The first months of the year are always a high-risk time for creeping into an over-trained condition. Are you sure you don't need to hold back a little?
By Paddy Doran
Whether you are preparing for a sportive, a major stage race or even an Ironman, training for sport is similar to work and lifestyle.
If you get the balance wrong it can be very destructive and can leave you extremely fatigued.
This can be a short-term problem (over reaching) when your body endures a natural reaction to heavy training or racing. It is usually remedied with easy training for a day or two.
However, if negative symptoms persist over a longer period of time, for example a number of days, with no sign of improving it could be as a result of overtraining which can dramatically reduce work capacity.
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If this is not corrected quickly it can develop into a long-term problem, which can destroy a complete season.
The best strategy to deal with dreaded overtraining is avoidance.
And the best way to do this is to follow the principles of training; lead a sporting lifestyle, use well planned periodization and monitor your response to training.
Lifestyle
General lifestyle has a part to play in overtraining. Some of the factors that can add to your general load in life while training include:
- Poor nutrition
- Lack of sleep or relaxation
- Meeting education or work deadlines/demands
- Difficulties in relationships
- Even life events like moving house
Training loads should be reduced when you’re going through these issues. They all affect the majority of us at one time or another.
Here’s something that I learned over 40 + years of coaching successful cyclists: An 80 per cent fit but healthy athlete will always perform better than an ill or over trained athlete.
It means balance between workloads and recovery is everything.
Anxious Athletes
This time of year is one of the real dangerous periods for overtraining in cyclists and triathletes.
They begin to get edgy about the season starting just a few weeks away.
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So they might load up the mileage and intensity together, which is the most common cause of overtraining.
Training Diary
If you keep note of the following areas in your training diary you will be able to ensure that you are getting maximum returns for the effort you are putting in.
You will also prevent simple tiredness developing into an overtraining problem.
Take a look at the seven exercise responses below and if they described how you’re feeling, you probably need to take a few days off.
- Mood: Generally lower; feeling negative and irritable
- Enthusiasm for training or racing: Poor; not wanting to go training or competing
- Sleep: Not feeling refreshed in the morning. Waking during the night or early morning, finding it difficult to sleep
- Appetite: Generally reduced
- Muscles: Feeling sore during training or events, fining yourself unable to hold efforts. Feeling sore and tired walking up stairs.
- Exercise heart rate: Lower than usual for a particular effort. But the effort feels much higher than usual at this particular heart rate
- Resting heart rate: Elevated by five beats or more above normal range over a number of days.
It’s normal to have some of these symptoms in the short term. The symptoms may present, for example, after heavy training sessions, intensive blocks of training or races.
But with balanced training and recovery they should be reduced in a matter of hours or days.
Alarm bells
The alarm bells should ring when a number of the symptoms are present and persistent. If so, you should reduce the amount of training - and train easier - until the symptoms subside.
If the symptoms are very strong and persistent get some more help from an experienced coach who may be able to help or refer you to medics if required.
The longer attempts are made to train through the symptoms the longer the overtraining problems are likely to persist.
A whole season could be ruined by continuing to train hard. So early intervention and common sense is important.
Being macho and deciding you are going to plough through a period of feeling over-trained is not only not going to work; it can be very destructive.
Medical advice, diary analysis
Take nothing for granted. If you’re very fatigued and out of sorts and improvements are slow or nonexistent, seek qualified medical diagnosis and advice.
To avoid overtraining or to determine how you might have gotten into an overtraining situation keeping a simple training diary can prove an invaluable tool.
Usually the overtraining symptoms show themselves after a few weeks of excess overload or demanding changes in lifestyle.
So you need to trawl back through your diary and the signs are usually there if you’ve have kept the diary updated.
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