Fatigue is Personal

If you can relate to this then this article is for you:

“There are a lot of guys out there now who know they are not working as hard other people.  I can’t fathom how they think.” Alberto Salazaar

It is great working with people who are committed to what they are doing.  They build up their fitness and can reach a point where I can really push them.  However, as you probably know, the body simply can not push itself more and more each day.  Recovery is needed.  So, it is tricky (actually impossible) to write the perfect plan which leads to the best possible improvements in performance.  As a coach, I do my best to take people to a higher level than what they could achieve on their own.

It becomes a balancing act of inducing training stimuli to improve performance and prescribing recovery to prevent overtraining.  Overtraining is actually a medical condition and is not something we strive for in training.  Sure there are times when over-reaching is planned.  But, that has to be surrounded by recovery training before and afterwards. 

In my experience, undesirable amount of fatigue can manifest itself in two ways:

1)      Loss of muscular force and achy legs.

2)      Loss of energy and body aches (similar to the flu).

You can read many textbooks on the symptoms of overtraining and I recommend you know them.  You do not need all the symptoms to prove you are overtrained.  Sometimes, only a few are present.  But, that is a long story and something to be explored in my blog at a future date.

The point of this article is to help you figure out what your own body’s signals of over-reaching is.  Know that you have to over reach for a period of time before you become over trained.  When you are over trained it takes weeks and sometimes months to recover.  That is the difference between over reaching and over training.

The ultimate metric to look for is:

A decrease in performance! 

And here are some example body signals to think about and see if you can relate:

Starting consecutive bike rides with achy legs.

Having to really push yourself to get your heart rate into your Mod-hard and Hard zones.

Workout performance that keeps getting worse.  No more improvements and the workouts get tougher when they should not.

Legs burning and/or getting out of breath easily in normal day activities (i.e. going up stairs).

Restless sleep.

Lack of appetite.

And there are many more…

Pay attention to your body and see how it reacts to your workouts and the subsequent weeks of training.   This will help you become a better athlete because you are learning how to recover better.  If you are over-reaching for too long, then you will need to back down (shorten hours and lower the intensity).  Listen to your body as you do this.  You should be able to feel better and better as you crawl out of the hole.  Catch it soon enough and it should only last 3-7 days.  Don’t let it go too long.

Getting faster involves getting tired.  There are not two ways about it.  Learn how to handle it.

 

—Scott