“How Do I Not Over-train?”

This is something I get asked a lot by patients in the physio room, and it seems an appropriate first topic as I get stuck in to power training for a half marathon at the end of Feb.

Training hard and over-training can be a very fine line, with one achieved at optimal loading for the physiology of the body and the other when you strain the body just enough to cause more net tissue damage (and injury) than net growth. It’s important to keep in mind that everyone is different, so there is no formula we can simply plug our height, weight, age, gender or goals into that will tell us exactly how much is too much. We can however, implement some reasonably straightforward principles into training to help us get things right.

  • Avoid Training on Consecutive Days

This one might seem pretty obvious, but its particularly important if you are starting a completely new sort of training or working your way back from injury. Training and recovery are both equally as important as each other, with the latter often not given the respect it’s due. Training is the breaking down of tissue, with recovery being the time you eat the right things and rebuild better, stronger and faster than what was there before. We can easily get sucked in to a boom-bust behaviour. What I mean by this, is you train very hard for a couple of days (the boom) and then find yourself so sore that you can’t walk for the next week (the bust). Training needs to be gradual, and having a day off in-between training days when you get started can be an easy way to make sure your body is given the time it needs to recover, especially as a beginner getting into physical exercise for the first time.

  • Have Variations in your Training

We can still be active while we recover. Keeping with the marathon training rhetoric, my personal goals are to be doing one decent run each week. Other days of the week, I’ll still be getting my Km’s in, but I’ll switch up whether I’ll getting these from the bike, or the rowing machine. Another option would be to get into the pool. All of these are great ways to train without the relentless pounding the body takes from running. It’s also important to respect the benefit that specific strength training can have on the body, and no, this does not mean that we need to go and get ourselves a gym membership to start pushing weights. To typically train for endurance strength, we want to keep the load low and the repetitions high, so body-weight exercises in sets of 12, 15 or 20 are perfect for achieving these parameters. Squats, lunges, step-ups, sit-downs, and floor exercises can all be easily performed in a small space in your own home.

  • Listen To Your Body

This last principle is often easier said than done, and is often accompanied with the question of “how do I know if I’ve done too much”. For this, I like to give my patients a traffic light guide model. A “Green Light” is given to an activity that may/may not be sore at the time, but the pain stops pretty much as soon as they stop doing the activity. They can do as much of that activity as they like, knowing that the pain/discomfort they feel is not physical damage to tissue. An “Orange Light” is given to an activity that again may/may not be sore at the time, but the pain/discomfort stays for a few hours before settling once again by that evening (within 24 hours). The patient can continue with this activity, but must pay attention that the activity does not become a “Red Light”. A “Red Light” activity is one that may/may not be sore at the time, but the pain or discomfort hangs around for a long time afterwards, and is also more sore the next morning (outside of 24 hours). It’s possible that this activity, if continued, could increase the chance of tissue injury and should be adjusted to be less strenuous moving forward, to limit this possibility.

If you’re interested in taking up a new sport or physical hobby, hopefully these three steps can give you the confidence to get stuck into things without the worry or doubt that the pain you feel training is actual damage to your body.

If you’re interested in reading a little bit more, here are some articles to g a little bit deeper into the science of training.

Teej

Over-training and Recovery: A Conceptual Model https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter_Hassmen/publication/13545392_Overtraining_and_recovery_A_conceptual_model/links/548199d60cf22525dcb6268c.pdf

Maximal Strength Training Improves Running Economy in Distance Runners http://sport1.uibk.ac.at/lehre/burtscher/efficiency-artikel,2008.pdf

Time to Push the Boat Out

So the time has come, I’m writing my first blog. I’m not exactly sure where this will go, so I’m going to start writing, stop when I’ve had enough, and hopefully what I’ve produced at the end of it all isn’t a huge pile of verbal diarrhea.

So, where do I start. I guess a bit of background about myself wouldn’t go amiss. I’m 23 years old, and am working in a sports-focused private practice on the Kapiti Coast in New Zealand. It’s been a bit of a windy road getting here, but if you’re still sitting at your computer reading this, I guess we’ll have a look at the shortened version.

I was born in Reading, England. My parents are both teachers and I have one brother who is two years younger than I am. On my 5th birthday, we moved to a small town called Attleborough in Norfolk and it was here that I first discovered I was pretty competitive when it came to sports. I played football then, as pretty much every kid does in the UK.

In 2004, my dad had a midlife crisis, and instead of buying a motorbike or getting some tattoos like most middle-aged men do, he decided to move our tight knit little family to New Zealand. On the other side of the bloody world.

It was here that I would grow up, throwing in the spherical ball for one a little more oval and not looking back. Through high school, I played almost every sport I could, but rugby was the big one. At the time of finishing high school, I had only had a couple of injuries; a broken hand and sprained calf. I played through a lot of minutes with niggles. Going to the physio back then wasn’t overly common practice, and in a small town the good old Kiwi “she’ll be right” attitude meant you just got on with things unless you were seriously hurt. The small town life wasn’t for me, so off to the university of Otago I went, full of hope and expectation.

It was during my time here that I really learned first hand what it means and feels like to be properly injured.

Things started off not too bad. I played colts for a club and had a pretty good first season; minor rolled ankle here, sore shoulder there, nothing that kept me off the footy paddock for more than 5 days. That is, until I played a game of “social” rugby just after the start of my second semester against a rival hall and rolled my ankle so that I couldn’t walk on it afterwards. X-rays showed that I had broken it, but everything pretty much lined up and I was in a cast for 4 weeks and a moonboot for another 4 after that.

This was the start of a cascade of injuries that would plague my sporting life at uni; multiple rolled ankles, a groin tendinopathy, a torn quad muscle, a broken jaw, a subluxed shoulder and a torn MCL. I spent that much time on a physio bed (we luckily had free sessions through our rugby club) that I think that’s what made me decide to become a physio myself. Through all these injuries, I would keep coming back. I was young. I was determined. And I still somehow thought my body was indestructible. 

Fast forward to 2 weeks in to my last placement, at the end of my fourth year of university, 4 weeks away from handing in my last portfolio and expecting to graduate in December of that year. I was playing in the semi-final of an invitational sevens tournament, and I attempted a last ditch tackle to stop a player from scoring. I came down in a heap, landing directly on top of the opposing players heels, and just felt deep, deep extreme pain. I had, without knowing exactly what I’d done, ruptured my pancreas, requiring emergency surgery that night, waking up in hospital with over 30 staples holding my abdomen together, a couple of drains and a catheter. What the hell just happened.

I did as was told, spent a few weeks at home, and with a lot of support, managed to complete my studies by the end of 2016. I passed with distinction, and now I’m here.

As you can see, I do know what it feels like to be injured. I know how difficult it is to mentally keep pushing yourself back. It’s why I wanted to start this, as I know I can’t be the only person like me.

Through this blog, I hope to cover a range of topics:

  • Published research
  • Go-to exercises
  • Personal experiences I have while working as a physio
  • Updates on how my training is going
  • What I’m working on to get back to my own sport.

Peace out,

Teej