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