Recovery Article & Implications for EN...
Caught this today via twitter: "How to Recover Right" by Matt Dixon (http://triathlete-europe.competitor.com/2012/09/07/how-to-recover-right/). I will cut/paste below for your edification, but some thoughts.
- I can see a lot of the "power of the impressive" inside EN, where the dashboard is used to put up some beefy numbers (I am one of the biggest offenders!!!)....this leads to a focus on doing big stuff, and maybe not the right stuff.
- Our focus on "work" doesn't really talk enough about the required recovery from said training.
- The author's note on who is fittest on race day really struck a cord with me.
- I think we can do a better job helping you to "get ahead of the fatigue" with some shorter rest sessions, or in the case of longer-term fatigue / consistent inability to see improvement, modify that plan to allow for recovery (and growth).
- We track FTP and vDOT but not the recovery stuff he mentions (restwise, etc). I have been doing this for 6 months now and have evolved to track: mood, AM weight, hrs sleep, wake up time, core exercises, workout times/distances, etc....and it's a phenomenal exercise to unearth how you are really doing. Not sure how we can do more of this....
READ, LEARN and give us your thoughts!!!
+++++++++ Full Article ++++++++++
Triathlon generally attracts highly motivated people, most of whom embrace hard work. But that ethic can often present a double-edged sword when an athlete struggles to balance heavy training with easy days and adequate recovery. Coach Matt Dixon of Purplepatch Fitness is known for taking injured, over-trained athletes (Linsey Corbin and Rasmus Henning are two cases) and radically changing the way they approach training by making recovery a foundational priority. Dixon explains how you can hurdle some of the biggest challenges to proper recovery—and in turn reap some serious performance benefits.
Among the Purplepatch squad of professionals, we have several mantras that we use in the training process. “It takes confidence to recover” is one that we hold dear to our hearts. Confidence in yourself, in the training plan, in the coach and in the journey of progression you are on. Our hard training will only yield positive results if we are healthy and our bodies are responding positively to the training load. You understand the need for hard work; you should also understand the need for balanced recovery in support of that hard work.
The trend of recovery modalities, including ice baths, compression, stretching and massage, is hugely popular in endurance sports nowadays. While some have their time and place in an athlete’s plan, their importance pales in comparison to other areas such as lighter training sessions or blocks of training, sleep and rest, as well as fueling and nutrition.
The trigger for adaptation (improvements) is stress, and in the case of endurance sports the stress is training stress—the root of why hard training is necessary in the first place. This adaptation can occur in a positive or negative sense, but to improve performance the athlete has to respond positively to the training stress. If you respond positively (what is called functional adaptation), you will get fitter, stronger and faster. If your response to the stress is negative (nonfunctional adaptation), you are on a path to major fatigue, injury and performance decline. Every great coach understands he or she needs to keep the athlete in a positive state of adaptation. This doesn’t mean athletes shouldn’t get tired, or train tired—pushing limits is necessary. The key is ensuring that the hard training is offset with lighter training, allowing adaptations to occur, as well as emotional, structural and metabolic rejuvenation. Carefully planned recovery helps you train harder.
Psychological barriers of recovery
A lot of athletes have a really hard time striking the recovery-training balance. Some reasons why:
The competition is working hard. Any competitive athlete has one eye on his or her competition, and this can wreak havoc on the emotional makeup of the training approach. Recovery provides no validation of improvement, as compared to a hard session with a performance breakthrough. When you are going light or easy, it is sometimes tough to not think about your competition out there on an epic training session.
The culture of the sport makes you feel weak. Hard training is great to talk about, and dramatic sessions are what dominate the stories of the most successful athletes. We are told so often that performance arrives to the last man hanging on the rope. The truth is that performance arrives on race day, to the man who has trained himself to hang on to the rope longest on that day. This is a big difference.
Coaches lack self-confidence. It is often not just the athlete who struggles with recovery. I see coaches layering in too much intensity, perhaps as a way to be seen to provide value or hard work. A great coach knows when to push, but the courageously great coach knows when to hold the athlete back. Confidence, wisdom and experience facilitate this trait so often missing.
All of these barriers lead athletes and coaches to make poor decisions when structuring training, like overloading multiple days in a row with really hard work, and never providing the opportunity to recuperate and balance the training load. Hard sessions become mediocre; recovery sessions remain mediocre. Training becomes ho-hum and a flattening of the intensity spread occurs. Repeat this pattern and athletes begin to lose the ability to raise the intensity of pace or power. They become fit—but slow.
Making recovery positive
How can you avoid some of these fears and reactions, and view recovery as a positive part of the journey to performance? It’s actually pretty simple:
Reset your lens. View lighter sessions and days as a part of the training plan. By framing it as an essential part of the plan, it becomes easier to accept and embrace. Many of my athletes have a “pit bull” mentality when it comes to training hard, so the recovery becomes the essential tool that enables them to train as hard as they love, and thrive from it.
Get in front of the fatigue. Each athlete is different when it comes to resilience, but the goal is to schedule in a lighter day or block of training before you are in desperate need for it. It doesn’t mean pulling back at the first sign of fatigue, but resting before it becomes a bigger issue. Getting a day, or session, in front of the fatigue allows quicker recuperation, and the chance to more consistently apply the hard work.
Monitor fatigue. There is major emphasis on monitoring training performance, but less on how the athlete recovers from that performance. This is a backward way of looking at things. The optimal tactic is daily self-evaluation, as simple as a five-minute check-in, or using a monitoring tool such as Restwise. Information creates awareness, and awareness allows the athlete and coach to make smart decisions.
Be realistic about your resilience. Remembering that recovery is a tool to facilitate work, your goal should be to get back to effective training as quickly as possible. This is always individual and needs ongoing evaluation. I have some athletes who can absorb high workloads and only need a day or two of recovery to bounce back from fatigue. Others are less resilient, requiring longer recovery blocks. Both sets are highly successful in racing (where it really counts), but only because we have worked hard to find the right recipe for them.
Learn your response to workload. This final component is critical for coaches. Some athletes respond quickly to an injection of higher intensity training, but break down or become flat if it is always present in the plan. Others require higher intensity in every week of training and become fatigued and regress with a higher-volume approach. Learning this response leads to a clearer plan and understanding the type of training—and recovery from that training—that are needed.
I talk a lot about the value of the recovery process (it is a major focus of setting up the training plan), but I am seldom thought of as an “easy” coach. I cannot think of anyone on my professional squad who begs for more work. But we don’t simply aim to accumulate as much training as possible, nor do we base success on how much we get done. I frankly don’t care how much training any athlete does each week. I don’t spend too much time counting hours or miles, and certainly don’t judge success in terms of volume achieved.
I base success on being able to maximize the specific and effective training we can consistently apply. If we find that individual recipe, we have a good chance for success. By making recovery as a part of that goal, it places a premium on it from the start, and inspires confidence in the plan, the coach and, most importantly, in the athletes themselves. And this is how top performances are born.
Comments
Patrick, I'd love to see what you guys come up with. I've had a couple of people in my tri club try EN plans and their one and only criticism was the lack of downtime/recovery.
I've mentioned this several times but I followed (or tried to follow) the EN training protocol to the letter of the law for two seasons (2010 and 2011). I got burned out a bit and a felt like I was a slave to the plan. I needed to change things up and I have done that this year. I'm training less hours with 10 hours max for HIM training and 13 hours max for IM training. EN plans involve less time than most plans to begin with so I have definitely scaled things back. I made sure to not have any run/bike two-a-days in order to keep my legs more fresh. I eliminated the second weekend bike ride.
I don't have a plan planned out weeks in advance... if that makes sense. I do my weekly training plan on Sunday night when I have a clear picture of what my work and life commitments are for the week and how my body is feeling. I have a base template already in my head so not much tweaking goes on but some rearranging happens from time to time.
My week looks something like this:
Monday: Medium Run, Swim
Tuesday: 60-75 min Bike
Wednesday: Medium Run, Swim
Thursday: 60-75 min Bike
Friday: Long Run
Saturday: Swim
Sunday: Long Bike
If my legs feel completely toasted on Monday morning I will break my "no run/bike two-a-day rule" and move the Monday run to Tuesday AM. More important to rest the legs if they need it than to be a slave to a plan.
It may look like I'm not getting much recovery because I'm on the go 7 days a week but I have four days a week where I'm only doing one workout and one of those is swim only. Doing a Tuesday AM ride and a Wednesday PM run gives me plenty of time (18 hours or so) of rest in between leg intensive workouts. Not being a slave to a pre-programmed plan also makes it easier to adjust for fatigue.
The result was that I got my mojo back and started to have fun again. I did not have a fun 2011 season. It felt like a second job and I couldn't continue down that path again.
The work done on my rides and runs are certainly done EN-style (FTP, intervals, etc.). I just needed to change some of when, why and how I was doing the workouts.
This may not work for some super Type-A's that scream "How High?" when told to "Jump!" but it has helped me immensely. I also had my two fastest HIM times this year employing said strategy and that included getting terrible leg cramps at Galveston (which cost me 10 minutes) and getting my ass kicked by the hilly run at Syracuse.
Notice how many times I said something like "slave to the plan" above. That wasn't on accident.
I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention how important things like post-workout nutrition, stretching, bi-weekly massages and things like that are to your training and recovery.
I also have some thoughts about race scheduling, race frequency and all that and how that plays a factor in all this. Maybe I'll share that later. Time to go to the pool!
As a side note, I did my own slight jigging of the plan for my IM training. Due to foot injury, I could not run two days in a row, and some days bike-run two a days were too much, so I ended up scaling back on my run plan, but with an injury that is to be expected. I also found the back to back biking too much for my poor knees, I needed more time between long rides, so I moved the intervals ride to Friday evenings, short run Saturday, then ABP ride Sunday. I am hoping that as I proceed with following EN style training I will get stronger and be able to handle more, but I feel like the changes I made allowed me to get the most out of the training plan, in a system my body could handle.
I think every one is going to find they need different recovery protocols, and will need to tweak the plans to suit how their body absorbs the training. I enjoy the process of learning what works for me, I think this is why EN appealed to me in the first place. We are given a plan to follow, yes, but you also need to be accountable for paying attention to how you feel. To me EN is assisted self coaching... you still have to be the one recording what sort of a toll training is having on your body, then run it by RnP to see what changes you should be making to the team plan.
I suppose every athlete is different when it comes to backing off the plan, like Rich said posting big numbers is very intoxicating, sometimes it's hard when you're always comparing yourself with other. I don't know if having EN build 'recovery' beyond what they already suggest into the plans would suit everyone, some people can handle more, others less. It all boils down to what we were told when we signed up for EN, even though you have a plan to follow, it's your responsibility to read the wiki info, read the forums, and take what works for you. There are so many athletes involved with EN at varying levels, I don't know how recovery could be 'planned'.
On the other hand, I think including more info about how we could learn to track this stuff ourselves would be helpful- that was a great article. I'm not sure I want to use a system like Restwise, but I have learned paying attention to mood, sleep patterns etc are good indicators to how recovered I am. We have lots of good articles about workout triage when things go wrong, I bet some sort of a system for a training plan triage based on needed recovery would work well too.
Thanks for the article Rich, curious to see what others have to say.
Having just come off of IM Canada, I took off 6 days and then started into a run focus plan. My ironman training was truncated by a serious bike crash and the ironman run leg was a walk/run effort 50 minutes slower than my previous ironman run split. So I was less fatigued post race like most of the team would be. My plan was to run four days and swim/bike two days, after a week of that I felt that the swim/bike wasn't going to deliver any fitness gains and I would be better served by running four days and separating them by days OFF. I feel much better now and don't fear those run days. Bottom line is you have to listen to what your body is telling you and change accordingly, everyone is different.
Awesome, happy to take credit for stuff that P posts :-)
My personal story: every week of IM training I struggle to find the weekly mix of workouts that work best for me. I really prefer to ride with some local guys when it works out -- Sawiris and a few others. I like to run with Riley for my easy runs, and a couple faster runners when I can. I like to swim at lunch vs the mornings. I absolutely don't do well (skip them) if I schedule stuff for the PM. I then do stupid stuff in LoseIt like setting myself up to lose 1.5-2lb/wk finding out, again, by Wednesday that it ain't gonna work.
So I pretty much manage my own training day by day, tweaking things in real time according to how I feel. I suspect that many of you do the same, using our plans are guides or suggestions vs straight up, do _this_ training plan.
Maybe PnI could add a recover workout / note to every week of every training plan:
"If you feel a need to take a day off, TAKE IT, no questions asked, don't hesitate!"
I think Rich said it best with his reminder for a recovery TAKE IT if you need it approach. Reason being not everyone is the same.
During seasons of heavy training, I used to sleep with my HRM. I knew my sleeping/waking up HR when I was "fresh." I used this as a baseline. If I woke up with my HR too high and outside of a tolerance... I knew I was not recovering and my body was trying to tell me something. I knew I was headed down the path of being sick or injured.
I have never been a slave the plan. I have no problem jigging with the plan, but I think that might be because of my background. I have been a personal trainer for over 12 years and also have a cert as a tri coach. I no longer coach athletes, but that knowledge does help me ask myself "what would I tell one of my athletes if they presented this issue to me". With a Type A personality, I do have to work very hard at listening to my coaching voice and not my athlete voice sometimes.
I will be entering my 3rd year with EN and I love the short intense training in the OS and had no issues with the 20 week plan, but like others, did start to feel the fatigue in that last VO2 block last year. This year I only did 14 weeks of OS before I went into the HIM plan.
My issue lies in jumping into a plan not from the onset. The bike volume never affects me but it is the run volume that got me injured this year.
My gut tells me that I need to take any intensity out of the long run,and just run the distance. I can keep the intensity in the short runs, but not the long runs. I just get to fatigued and my form is altered and then I get injured. I like that they added a short 45min hill run into the programs this year. If my upcoming race is hilly, then I alternate between a flat long run and a hilly long run every other week. Again, just running and practicing my fueling. I got introduced to water running this year because of an injury and had a really good plan that invovled interval work, which made the runs go by very quickly, so I might continue to do 1 run a week in the water to give my body a break from the pounding but still get a good workout.
All this to say that I still do all my biike workouts as EN assigns and most of the runs as they assign as well and repeating some great benefits.
I always look at it this way - simply that workouts stress your body, recovery/rest allows it to build back stronger than it was before. Therefore, proper and adequate recovery is more important than any single training session. Unfortunately, that can be a tough thing to keep in mind as we (triathletes) tend to feel like slackers if the plan says to do a workout and it gets skipped. So maybe an amendment to your note is that no single workout is worth risking injury - just a little perspective reminder.
Secondarily - I'm finding over time that the proper balance, for me at least, is to work out often enough that I feel like I'm making good progress, but not so often that I lose that edge to really want to put in solid effort. If I get to the point where I feel like I'm going through the motions two workouts in a row - it's time to back off and give myself a break to get back into the game mentally. Usually that lasts for only a day or two - but even if it lasts a week, better that than the alternative.
My problem is that I don't realise I am fatigued and keep pushing notwithstanding I have lots of symptoms of overtraining (disturbed sleep, finding it hard to concentrate, feeling flat in training, fitness going backwards).
In season, I am much better at managing the training load and have always peaked my Vdot and FTP 4 weeks out from my A race.
I think I need to take my waking heart rate, weight, hours slept, and note the quality of that sleep to help me monitor my fatigue.
The general outlook seems to be: it's probably not possible to "plan" for recovery. Looking at a training plan over multiple weeks, after all these years, I am still not able to point at a day and say - "There, that's the day I'm going to feel too fatigued to get that workout in." I suspect everyone will have several specific metrics which describe FOR THAT PERSON, AT THAT POINT IN TIME, when some recovery is needed.
For me, I follow (but don't actually record) my AM weight, hours sleep, mood, overall fatigue, and feelings of muscle soreness (being careful to not check those latter two until Ive been awake for two hours - "at my age", I ALWAYS feel tired and sore when I wake up.) I listed those metrics in a specific order. IOW, if my weight has dropped too much after a long run, that takes precedence over any other factor, and I will structure in some recovery. And, if eveything else is OK, but my quads freel trashed (like today after the Ragnar), then that will trigger a reduction in the plan.
Now, the second question is, "What IS recovery?" Rarely,it may mean a total day off. Usually, it's a reduction in intensity or time, depending on the specific workout planned. Like today, I both shortened the ride I'd planned by 50% and reduced the IF from IM pace, to stupid recovery pace (0.55).
I know we can't build recovery into the EN plans any more than we have now. But we can learn from each other how to do the best job possible at self monitoring, and how to support yourself when you do need to go off plan for some reduced work. To me, that's the hardest part, dealing with the guilt feelings when what I write in the training log is not what I wrote on the white board a week earlier for that days activity.
Great timing for this discussion as I am full into BURN OUT mode right now. What is scary is thinking of losing all the fitness gains by taking time off. Or, getting fat (I am paranoid about this because I used to weigh 65 pounds more than I do now and I am bad with food).
Last year was one of my best seasons ever. This year, I was great in May but progressively worsened as the summer went along. In June, I could ride a steady 4 hours holding 240 watts. By mid-July, I was lucky if I felt like holding 200 watts. Instead of getting more fit, I was losing ground in all three disciplines and it made no sense. I thought "If I am doing all the workouts, then why am I not gaining ground? Well, I guess I should do more". What happened is classic overtraining symptoms: poor sleep, constant tired feeling, lack of motivation, and just a general "I don't care" attitude toward training and/or racing.
Maybe this is the wrong place to ask this but what do you guys do when you get to the point like I am above?
I usually know I'm heading for over training by my cravings and diet. If I'm not motiviated to eat smartly (either food choice or portion) than I know I'm carring some fatigue. I do think it would be good to call out days that are specifically meant to be recovery. To me a recovery day has little to no intensity and more often than not it is a full day off. I would rather use the time to either sleep, catch up with family or catch up with work.
I also have always liked Gordo's comment about intensity...you shouldn't sacrifice your next workout during your current workout. Usually this doesn't apply so much to the specific work intervals for me, but rather what happens outside of those. A long ride where I do some FTP intervals and some ABP intervals are good, but racing a training buddy up that last 1.3 mile climb after riding for 2.5 hours is me impacting my next workout.
I also wonder about peoples thoughts on our "testing" weeks. We have been saying these are actually our "recovery" weeks, but while these weeks dont' have as much volume, they are very intense and they are also usually following one of our highest volume weeks. I'm trying something different the next two weeks. I'm planning to do a FTP test and run test next week, but I am calling this week a cut back week in order to prepare for that week. I feel like going long on both Sat and Sun and then doing an FTP test the following Tuesday is tough (probably more mentally than physically), so I plan on low volume later this week including the weekend.
-my legs are jumping all over when I am trying to rest/ sleep- despite foam rolling and stretching
-I do not wake before the alarm. This is my #1 indicator. I ALWAYS wake up just before the alarm. If I don't, then I am too tired to train.
On the weekend, I wanted to be out the door by 7 am, but I did not set an alarm. I was waking up at 6:45. All the prep put me out the door just after 8 am. I needed to sleep.
Yesterday alarm was set for 5:40, woke at 5:30.
Today, alarm was set for 6:40, woke at 6:25.
So it has nothing to do with getting up at the same time every day, cause I don't. It is all about sleep.
My "top" athletes (KQ'ers, AG winners...) train every day. They rarely take a "full day" off. The only time they take days off are before a big race, 3 days before the race they get a day off, then they do a light workout the next two days and race. They do not go balls to the wall everyday and they cycle their training just like we do at EN. The big difference here is they log everything like Coach P is doing and e-mail it to their coach. Their coach then uses this data to structure their workouts. They pay north of $400.00 a month for said services.
What shocks me about some of the MOP and BOP athletes I work with is that they take many days off, and are still more fatigued than my top athletes. I do not believe this is because they are less fit, they just ride their training plans into the brick wall. I met a former EN'er who thinks that the plans are evil and it is all EN's fault that she needs hip surgery. I disagree, I have never had Coach R or P hold a gun to my head and tell me to get out and run every inch of the training plan or else...
I think the rest/recovery issue is more about "permission" than planning.
I took this season "off" and only planned on doing short course racing. I had great results with the SC plans. I also got myself into a HIM and did it on 5 weeks of HIM training plan and did great. I was truly RESTED going into those 4 weeks of hard work and it paid off big time for me on race day. I did an OLY 2 weeks after that and set a PR bike on a hilly/curvy course. Again, I have not reached a level of fatigue all season that last years Ironman had me at...hence I think I had big gains on race day.
I trained every day like my top athletes do while following the EN plan. I also backed off when I started to feel overly tired. I think the key is to know your body and when the wall is aproaching. Sometimes you need to hit that wall, but most times I think you can avoid it.
Maybe the best advice I ever recieved about this came from R&P..."This is just a game people"
As suggested by others I think when it says "optional" for day off a lot of people do that swim or short run when in fact they should have taken the day off. There is a strong need to stick to the plan if for only knowing what sport and duration each day.
I think one of the issues is the idea of "work works" but also the idea of "don't do anything today, that will negatively impact tomorrow". I struggle with this one a bit. Especially, when I even slightly over achieve. Wednesday has a ton of Z4 in it, long run Thursday, Followed by a 4 hour bike on Sat with even more Z4/3. Really easy to dig yourself into a hole if your lacking sleep or nutrition. Overachieve on any of it and your cooked. There are two voices in my head, One telling me to stay within my zones and the other is telling me that in order to get faster I need to go slightly over those zones. hardly the plans fault. Mainly this athletes fault.
All of the above are mistakes I have made or currently making....
I think its sad that anyone is blaming an EN plan for getting them injured. In fact I think one of the large benefits of EN is upping the odds that I'm going to get to the start line healthy. I can't seem to find anywhere in Our plans where it says 5 hour ride followed by a two hour run. Met one of those guys at my training sight a few weeks ago. Felt bad for the dude, he was cooked.
A focus on recovery will serve you and the team well in at least two ways:
1. The EN athletes will have better performances and far less burn-out. This will lead to:
2. Much higher athlete retention/ less subscriber turnover. Most athletes that get burned out simply slide off to the side without comment; after all, who wants to expose themselves as the "weak" one? For every athlete that thrives on the "squeeze the lemon" modality, there are ten that are drilled into an early fatigue grave.
I'll be curious to see how you will implement this new awareness.
One thing that's really a disadvantage here is that it is easy to measure work, so we do. We can measure miles or hours or heart rate or power or FTP or whatever. (Those who utterly disdain HR often use a line like this: "for a long time we measured HR, because it was the only thing we could do.") But it's a lot harder to measure recovery in a really straightforward way, and - as noted in that post and by other commenters here - it's hard to trust yourself when we're all Type A people.
I know it sounds really sort of stupid/silly, but some quantitative guidance to go along with the "by feel" might be helpful. For example, I am not sure from reading Patrick's note, whether he is still using RestWise. If so, do you find it "uniquely valuable", compared to specifically tracking the things you note (mood, weight, sleep hours, etc)? For those of us concerned about this, but new to the idea of tracking, what do you actually look for in those parameters, and how do you respond?
(If you already use a paid account on TP, virtually all the restwise metrics are recordable...but without interpretation, I've never bothered....but if I knew what to make of them and could save $150/year vs jumping in on something like rest wise....)
Al, as a vet ("grizzled" deleted) and physician, can you comment on some of the specifics about these things that are easily measured?
Just like RPE can't be forgotten with all the gadgets we have, being self-aware of recovery can't be trusted solely to measurements... but if measurements can help us get ahead of the curve or confirm things we might not have the confidence to believe about ourselves, they would really be great to have.
I think putting up a video that says you can rest when you're tired is it really that productive. After all, the people who want to wrestle a more aggressive than those who will one arrest look at this video and say: it's not for me, it's for someone else. :-)
My initial thought in this area, neglecting of course all the other work that actually need to be doing, is create some sort of a personal record-keeping tool which will allow our members to track some baseline metrics. Ideas could be diverse but could include: Heart rate, hours sleep, wake time, overall mood rating, workout performance rating, total workout time, etc.
For me my Excel worksheet tracking tools serve 2 functions. 1st it gives you on track my training because I'm literally logging things every day. 2nd, as I enter that data I am aware of how my body is reacting to the training. More so than just making a gut call, that data allows me to actually see a trend and make a call now versus trying to push through. Of course, I have the benefit of over 10 years of training experience (translation: I've messed up a lot of times!!!!) to know exactly where I fall on the fatigue spectrum.
Any thoughts here?
My question about rest and recovery in general is where does the balance lie between cutting out a workout vs cutting back a workout?Is there a way to know when its better to just stand down or still get out and do something ( but run the risk of just doing junk miles/time)
I can/do/have find/found myself in a situation where a workout is blown (on a trainer say), because I'm in the hole or over cooked, so the decision now becomes: do I put in the time/miles left at z1/z2. Or do I pull the plug and tell myself "everything else is going to be junk, maybe detrimental to tomorrow, so its better to just call it now and rest" -- in my experience I usually pull the plug, If I'm not hitting my targets by a signif margin, or my pacing/power falls off the cliff on the 4th set, I know I'm done and everything else is damage control, so If i can walk away, I do.
And If I know starting the day that I'm blown (say HR is high, my alarm wakes me up out of a coma, and I'm still dead tired) do I stand down for the day thinking: anything I do is pointless besides resting, or do I still hit the road for some slow easy miles for an hour, thinking this is still good practice of working through fatigue?
Some wisdom from the 'grizzled' vets and coaches on where/when they draw those lines and if junk miles exist in the context of events Oly vs HIM vs IM might be helpful to me and maybe to the general population. And yes I know thats asking a lot
Here are my suspicions
I'd also like to add that I have personally seen a lot of high performing athletes over do it and just bonk, like totally, during a season. It really is so important to find balance in life. I hate days that I dont exercise primarily because it means I can't eat as much lol, but know it is important for a proper balance. My vote is for coach's notes that remind us at appropriate times in the training cycle to check in with ourselves. Just as we do out SBR tests, we should do regular "fatigue" tests to keep ourselves on track. Like everything else, we need to track and record those things that Coach P and others mentioned, and we simply need to feel good about taking a day off when we want one, not guilty. Balance.
No WSM here, and only slightly old and grizzled (and I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night either). That said, I've got 12 yrs in the sport and multiple IM, HIM and many shorter finishes.
My thoughts to your Q, in what I hope is not random format:
OLY and Shorter
Biggest bang for the buck is on getting the quality in for these kinds of events - see the EN SC Plans, for example. Most if not many of your workouts in training for these events will be hard and will leave you pretty thrashed, but the objective is alternating the thrashing with enough recovery so that you can do it again tomorrow in probably a different sport. IMO, key in this kind of plan is how you build your week. When you're over-done from this kind of work, I tend to think (n=1 only and personal experience), that since your workouts are most all < 90 min anyway, it is best to do the time at whatever pace you can manage. That is, there is such a thing as junk miles when training for short course, esp. when your workout duration gets over and above maybe 125-150% of race time (so, say 3 hrs long bike for an Oly, for example). There is a real diminishing returns issue here, as that duration may impact the work you need to do later on in the week or in the plan cycle overall.
As you likely know from the OS and SC plans, the key workouts are interval bike, interval run, long-ish run and long-ish bike, the rest is more or less fill-in-the-blank.
HIM
Applying the same logic to HIM ... you need to do enough workload to dial in your paces as well as be certain that you can manage fatigue and nutrition across the race duration. If you need 'junk miles' to get to that point, then it probably isn't junk miles; it is not uncommon to see people doing a long ride or two in HIM builds that approach HIM race duration – especially if you can’t get to the work in a 3+ hour ride, defaulting to ABP or ABP- for estimated race duration might be a good alternative, and get you some benefit; the idea is not to stress fast and far at the same time. At LC racing, the work becomes more of a problem from load than intensity, per se, and it's therefore a bigger risk to be aware of across a build or plan -- you can think you feel great, then suddenly crack wide open in the middle of some 30 min interval 2 hrs into a 3 hr ride. In those cases, I believe (again, n=1) damage control is key. After all, the same thing can (unfortunately) happen on race day ...
It becomes very important to hit the key workout durations and intensities for HIM build (long bike, interval bike, long run, long swim) and the rest can probably be managed to control fatigue and preserve the integrity of the key sessions within a given bloc of training. There is probably less pure downside to junk miles for HIM and IM, SAUs aside, b/c in the end you do need overall endurance to be high. My succinct thought is really the same as Patrick's advice somewhere .. in HIM or IM build, at least go do the warm-up and see if your legs come around - they often will - esp. on a key session day. If it's not a key session, then do the same, and give yourself the permission to turn around and go home ... but make the commitment to back that up with a full session the next day.
IM
Same as HIM, but with probably even more attention paid to the key sessions in the last 4-5 weeks before taper. In all of my IM builds, I admit to cutting short the Friday workout (regardless of what it was) before RR Saturdays as well as taking an occasional easier day (esp. on the bike or day after the long run (in EN plans, this is also Friday)) outside the key/core sessions. I know it is slight heresy here in the haus, but I don't really believe there are junk miles in IM training. If you're doing the work overall, more is just more (and which you need) up until it compromises your ability to do the work -- if that happens, back off, but only far enough to keep up the work.
One other thing I would add is that age, gender and body size will also impact all of this – more so in IM than HIM. For example, more ‘mature’, smaller, women are amazingly resilient and can take a ton of work, while younger guys (big and small) need to be careful or will smoke themselves on an EN Adv Plan. For guys, the bigger and older, recovery becomes a lot more important ... as one who is both, I know . Generally, I’d say that what really happens is a more attuned need and ability to balance that fatigue overall as we age. To Al’s earlier point, and older gent may not be able to crush himself as he did when he was in his 30s, but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t residual fatigue that needs to be managed by the athlete – by whatever metric you feel works best for you. Personally it’s mood and AM HR that I don’t so much track as be aware of, esp. during a higher volume phase; it tends to be a good early warning sign of over-reaching for many and has been statistically shown to be a marker for over-work in endurance performers (e.g. Tour riders, O2 vector pharmaceuticals notwithstanding).
Last, but not least, I think it matters a great deal where you are in your season. Feeling tired 7 or 8 weeks into the OS in the middle of February ... probably low cost to miss one if you are feeling fried vs. 5 or 6 weeks from an A IM race ...
Hope this is helpful or at least food for thought.
I'm personally leaning towards us including lots of notes across the plan related to recovery -- how are you feeling, if shitty then do x, y, z in that order, stuff like that. I prefer this method because I know you'll all see it.
P working with other smart types to create a spreadsheet would be useful for the spreadsheet inclined.
Wow what a Great Thread!
Tim: great summary! Thanks so much. I had a similar outlook about how things should adjust based on distances.
I can really see a careful analytical approach to identifying fatigue, encouraging rest and perscriptions for workout triage being the next quantum leap for this 'self'-coached numbskull.
Thanks guys. Happy to help out ...
Edits in the original post to reflect some additional refinement as well as fix the typos. It's what I get for doing this from a smartphone.
@ Rich, I agree with you. There is a a wiki on workout triage, but IMO it could benefit from being more plan specific. That is, what you would do if you feel lousy will vary whether its swim, bike or run and whether you are in OS, SC plan or IM or HIM build.
a) today is an A" priority, 'do not pass go' workout (long bike, long run, interval bike). If you need recovery, you'll need to reschedule this workout
b) this is a "B" priority workout. If you need to dial it back, either shorten the intervals, dial the effort down one zone, but try to get some work in
c) this is a "C" priority workout. If you don't have it in you, go put in the saddle/on your feet/in the pool time
Having that "permission" would help a type-A like myself a lot.
I have been following this thread closely and trying to choose my words carefully. I agree with most of what's been said so far. Mike's idea seems to be on track. I assume however that under "c" priority that should be "don't" not "go" put in the time or maybe there should be a "d" for don't.
The issues that I also struggle with is feeling that while I have faith in the program I have to do all the workouts or I will be unprepared to complete the race at the desired intensity. I need to get better sleep and have to use better recovery protocols(compression under cloths at work if need be and bi weekly message and good fueling and refueling). I guess we are trying to maximize the number of hard workouts we can not just complete but nail and still be ready for another.
If your tired take a day off only happens with me three days or more too late.