A Few Thoughts On Overtraining

"Better to stop short than fill to the brim. Over sharpen the edge and the blade will soon blunt... Retire when work is done. This is the way of Heaven." from the Tao Te Ching


Giving your best. It is the easiest thing in the world to do sometimes. Especially when you are exited and committed. And you have a goal with a firm deadline. You go all out. You give it everything you have. No one expects anything less from you. "You"expect nothing less from you. It is with this mindset that you have come to accomplish many things in life. So it is no surprise you enter the training for triathlon with this mindset as well.

As much as I applaud this mindset, I am also keenly aware of how it can also negatively affect your performance and ultimately undermine your experience of the sport of triathlon. I know this because of my own personal journey down the backside of the "More training is better and harder training is better still" mountain and into a crevice that left me unable to train or race for 5 years.

The key thing to consider is while the workouts you plan and complete are important, what is of equal importance if not more so, is the quality of the recovery you allow between the workouts. Perhaps you've seen the equation Stress + Rest = Performance? Simply put, the quality of the stress (or workout) and the quality of your rest (or recovery) is what adds up to your performance on race day. It is the combination of these two things that determine your improved fitness and adaptation to future workloads.

It was during my time away from triathlon that I came to fully appreciate the wisdom of the words that precede this post. What follows next are five principles I've used to embody the sentiment they convey in my actual daily training.

1. Strive to be honest about your current fitness level and accept where you are. At the beginning of any training block take time to assess as honestly as possible where you are in terms of your fitness. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. All you need is a known distance and a way to track time. A local track and a sports watch will do. A heart rate monitor, if available can add finer detail to the assessment. Test during weeks where you have lowered both volume and intensity to allow for a true assessment. By returning to do the same test regularly, you remove the guesswork from your training. How you perform on your tests can tell you lot and help guide your future choices with regard to the duration, frequency and intensity, and even the sequence of workouts.

2. Learn to be patient with your training. Many athletes will move on to the next phase in their training because of what it says on a calendar, or because it is what someone they know, or someone they've read about is doing in an attempt to rush improvement. What you should ask yourself based on your tests is, "Did you make the gain?" The answer to this question is what should determine whether or not you are ready to move on to more exotic and demanding types of training. Remember, improved fitness isn't always linear. It is important to keep in mind your training, your diet, the quality and quantity of your rest, and your body all work synergistically to create a gradual adaptation to increasing volume and intensity. It is this systematic consistency of workout stimuli, recovery and diet, which leads to improved fitness and race results.

3. As a general rule, workouts should leave you feeling satisfied and even refreshed. You may not want to repeat what you did, but try to leave your workouts knowing you could repeat the effort if necessary. One way to achieve this is to find other ways to gain speed or endurance without continually pushing your body to its limits. Work on refining your technique in the three disciplines and improving endurance, functional strength and range of motion, prior to working solely on generating speed. Consider speed training as you would sugary dessert -- something to be indulged in sparingly if at all. The truth of the matter is if you become adept at refining your technique, and developing your endurance while gaining functional strength and maintaining range of motion, you will get faster without killing yourself to do it.

4. Listen to your body. There will be times when your body will subtly ask you to rest. Learn to listen to it. By learning to recognize your body's unique signals and honoring them immediately, you won't find yourself in the situation where gentle hints have become firm, painful ultimatums. The hints can be as simple as difficulty sleeping or feeling the need to stay in bed a bit longer than normal after the alarm has gone off. Dreading or postponing workouts is another common but subtle indication that your body may not be ready for more training. Other more common symptoms include moodiness, loss of appetite, lethargy, slow healing wounds, onset of colds or coughs, increased allergic reactions, elevated or prolonged muscle soreness and stiffness, elevated resting heart rate. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, take a day off.

5. Learn to trust yourself and your plan. Map out a plan and stick to it. Map out a plan and be flexible. I know this sounds contradictory but it isn't. Try to develop a routine and stick with it. Have a reason for each workout. The more focused and purposeful you can be in developing your training plan, the easier it is to stick with it and see the rewards from what you have set in motion. But you need to be flexible because there is always the larger aspect of your life outside of triathlon that also needs to be attended to. When your life outside of triathlon interferes with your training, and it will, you will need to be able to adapt. The simplest advise I can give, is if something comes up that needs attending to that will keep you from doing your workout on the day it is scheduled, then skip that workout. Forget about it. It is gone. Move on to the next workout, or repeat the one before it. Whatever you do, do not attempt to "make up" or "double up" workouts or training blocks to stay on or get back on track. Take it from me, it doesn't work.

Your overall goal should be to enjoy your training. Your training should enhance your life through improved, health, fitness, greater self-esteem and self-awareness. At the center of each and every workout, every decision, and any training program, is you. Always remember this because ultimately triathlon is one of life's the demonstrable activities where you can truly experience and reap the benefits of a "less is more" approach.

Train well!

Getting Back To Normal

Wherever that is...

At any rate I started this week the way I like to start all my training weeks and that is with functional strength work.  

Lately I've been reading Chuckie V's blog and actively trying to incorporate some of his ideas where I can.  Sadly strength work is not one of the things I used (took, borrowed, stole).  But to be fair, and I'm perfectly happy to admit this,  the posts I've seen where he talks about strength training for triathletes say I'm not old enough to worry about it yet.  I can live with that.  

But that did start me thinking more and more about the different ideas people can have about strength; how to develop it and how to apply it properly.  As a committed experiment of one, the best thing I have to add is that I feel endurance athletes need to rethink the entire concept of strength training altogether.  I will acknowledge, lately I've been seeing more and more people expand their definition and experience of strength work by using programs like CrossFit, P90x, pilates, or Boot Camp style workouts to get more from their bodies.  I honestly believe this is a good thing as we move from the traditional "bodybuilding centric" paradigm and begin to incorporate more functional bodyweight and balance movements into the mix.

And that's why I left the yoga and functional strength work in my schedule after reading ideas from Chuckie V, Gordo and a few others.  I think I've settled on a pattern of work and recovery that takes advantage of the available free time in my schedule and allows from some quality work on the days that I am working my normal job.  The reason I've taken the time to sit down and do this (again) is I felt I still wasn't making the most of my time.  Even though I've seen some real gains in my training, my body composition continues to improve and move more into the lean muscle side of things, I was still struggling to fit in key workouts in each sport.  Some of this can be rectified by using a single word much more often, "No," if you were wondering.

So this weeks work so far was something like this.  Monday 1 hour of functional strength work: about 150 pushups, 50 pullups, 30 single leg squats per leg, 20 min of jump rope, 10 min running stairs and 15 min of core burning work(I'm still on fire, moving from sitting to standing is difficult).  There was also a 30 min easy run. Tuesday was 2 hours cycling and 1 hour swim with Tabata intervals in each workout thrown in for good measure.  Wednesday was 1:30 cycling and trips to get rolfed and some acupuncture.  I decided to do some housekeeping and post this blog otherwise there would have been a swim as well.  Like I said the schedule is a work in progress.  As am I.

Thoughts About P90X 11 Months Later

So a lot of folks have been looking at my P90X posts this summer and for the most part I think if you take the time to look through them they speak for themselves but I thought I'd offer my take on the program now and give some input on which posts about my experience I thought might offer the most information.

I suppose one thing I'd want to know right off the bat is how is my weight/fitness now? When I started the P90X program in September 2007 I had already lost about 10 pounds and my weight at that point I was 164 pounds. Now I weigh 154 pounds. Aside from losing the weight and being able to keep it off, P90X allowed me to get back into triathlon training and racing faster than if I'd not used the program. I was not only able to build strength but I was also able to build my base endurance up in the process. P90X is also very, very core intensive. For this reason if you look around the internet you will see not only dramatic changes in weight but also huge changes in posture. Personally for the better posture alone P90X is more than worth the money and effort you will put into it if you chose to purchase the program and use it.

The nutrition plan that comes in the program is also very sound and well thought out. If you take the time to study it and adjust it to your personal needs and situation, you will find this is where your most visible results will come quickly. Without the diet you will get much stronger, but chances are you won't see the visual results P90X is so famous for. I also believe how we choose to eat affects not only how we look in the mirror, but how we ultimately think and behave. When we eat better, we are better.

Currently I still use the P90X workouts 2-3 times a week depending on time, timing (am I racing that weekend), and fitness goals. The workout is portable if you have a set of resistance bands. This summer I used P90X to stay in shape while on trips to California and Washington D.C. I plan to use the full 90 day program again during my off season. Where I decide to position it will depend on if I also plan to use the P90X + program in addition to P90X or not.

Finally, I found the results I got varied depending on whether I was using the resistance bands or the weights. The bands, I think give a type of strength that is present throughout the full range of motion of the exercise. You will look toned. The dumbbells will give you a higher top end strength wise and you will get more definition more quickly.

If you just want a quick overview of how the program is structured check out these two links:
Week 1

Week 1 Caveat

If you just want to know how the story ended, check out this link:
Final Thoughts on P90x

If you want to see pictures of what I look like now compared to what I looked like when I started, check out this link:What I look like now.

The Tao of Training: Fourth Insight

"...People usually fail when they are on the verge of success. So give as much care to the end as to the beginning;
Then there will be no failure..."

Of all the posts in this series, this has been the most difficult to write. Perhaps it is because this one hits so close to home for me personally.

I don't think any of us have a hard time dreaming big because as triathletes we all have some mountain to climb whether it be a goal race, or a finishing time, or place on a podium. Triathlon with its times and schedules and rankings can be very, very goal oriented. It is easy to lose sight of what attracted you to the sport in the first place. In an environment like this the actual "process of triathlon" can get overlooked. And as fitness increases it is so easy to start to believe it will continue to increase with more effort and less attention. If you fall into this pattern of belief, your behavior will soon follow and you could wind up undoing all the quality work you have done. This can signal the beginning of the end. Check out Brandon's post on a similar subject here.

The other day at the end of a solid three week block of training, feeling strong and satisfied, I picked up the phone and called a friend to see what he was up to. I hadn't talked to him in a while so, he was very excited to hear from me. He started suggesting we get together to either ride or run. As he talked a feeling of absolute dread came over me. There was a reason I hadn't talked to him in a while. Our life and training goals were very, very different. I experienced this first hand last year when I wound up on the verge of overtraining after agreeing to workout with him a few days a week. For him there was no "off" button. Sessions continued endlessly and without much purpose. It was easy to train too much and too hard when I was around him. Fortunately we both got busy and went our separate ways. And I eventually recovered.

What I have noticed in my own experience is the fitter and more confident I become, the more I think I can do both inside and outside triathlon. Ultimately time and time again this one small fallacy has wreaked havoc on my results. Calling my friend to see what was up is just one example of how a single act can have far reaching, entirely foreseeable consequences.

That experience made me sit down and consider the implications of my recent phone call. What was most troubling was the realization that I had done other things just as counterproductive before. There was the year I was tapering for a big race and had told my girlfriend I could not help her move and to either call her brother or hire movers. She did neither and I wound up spending two days, 12 hours each, lifting and moving furniture. I could feel myself actually using stores of energy and fitness in the process. I still raced but was sluggish the whole day. Needless to say my results that day were not what I was looking forward to.

The thing is decisions like this seem so small at the time. A phone call to a friend. Spending two days helping a girlfriend move. They don't seem like the end of the world or the reasons some of your personal goals are no closer now than when you first conceived of them. But if you take some time and look at your own life and find there are some phone calls you could have left unmade, or emails left unreturned, or that “can't miss” party that you could have skipped just to get a few extra hours of sleep, or taken more time to prepare better food versus grabbing something quick in a drive thru, or even just make a small adjustment to your training schedule because you sense a change is needed, then you might find that you are actually closer to realizing your goals than you think. It can be easy to forget that our goals matter to us and one of the ways we can remind ourselves is to acknowledge the larger picture in our lives and give it the attention it deserves. Of course becoming conscious of our patterns of limiting behavior and addressing them has implications that extend far outside the world of triathlon.

Tao of Training: Third Insight

"Better to stop short than fill to the brim. Over sharpen the edge and the blade will soon blunt... Retire when work is done. This is the way of Heaven."

Know when to quit. Respect your limits. Understand when a workout stops being beneficial to you and end it there. No advice could be so simple and yet so ignored. One day as I was running around the lake, I had done about 5 of my planned 8 miles. The run felt really good. My heart rate was right where it should be, but there was a cold front coming in and the temperature had already dropped by about 20 degrees since I'd started running. To complete my workout I'd have to run by my car and come back to it. I opted to stop running while I still felt good and my clothing was still adequate. The additional 3 or 4 miles was not going to mean much fitness-wise if I wound up sick because of another 10 or 20 degree drop in temperature that could have occurred in the interim.

This advice is especially relevant if I am contemplating a speed phase. Before I might have a 6 week block of speed work scheduled and I might try to extend it to 8 weeks to see if I could eek out more from myself. In retrospect, not understanding and respecting this one insight is probably the reason for each and every injury I have ever had. Now I'm satisfied to complete 5 good weeks and wrap things up. Sometimes, especially in triathlon, less has to be more.

Tao of Training: Second Insight

...Magnify the small and increase the few... Achieve greatness in little things

There are three ways I see this idea influencing my training. First is by doing more frequent, but shorter duration workouts that emphasize technique. There were times in the past where I ran into scheduling conflicts that left large time gaps in my training log or I stopped training altogether because I couldn't find the large blocks of time I felt necessary to meet my goals. But five years away from doing something gives me a much different perspective. Instead of lamenting the 2, 3, or 4 hour blocks of time I don't have on a given day, I try to focus on the 15, 30, or 60 minute blocks of time I do have an make better use of those. I like to use these "mini" workouts to do those things I normally wouldn't because of my short attention span. 15 minutes in the pool working on my stroke/technique is way better than no time spent in the water at all. The same goes for 30 minute trainer sessions on the bike which emphasize pedal stroke and cadence, or my 15 minute treadmill runs which focus on leg turnover and speed at a low heart rate. They all count toward my goals and I do them to get me ready for those times when I can train in 4 or 5 hour blocks. I can also use these small blocks of time to do core work, mini yoga sessions targeting trouble spots, or body weight workouts. These are things which all contribute to my overall fitness and allow me to get and keep my body ready for the more time consuming work to come.

Second, I try to focus on the little things that get me ready to train. Now I spend time thinking about how I am going to eat and sleep leading up to key training sessions. I try to spend as much or more time planning my food and my recovery as I do my races and training. During my recovery days and weeks, I schedule massages, Rolfing, acupuncture, naturopathic and nutrition appointments to stay on top of my overall health and wellbeing. In one sense, I may not be a professional triathlete, but where ever possible, I really try to treat myself as if I were one. Where this is paying off is now I find myself better prepared to actually execute and achieve my goals. I am injured less, except for the bike wreck, and I'm generally pain free and rested prior to key workouts. This in turn sees me actually meeting more of my goals because now I am paying more attention to the things that actually make it possible for me to train and race well. And as a result I have a much more positive outlook.

Third, I try to remember to celebrate my small victories. Instead of focusing on race times, placings, or PR's, I focus on smaller triumphs like having my run stride feel fluid and effortless, or taking ten perfect strokes in the water, or pedalling so as to take full advantage of "power points" and floating up climbs. I focus on the things I am learning and make note of even the smallest improvement. I know triathletes who get discouraged after all the training, the time, and the sacrifices they've made and see no reward or payback on raceday because they didn't have the race they expected or didn't beat someone. I like to keep my triumphs small and personal. This way I always see constant improvement. I am discovering when I take care of the small things, the big things really do take care of themselves which is exactly what "magnify the small, increase the few" means.

The Tao of Training: First Insight

Two years ago, as I recovered from a severely pulled hamstring, a very simple, yet profound, thought occurred to me. For the greater part of my adult life I have found wisdom within the pages of Tao Te Ching and used it to guide me personally and professionally. But it wasn't until I had attempted to race again and failed because of the injury the thought, "Why not use the Tao to guide your training and racing?" came.

In training and in life in general, the "why" or reason for for doing something is usually, at least on some basic level, understood. But ironically the "Way" or how we choose to go about carrying out our chosen mission can be clouded in superstition and mystery and heresay. How we often go about our training is often shrouded in a series of complex equations with variables including things such as nutrition, heart rates, volume, power, recovery, duration, and motivation.

Loosely translated the word Tao simply means " The Way." But as with most of the wisdom in the Tao Te Ching, there is more too it. The mind we come to the words with usually provides a framework for any insights we are able to draw from the book. Just as the mind we come into each training session will say a great deal about what we ultimately take from it whether the transformation that results is physical, emotional, mental, or some combination of the three. Over the next few weeks I'll share a few of the insights that I've taken and used to form the pillars of my training and return to racing. Here is the first insight:

"...A journey of a thousand miles starts under one's feet.."

In most translations it is probably more common to see this idea expressed this way: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Scholars routinely split hairs over which translation is in keeping with the spirit of the original sentiment, but I don't really think it matters. They both say the same thing. Wherever you are, "begin at the beginning." For me a couple of years ago it meant walking all winter to restore leg and tendon strength. At first walking 2 miles was a challenge. By spring walking 10 miles two to three times a week was routine. And by early summer I was able to run again. Sometimes we let the enormousness of the task at hand prevent us from even attempting to begin. As a result we don't do anything and our goals and aspirations never come to fruition.

But now I'm also trying to follow a sequential pattern of training moving from recovery, to strength, to flexibility, to endurance, to race prep, to racing each year. In the past, I might have been tempted to skip some prep work thinking my past fitness made some portion of a current phase unnecessary. I might have also tried to jump into race prep type work just because people was I training with were working on speed or were just training haphazardly. In retrospect, in looking through the lens of The Tao, I understand the problem with this pattern of behavior. When dealing with fitness, especially race fitness, it is best to respect where you currently are. Not respecting where I was in my training is probably how I wound up with a pulled hamstring in the first place. No bit of wisdom could be more simple or more clear:

"Start wherever you are and build from there."

Yoga Stretches You

While it is a common belief that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, what happens in Yoga is under no such restrictions. When you leave a Yoga class the experience can sometimes linger for hours, if not days. You see while it is common knowledge that Yoga improves flexibility, what they don't tell you about Yoga class is that is more an exercise in how well you can handle your buttons being pushed. This is one of the fundamental differences between mere static stretches and Yoga and why you shouldn't refer to the two activities interchangeably. That's because Yoga classes, the good ones at any rate, often take you right up to, and sometimes just a little beyond, your own personal mental, physical and emotional boundaries. When you find yourself on your edge holding a particular pose beyond what is comfortable, you may not particularly like what you see there.

It is very common for people to describe or see themselves in one way, say successful, easy going, happy, strong, or forgiving only to have a particular Yoga pose show them they are none of these things -- at least not when the pressure's on. And that is where some of the similarity to triathlons comes in. How you respond when the pressure is on says a lot about the results you ultimately get. And it can say a lot about who you really are as a person.

One day I went to Keith's Vinyasa class at Dharma Yoga here in Austin. The class started with Keith calling our attention to the words he'd written on the whiteboard at the front of the room from a Leonard Cohen song:

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."

The message of the class was to forget about doing things "perfectly." Most people come to Yoga (if they explore it at all) with the expectation that it is just a bunch of stretching. But over the past year I've discovered Yoga as being so much more. Yoga is about your body and all of the expectations and beliefs you hold regarding it and learning to live in and in concert with it gracefully.

This particular class really didn't involve much actual stretching at all. It was all about headstands, handstands, and arm balances. These are some of the more challenging intermediate to advanced postures you can do in a Yoga class. But what I also discovered was these postures focus more on alignment and core stability than actual "flexibility." There was very little in the way of actual stretching. So in that regard this one class was totally outside of the expectations of what most people would consider to be Yoga. And as such "the edge" we were exploring that day had nothing to do whatsoever to do with how "flexible" I was. In this case there was the more profound and direct edge of fear to deal with. Floors in Yoga studios are typically hard except for where your mat is placed so falling out of one of these poses and smacking myself on the floor is what I was confronting with regard to both my edge and my fear. This would be in addition to the fear of people actually seeing me smack myself on the floor if I fell.

As I moved through the poses, focusing on my breath and my body alignment, I became aware that my fear, though still present, had receded. And as my fear receded, I discovered my previously carefully guarded and highly respected edge (the point at which I balanced on my hands while upside down) had expanded by the an almost equal amount. After class I considered what had occurred. It was within the space surrounded by my own imperfections and fear that I found I could play with both. Like the words of the Cohen song suggest, it isn't by ignoring or attempting to cover up our imperfections and fear that we grow as human beings. We grow as people by accepting our limitations whatever they might be and then working with them. This one of the reasons I find Yoga and triathlon similar and complementary. In both triathlon and Yoga we find ourselves engaged in a meaningful process of self discovery and patient exploration which allows us to deal honestly with fear and discover where our edges truly are. They are spaces that stretch and extend us as people allowing us to come to terms with our imperfections so that we may ultimately shine brilliantly through them.