COACH’S CORNER – TOO MUCH, TOO FAST, TOO SOON

What is overtraining?
Overtraining happens when the intensity and/or the frequency of your training exceeds your body’s ability to recover from the training load.

It can seriously affect you mentally, physically and emotionally.

When it comes to overtraining, there are different levels:

1. Acute overtraining – this is a result of trying to run too intensely, too many days in a row without proper recovery. Acute, or short term, overtraining will typically manifest itself as soreness or worse yet injury, but this type of fatigue can usually be addressed with a brief rest period.
2. Chronic overtraining – this definitely tends to come on much more gradually over weeks and months. Chronic fatigue, attributed to overtraining for a long period of time because of its gradual and systematic nature, can really take you down and put you out for a significant period of time.

First signs of chronic overtraining:

• Generalised fatigue
• Weight loss and loss of appetite
• Diarrhoea
• Restless sleep and early morning awakenings
• Sexual disinterest
• Acute exhaustion marked by breathlessness
• Colds or flus
• Higher perceived effort for the same sessions
• Increased resting heart rate
• Underperforming in ‘sweetspot’ racing
• Recurrent headaches
• Loss of desire and motivation to train

Preventing overtraining:

1. Don’t race too frequently.Running races puts a lot of stress on your body. Without taking time to recover from frequent racing, and devoting time to train in a periodised fashion towards them, your performances will plateau. Since racing should be 100% maximum effort, you’ll quickly peak your current fitness and have trouble running significantly faster. I recommend no more than 1-2 races per month, depending on race goals and distances.
2. Sleep as much as you need.This is a no-brainer. Getting fitter and fresher happens when you sleep and recover because that’s when your body adapts and super-compensates from your training. Do yourself an easy favour and make sure you get at least 7-8 hours of sleep every night.
3. Eat real food in the right quantities.Your diet provides the fuel and nutrients you need to train and it helps your body recover from the workouts and long runs that you’re doing on a weekly basis.
4. When training, don’t focus too much on one thing.Some runners get convinced they need to do long runs every other day or run interval workouts three times every week. You’re going to get over-trained if you put too much emphasis on any one type of training. Training should be varied: there are staples, like easy distance runs, and then runs like long runs, interval workouts, or hill sprints where you only need a bit. Variety is important, so don’t get stuck doing too much of one thing for too long.
5. Recovery runs should enhance recovery (freshness), not fitness.Don’t fall into the trap of trying to “get a workout” from a recovery run. That’s not the point of these easy runs and if you try to run too far or too fast, you’re potentially negating the positive training affects from the harder workouts. Easy runs allow the quality sessions to shine!

Know the purpose of every run and stick to your plan. Most runners run too fast on their easy days and too slow on their hard days. Strike a balance and know when to push the pace and when to take it easy.

Breaking the habits of overtraining

For some readers, particularly the case with many ultrarunners who tend to be on the slightly obsessive and compulsive side naturally, prevention is no longer an option and years of overtraining have ingrained unhealthy training patterns that have led to bouts of chronic overtraining. So how do you break the habits and form new ones which will help you avoid doing the same unhealthy patterns over and over?

1. Try halving your usual routine for a month.Half your usual volume and frequency of training and see if energy levels and motivation improves. Focus on other aspects of your training instead like flexibility, strength, etc.
2. Find some other ways to deal with life.Unfortunately far too many runners, particularly ultrarunners, use running as (and often the only) coping mechanism for the myriad of issues life naturally presents. While running can be a great therapeutic tool, it can’t be the only tool you have. Commitment to a healthy habit is one thing, dependence is another thing altogether.
3. Utilise a coach.Even if you feel you don’t need a coach for any other purpose than to keep you accountable to a safer, sounder training program, then that is as good a reason to have a coach as any! Personally, I can vouch from my own athletes who I coach, there is a large percentage of them who know the nuts and bolts of running training pretty much as well as I do, but one of the major reasons for utilising me is for that level of both expertise and accountability when it comes to training load, recovery and periodising towards the races that matter and to avoid the overtraining traps!

I hope this article has helped you assess your training and given you some thoughts on overtraining. ‘Listening to your body’ is a key component of the success of runners both in performance, durability and longevity. Don’t ignore the early signs as prevention is of course the best treatment. Like all things though, some of us occasionally will push the envelop in search of our bodies limitations, and bad patterns may develop, some over many years. In this case, I highly recommend seeking the advice of experts.

Brendan Davies, Head Coach
Up Coaching

Get in touch with Brendan Davies and his team at UP Coaching by clicking on the logo above, emailing him at brendan@upcoaching.com.au or visiting Instagram or Facebook.