Training Flexibility: The 3 Gs Framework
by GRP runner Elena Horton
Elena on the trail as she circumnavigates Mont Blanc near Chamonix, France during the 2025 UTMB 100 miler (she placed 18th out of 221 women)
You've heard it before: the best training plan is the one you actually stick to. But what happens when life gets in the way - when you're standing at the trailhead, worn out from a hard week, staring down a workout that suddenly feels impossible? Or when you haven’t slept, have a million other things to do, and are beating yourself up for not hitting your workout paces perfectly?
While it took me a while to figure it out, I've learned after years of racing and coaching that rigidity in training can be more of a liability than an achievement. The athletes who consistently perform well over the long haul aren't the ones who never miss a workout. They're the ones who've learned to adapt with intention.
To that end, I want to introduce a little framework I've been using, both for myself and with the athletes I coach, on the days when real life and the plan don’t feel aligned: the 3 Gs — Grounding, Goals, and Gauge.
G1: Grounding
Perhaps a prerequisite to anything is to be in touch with how you feel. Are you dreading that workout? Are you excited for it? And once you get going, are your body and brain aligned? Start by naming the feeling, positive or negative. Crucially, before reacting - whether you're tempted to bail or tempted to push through something your body is resisting - pause and get grounded. Remind yourself that everything will be ok. Skipping a workout, cutting a run short, or swapping a tempo for an easy jog is not going to derail your training. The body keeps score over months, not days, and one adapted session is a rounding error in the grand scheme of a training cycle. Take a breath and be curious.
From that place of calm, grounding means taking an honest look at where you are right now, in this moment, on this day. Not where you were last week. Not where you want to be in six weeks. Today. It's the practice of creating space between the stimulus (the hard workout on your calendar) and your response (dread, guilt, avoidance, or white-knuckling through it). When you're grounded, you can make a decision that actually serves you - rather than reacting to fear of falling behind or the inertia of just doing what the plan says.
G2: Goals
Once you're grounded, ask yourself: what is the purpose of today's workout? Not what it says on paper but what is it actually trying to accomplish?
This may be the most underutilized question in training, and it's transformative once you start asking it consistently. If the goal is just time in an easy training zone, this it’s flexible - the purpose is aerobic stimulus and durability, so ask yourself what route or format sounds fun today. A long walk-run or hike still counts. A slower pace on a beautiful trail still counts. Or maybe biking sounds more fun. If the goal is speed work, get more specific about what kind of speed. There's a meaningful difference between leg turnover work, lactate threshold efforts, and race-pace practice. Once you name the stimulus you're after, you can often find a modified version that delivers it. If the goal is mental strength, this one's actually the easiest to adapt, because the entire point is the practice of doing hard things. Don't worry about pace. Just do it. The psychological rep counts regardless of your splits.
Knowing the why gives you permission to find the best path to that outcome rather than treating the workout as immovable scripture.
G3: Gauge
The third G is about taking stock of your stress load and then being honest with yourself about it. Not just physical stress, but life stress. Sleep. Work. Relationships. The emotional weight of whatever's sitting on your chest this week. Your body doesn't distinguish between "running stress" and "got three hours of sleep because of a work deadline stress." It all draws from the same well.
If you're feeling good - genuinely good, not just "I think I should feel good" - go for it. Trust your fitness, execute the workout, and enjoy the momentum. If you're feeling overwhelmed, depleted, or like you're running on fumes, adapt. A phrase I come back to constantly, both personally and in my coaching is, "Show up, but don't judge it." Get out the door. Do something. But release the expectation of what it needs to look like.
The Macro View
The 3 Gs are a workout-level tool, but flexibility in training also needs to operate at the macro level, across your whole training cycle. Every few weeks, it's worth zooming out and asking: how often am I feeling like I'm not doing enough, and is that grounded in reality or anxiety talking? What's my overall mental and physical health score right now - not just fitness, but wellbeing? Do my current goals still make sense given how the cycle is going? It's okay to recalibrate.
The athletes who burn out or get injured are rarely the ones who trained too little. They're usually the ones who couldn't let themselves adapt, who treated every deviation from the plan as failure rather than information. Process over outcome. The willingness to adjust, to stay curious about your body, and to make smart decisions over and over again across a long training block, that is the training. That's the thing that compounds.
Racing rewards the athletes who show up to the start line healthy, mentally fresh, and confident in their preparation. Flexibility in training isn't the opposite of discipline - it's one of its highest forms. Give the 3 Gs a try the next time you're staring down a workout that feels wrong. Ground yourself, clarify the goal, gauge your stress, and then make the best decision you can with the information you have. That's all any of us can do.
Onwards and upwards!