a quick conversation, and it saves you from guessing.
If you miss three or more
Same thing. Talk to me.
At three or more, we are no longer tidying up a disrupted week, we are reshaping it. We need to understand perhaps why this has happened... is it just life, or is it that the traikling has drained you to a point where we need to back off... That is a coaching decision, not a cramming exercise.
Sometimes the right call is to protect the key session and bin the rest. Sometimes it is to back off entirely and reset for the following week. Either way, do not try to solve it by piling everything back in. Let me look at the whole picture and we will make the call together.
The rule everyone forgets
Here is the one that is hardest to follow, and the one that saves the most weeks.
If the sessions you have rolled over start getting in the way of this week's work, let them go.
That opportunity to build a bit of fitness has been missed. It happens. Chasing it may cost you more than it gives you, because now you are behind on two weeks instead of one.
Think about how that trap actually plays out:
- You miss Monday, so you push it to Tuesday.
- Tuesday is busy, so now you have Tuesday's session plus Monday's.
- By the weekend you are looking at three sessions in two days.
- None of them happen, and the week is a write-off.
Compare that to the alternative. You let the first missed session go, you protect the rest of the week, and you complete most of the right work in the right order. One of those weeks moves you forward. The other sets you back.
Letting a session go is not failure. It is a decision. And it is usually the better one.
Why this matters more than any single session
As we all know, fitness is not built in a session. It is built across weeks and months of sensible, repeatable decisions.
One perfect week followed by an injury or a burnout week gets you nowhere. A long run of good-enough weeks, where you made smart calls when life got in the way, gets you to the start line fit and in one piece.
That is the whole point of these rules. They are not about squeezing every minute out of your plan. They are about helping you make good decisions when things do not go to plan, so you keep moving forward instead of lurching between heroics and write-offs.
Because, and I will say it again, better to be consistently good, than sporadically great.
The short version to save
Here is the framework, stripped back so you can use it the next time life gets in the way:
- Need to move one session? Move it, get the work done, never stack two hard days.
- Missed one? Find a sensible place for it, even if that means next week.
- Missed two? Talk to me before you move anything.
- Missed three or more? Same, talk to me.
- Rolled-over work getting in the way of this week? Let it go.
That is it. Simple, repeatable, and designed to keep your training on track rather than leave you chasing fitness you have already missed.
If you are ever unsure which rule applies, that is what I am here for. If you have any questions, queries or concerns, don't sit on them, let me know.