'Part 2 - The Day After Camp' Guidelines / Insights - COACHES or TEAM THOUGHTS?
So you've just gone the Full Beefcake, and rode for some zany multiple of your regular TSS in a Camp Week or Volume Pop. Now you're sitting on United flight UA203, flipping through the page-turner of their in-flight magazine's article about 10 Things You Can Make with Turnips, and the whole chapter is behind you. The moment it's wheels down, it's time to start setting PBs.
WRONG.
Extraordinary work (like you just did) requires extraordinary recovery. Deep, different than normal recovery, IMHO. It's hard to think about this, particularly as you are coming from a setting where the only equation that mattered was "miles build champions," but this fitness now needs some serious time to actually sink in, and changing the mindset from a forward trajectory to regeneration is tough. But More than other experiences, your body needs time to actually repair the damage you have done to it and do some basic rebuilding.
Like usual, I have lots of lessons to offer on the wrong way to roll after a big block ... but before I start this list, I'd love to hear what others think or do, or bigger-picture strategies they put into place.
Talk to us about ...
The role of rest?
Food?
Sleep?
Specific TSS (or other performance model) re-ramp-ups?
Days off vs active recovery?
Comments
All this is happening behind the scenes, and really can't be tested for directly unless you want to spend a week in the hospital and submit to endless blood draws, bone marrow and spinal taps, muscle biopsies (OUCH!) and assorted imaging studies. So we look to indirect ways to give us clues.
The key thing is not when this process is complete. It will take weeks, at a minimum, and years for those who are consistently stretching the bounds of homeostasis via something like a three-year EN training program. The trick is to figure out how to ramp back up the training without (a) falling into the pit by doing too much too soon or (b) losing too much fitness so that the effort was wasted. A fine balance to be struck.
Signs I use to put a big STOP sign in my training plan: muscle soreness/stiffness, deep sense of fatigue, need for extra sleep, weight loss, grumpy or listless attitude. More than one of those, and I need a full day (or at most two) off, no "active recovery", no nothing. This is often harder than actually working out would be, as it drives me nuts. But I've learned it's for the best.
After 1-2 days, I then return to my "normal" monitoring systems, but refrain from any interval work on the bike for a week, or the run for maybe even more, until I can do strides without feeling any stress.
I use the data from my Tanita scale to help me understand hydration and caloric needs. Before I worry about my actual weight, I look at my BF% and body water %. These two tend to vary in inverse proportion to each other. YMMV, but my numbers in the midst of a 12 week prep phase ( the final 12 before the race) will optimally be 6.x and 58.5. If my BW% is 58 or below, I work on getting more fluids than I am thirsty for, specifically gatorade, as the sugar aids in getting the water into my gut. If my BW% is nominal, but my weight is low (for me, that would be about 147# during training), then I work on calories, of all sorts. Protein, fats, gluten, starch, dairy ... I don't care, I need them all.
Here's a list of things I will eat to help me regain what I've lost: Dairy - chocolate milk, yogurt; fruits - berries (blue- and straw- especially, black- when they appear in my yard), oranges, apples; grains - granola; nuts - almonds, peanuts (I know, not a nut); fats - olive oil, bacon; protein - bison meat, fish, especially salmon, beans; other - Naked Juice Green Machine, Stacy's Pita Chips with hummus. Along with my daily helping of oatmeal and PBJ sandwich.
I use the PMC from TrainingPeaks (via the WKO program on my computer) as an additional aid. It hurts, but I have to accept the "dip" in CTL which I will see after a volume pop. That's when the recovery is happening, I tell myself. I may even let my TSB drift close to 0, from whatever godawful negative number I drove it to. And the "Ramp", which is basically the rate of rise over a defined period of time (anywhere from 7-42 days; I use 21) is another thing I keep an eye on.
One final thing for the veterans who may be reading this. I did not find that age had any effect on need for more recovery time until I got past 61. So if you are feeling "old" in your forties or fifties, buck up, young 'un. You can do more than you think you can, if you've been doing this at the EN level consistently for 3 years or more.
Gold as usual, Al. I could not agree more with the reframing of expectations, and I think you’ve hit on a really important piece where to highlight that gains aren’t realized immediately, and might also not be realized as tangibly as a % boost in FTP or LT … instead, the timeframe is prolonged, and the gains might be black-box like efficiency, all-day-long rate of fat oxidization, and so on. But for long course triathlon, these things matter, so these pops matter.
We talked briefly about the prescription for coming down from a Pop when we trained a few weeks ago. Where I agree that the recovery period (I originally called it a recovery week, which bore immediate correction) varies from time-of season, entry fitness level and stimulus, I do believe the following protocol applies to any Pop. For at least 3-4 days:
-Regeneration is your full time job, not training.
-Hydrate perfectly, from the moment you wake up, until your heat hits the pillow at night. For the near-term, ABP means “Always be Peeing” (clear).
-Stretch lightly, 2 times a day. Especially the floor routine stuff like hip flexors, lower back, and glutes. And also the little stuff that normally doesn’t get stretched (because you have probably been activating it during your block, in ways unlike before). A few days after CO, the tendon behind my knee locked for 2 days and it was near-impossible to walk. Never had that before, and I attribute it to the larger muscles getting wound up, and pulling all the little stuff along with it.
-I can’t resist a good post-camp pig-out, but limit the damage to a defined period. If I could do a perfect feeding recovery week, it would be unlimited red meat, fish, veggies and fruits. And water.
I really like the “Inside Tracker” perspective of actually measuring the gains, and how this goes on behind the physiological scenes. I want Heart Rate Variability (HRV) to work SO BADLY, if only because it has a few metrics that purport to measure these things, but I just haven‘t been able to achieve valid data. However, I think there are two concepts from HRV that are very helpful to gauge readiness to return to training, and could probably be used subjectively coming off a Camp: For this topic, I’ll just call them Readiness to Train, and Readiness to Absorb. I think that coming off a block, there’s an immediate period where the athlete is neither of the above: they just have nothin’, and aside from keeping moving in other activities, there’s just no way that they could muster a solid run/Bike/swim set, even if they wanted to. (A good sign of this for me is swimming at Strokes Per Min … if I’m unable to achieve 64 SPM after a block, it’s a sign that the neuromuscular system is down, and I’m not even able to fire at a level of basic coordination, so forget building strength/speed/power for now. Now … absent this “Readiness to Train,” I don’t think the “readiness to absorb” is even on the table. But … once the “readiness to train” returns, I would suspect that there is still a period of adaptation / regeneration that’s occurring, where you might feel great and ready to hit FTP intervals or harder stuff … but your body will still not be able to actually absorb the increased workload. Again, just speculating, but I think this period is probably equal to (or a multiple of?) the time you spend In Camp. So, the trick again is to find anything that will hasten recovery and regeneration and get both of those states back up and running.
And of course, recovery is not a one-size fits all training camps deal. I did two camps in the winter that focused on a 100% increase in steady / abp work, and they felt fantastic, but I completely missed the mark when ramping down from this stimulus, and trying to return to the real world. On the other hand, coming back from previous big Ae-focussed camps, I’ve taken slightly different approaches in returning.
I do use trackers as described and although there is several issues I've noticed with some aspects seeing deep curve into overtraining does correlate with notable fatigue. As far as Recovery....
Definitely a do as I say.. not as I do. Typically I would do foam rolling and trigger point work with my leg squishers and yoga/streatches.....but lately it's been mostly just leg squishers.