Joe Friel

Recovery and Overtraining

It's that time of year when the risk of overtraining increases for many athletes due to the warmer weather and the rapidly approaching race season. This is not something to be taken lightly. I've seen overtraining end a pro athlete's career. It's not a pretty sight when an otherwise powerful and dedicated athlete has a hard time getting out of bed in the morning, let alone doing any training.

The symptoms of the overtraining syndrome are difficult to define since there can be many and they are seldom exactly the same in any two overtrained athletes. Physiologically, the only ones that are common are poor performance and fatigue. But since these can occur even when an athlete is not overtrained, overtraining remains a bit of mystery in sports science.

Fatigue may be the better indicator. Every athlete experiences fatigue since physical stress is necessary to produce improved fitness. This is referred to as overreaching and is a necessary part of any training program. When an athlete ignores the fatigue of overreaching and continues to train with high stress and without rest or recovery then the possibility of overtraining greatly increases. For younger athletes this has been shown to require several weeks of such dedicated and exhaustive training. Older athletes and those who are relatively new to the sport may produce overtraining in fewer than three weeks.

While overreaching an athlete can shed the fatigue by resting or training very easily for a few days. After that he or she can return to high stress training. But once the overtraining syndrome has occurred the fatigue will not go away easily. The athlete can become listless, grumpy, and unmotivated. These psychological symptoms are usually best identified by a spouse and close friends. The overtrained athlete may continue in this state for weeks or months. The relentless fatigue is with them as a constant companion.

The symptoms are much like chronic fatigue syndrome, Lyme disease or mononucleosis. In fact, an athlete who experiences such deep and lingering fatigue should see a physician to be tested for these and other similar medical conditions. The best way to avoid overtraining is to monitor fatigue and rest frequently.

Excessive training, which is common among serious athletes, has the potential to produce overtraining. Frequent recovery for a few days is necessary to prevent it. How often and how long the recovery period should last is an individual matter which can only be determined through trial and error. If unsure of how often and much you should rest I would recommend erring on the side of too much rather than too little. I'd rather see an athlete undertrained but motivated than highly trained but unenthusiastic about life in general and competition in particular.

Why Recovery Days?

I recently answered this question for a German magazine. It's an issue that is seldom discussed and often taken for granted--recovery.

Question: Why are recovery days so essential? What happens to the body on a recovery day? What’s the best way to plan a recovery day?

Answer: I tell athletes that the hard training days only create the potential for fitness. They don’t result in fitness improvements unless there is rest. For it’s during short-term rest that the body adapts to the stresses of exercise. Muscle strength and endurance improves. The heart’s stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat) increases. Capillary beds in muscles grow allowing the heart to deliver more oxygen. Aerobic enzymes increase. Blood volume increases further enhancing oxygen delivery. Glycogen stores are restocked allowing for harder workouts in the following days. And these are only some of the physical changes that result from recovery.

Recovery days come in two forms: days of complete rest ("passive" recovery) and days with light exercise ("active" recovery). Passive recovery is generally best for novices. If they take the day off from exercise the day after a workout they will improve greatly. For the pure novice any form of training may very well be too stressful. As fitness improves, the recovery days are better spent doing some very light exercise. For the novice this could be light cross training in a sport such as swimming or cycling. Novice runners should never run on a recovery day. It's simply too stressful even for somewhat advanced novices.

The advanced, experienced athlete is best advised to train lightly on a recovery day as this maintains some of the most basic gains made in previous, harder sessions, especially economy of movement and aerobic endurance. Given the advanced athlete's high level of fitness, such a light training session is not stressful. But it must be easy. Making these sessions too hard is the most common mistake in training at this level. 

Regardless of one’s level of experience or fitness, the harder the hard workouts, the easier one’s recovery days should be.

Training and Racing in the Heat

On Sunday I returned from two weeks in Italy. The first week was a vacation and in the second I put on a training camp in Riccione on the Adriatic coast.  During the first week temperatures were in the 80- to 90-degree Fahrenheit range (26-32C). Then it cooled off for the camp after a storm moved through the region with temperatures in the 50F to 70F range (10-20C). I arrived home back in Scottsdale, Ariz. on Sunday evening and the next morning started a three-hour ride at about 10 a.m. Big mistake. It was about 90F (32C) at the start and when I got done it was around 100F (38C). It peaked out at 105F that day.

The planned workout called for some long hill-climbing intervals at functional threshold power.  The second big mistake. Besides being jet-lagged I was certainly not ready for such extreme temperatures. After a warm-up followed by the first interval it became readily apparent such a workout wasn’t a good idea. It was way too hot. So I rode steadily at a low intensity instead and made the workout about 20 minutes shorter. Even with that it became a challenge near the end just to maintain pace. The perceived effort steadily increased as evidenced by a rising heart rate despite steady power. In the last 90 minutes I decoupled 10% even with the low and steady power. “Decoupling” is just another way of saying that my heart rate drifted higher relative to power. It’s a method for comparing power on the bike (or pace in running) with heart rate over time to see how much they separate. A high rate of separation can be caused by several factors including heat.

Now is the time of year when you may also be experiencing hot workouts and races for the first time this season. While the highest temperatures where you live may not hover around 100F, even somewhat cooler conditions with high humidity may be too great in the spring for aggressive training and racing. And the greater your body mass, the greater the negative consequences of a hot environment. For example, a 200-pound (90kg) athlete will produce and retain more body heat than a 120-pounder (55kg).

The following are a few heat-coping strategies that have come out of research to consider when planning a high-intensity workout or doing a race in hot weather. I’ve listed them in what I consider to be their order of importance with the most effective strategy listed first. There is also a link provided to research supporting each should you want to read the abstract for the study.

#1. Acclimate.  It takes about 10 to 14 days of frequent exposure to heat for your body to adapt. During this period of time workout daily in hot conditions at a lower-than-normal intensity. After a couple of weeks of near-daily exposure to hot conditions you will begin perform better in the heat than prior although performance will still likely be diminished from what you might have done in cooler conditions.

#2. Shorten the warm up.  In hot conditions you will warm-up adequately with a shortened version of what you normally do and experience less stored body heat at the start of the race or higher-intensity workout portion.

#3. Stay cool prior.  Several strategies have been used in studies, but few may be readily available to you. For example, soaking in cold water and wearing an ice vest immediately before exercise in the heat have been shown to improve performance. Drinking icy fluids may be of some benefit, also.  But, of course, this benefit of pre-cooling is greatest in the early part of the race or workout and quickly diminishes as the session progresses.

#4 Stay cool during.  There isn’t a lot of research available on this, but draping an ice-filled container around your neck while training or racing in the heat may improve endurance performance. Runners may even try putting ice from aid stations in their hats.

#5 Hydration. Your body fluid status may affect how well you perform in the heat, but, unfortunately, most of the research is poorly designed relative to what athletes actually do in hot environments. Be aware that over drinking is a far worse matter than dehydration. No one has died from dehydration in a race, but there have been several deaths due to over-hydration-caused hyponatremia. And even if you don't die, performance is likely to be decreased in the early stages of hyponatremia. The key here is to drink when thristy--not to a predetermined schedule.

Sodium intake doesn’t appear to have any benefits for adaptation to the heat (see a previous post on this topic here). But there are a couple of studies suggesting that you may need more carbs and protein  before and after a hot workout and that the benefit of carbs taken in during exercise is reduced. The clothing you wear can also have a modest impact on performance in the heat.

Perhaps the most important matter is realizing you need to train or race more conservatively when it’s hot. For a planned intense workout keep the pace or power the same but shorten the work intervals and lengthen the recoveries (heart rate is not a good indicator of intensity when it's hot). You may need to do less total high-intensity work in such a session. In a steady-state race, such as in road running or time trialing, everyone else will start too fast and wither. Start slower than usual, be patient, and they will come back to you. Be aware that your heart rate will be higher than normal for any given sub-maximal pace or power. Don't let that concern you. It's just a part of exercising in hot weather.

Chapter 1 from Your First Triathlon

I've recently revised my book, Your First Triathlon. The Intro and Chapter 1 are available here for you to read. Just click on the link. It's one of the book projects I mentioned below which has been keeping me so busy. As soon as I get the next book done -- in about a month -- I'll be back to posting frequently here. I appreciate your hanging in there with me until this very busy patch in my year is behind me.

Change in comment posting

Two blog posts in a row! Perhaps things are looking up for me. This one is just in regards to "comment" management, however. Someone has been posting random, spam comments. Nonsenisical blabbering. It's gone on for months but was usually only 2-3 per day. But in the last two days it's been hundreds and takes a fair amount of time to "moderate" to the trash. I don't know why someone would do this as it seems like such a waste of my and their time. Nevertheless, I've had to require a verification code in order to add a comment. I apologize for this inconvenience but see no other option. If some how he/she/it continues and gets past the verification code I'll have to turn off all comments. Fingers crossed...

I'm still around

I've gotten a lot of emails asking if there's something wrong. It's been a long time since my last post. No, I'm not dead. Nor have I stopped blogging. I've been as busy as I've ever before been. At one point recently I had 4 book projects going on at the same time. Now I'm down to only 2. In a couple of weeks things will get back to normal and I'll start posting here again. There are lots of things I'd like to write about and look forward to getting back to normal. Thanks to those of you who wrote asking if I was ok. Very thoughtful of you. Back to work.

How to Optimize Your Economy, Part 2

Once again I must apologize for the big gap between my posting of Part 1 and today’s Part 2. This is my busy time of year with lots of travel for clinics and camps so time is quite precious. It seems there is always more to do than there is time available to do it. I’m sure you understand.

In my previous post on this topic I mentioned that economy is critical to performance in very long events, such as an Ironman triathlon. I also explained that there are some things that affect economy over which you have little or no control. But there are also others over which you do have some control. In other words, you may be able to do certain things in your training to boost your economy. They will vary a bit by sport so I’m going to describe a few them using economy research done on runners.

Here are five training methods shown in some research to improve running economy along with one study that supported it. I should point out that for almost any topic below I can also find research showing that there is no benefit for a given method. So it often comes down to the preponderance of the studies indicating a trend—or even what seems reasonable to you (we’re then in the realm of “belief,” which is often necessary in the application of science to training). If you click on the research study listed for each method you can read more of the details from the abstract for yourself and even “chase” down the related research to see what others have found. This latter may be done by selecting other research in the “Related Citations” in the upper right corner of the PubMed page.

Intervals. Eight runners did one weekly session of 3-minute intervals at the velocity of their VO₂max (vVO₂max). vVO₂max is what I call peak pace for 6 minutes—“P6”. This is your fastest average pace for a 6-minute, all-out test run. Their economy improved by 6% on average while there was no significant change in VO₂max.

Billat VL, Flechet B, Petit B, Muriaux G, Koralsztein JP. 1999. Interval training at VO₂max: effects on aerobic performance and overtraining markers. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 31(1):156-63.

Heavy weight lifting. A group of triathletes improved their running economy by combining their normal endurance run training with heavy weight lifting twice a week for 14 weeks. (I should point out here that there is also a lot of research showing no benefit from heavy weight lifting, so we’re back to “belief.”)

Millet GP, Jaouen B, Borrani F, Candau R. 2002. Effects of concurrent endurance and strength training on running economy and .VO(2) kinetics. Med Sci Sports Exerc, Aug;34(8):1351-9.

Hills. For some reason there's not much available on this topic, but almost all runners agree on it's benefit. In this unpublished study, hill training twice per week for 12 weeks improved the running economy of 11 marathon runners by 3%. They ran up a 400-meter hill with exaggerated vertical oscillation—“bouncing.” This is closely related to plyometrics.

Sjodin B and Svedenhag J. 1992. “Endurance Conditioning,” in Endurance in Sport, RJ Shepherd and PO Astrand editors. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications.

Plyometrics. Plyometrics for 9 weeks produced an 8% average gain in economy at 5k pace in 10 runners. There was no change in VO₂max.

Paavolainen L, Häkkinen K, Hämäläinen I, Nummela A, Rusko H. 1999. Explosive-strength training improves 5-km running time by improving running economy and muscle power. J Appl Physiol, 86(5):1527-33.

There’s a lot of research on plyometrics which seems quite beneficial for running. So here’s another study. Seventeen male runners improved their 3km times by 2.7% over 6 weeks by doing plyometric training which resulted in improved economy. There were no changes in VO₂max or lactate threshold.

Spurrs RW, Murphy AJ, Watsford ML. 2003. The effect of plyometric training on distance running performance. Eur J Appl Physiol, 89(1):1-7.

Tapering. A 7-day reduction in volume with high-intensity included improved economy by 6% and 5km times by 3% in 8 runners. This is yet another good reason to go through the taper and peak process before a race (as described in my Training Bible books).

Houmard JA, Scott BK, Justice CL, Chenier TC. 1994. The effects of taper on performance in distance runners. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 26(5):624-31.

How to Optimize Your Economy, Part 1

I’ve written before about the three markers of endurance fitness: aerobic capacity (VO2max), anaerobic/lactate threshold (AT/LT), and economy. In my last blog on economy I noted that sport science knows less about economy than the other two, but that it may be the more critical to performance, especially in very long events. Without rehashing everything explained in the above post from March, 2010, here is a quick summary of economy and, in Part 2 which I'll post soon, what you can do to optimize yours.

The less oxygen it takes for you to turn the pedals, run, ski, or swim at any given submaximal workload, the more economical you are. The longer the race, the more critical economy becomes. For a triathlete doing an Ironman this is a huge determiner of performance. For the road cyclist racing a 45-minute criterium economy is still important, but not nearly as critical to the outcome. The same is true of a 5km race for a runner. The reason for this is that the Ironman bike ride is done at a significantly lower power output than a 45-minute criterium or an 18-minute 5km. The crit and 5km are raced at an intensity between AT and VO₂max. So these fitness markers are critical to such a performance. The Ironman is raced at around 70 percent of AT. During such long durations the rider can’t afford to waste energy as the gut has a limit as to how much energy it can process from food and drink while racing. If the rate at which energy is expended due to low economy is greater than the intake rate then the athlete will “hit the wall.” On the hand, the crit racer and 5km runner can afford to waste some of the energy as their race outcome will not be decided by how much energy is wasted as there is plenty of stored fuel available for such a short race and none will need to be replaced. The key issue for the road cyclist and runner is how to optimize economy in order to produce more power or speed.

When riding, running, or swimming your economy is likely between 20 and 25 percent effective meaning that 75 to 80 percent of all the calories you burn are not producing power or speed. Most of that lost energy is expended as radiated heat. That may seem like a lot of lost energy, but it’s common. Interestingly, research reveals that athletes with high aerobic capacities tend to be somewhat less economical than athletes of otherwise similar ability with lower aerobic capacities.

Economy is dependent on many factors, several of which are outside of your control. As an example, in cycling economy is somewhat dependent on the length of your thigh bone (long femurs relative to leg length pedal more economically than short ones) and for all endurance sports economy depends in part on the ratio of your slow twitch to fast twitch muscles (slow twitch are more economical). Such physical determiners of economy largely result from who your parents were. The most significant aspect of economy over which you have control is how you physically pedal, run, or stroke. For example, in cycling “mashers” are less economical than “spinners.” How rapidly and smoothly you apply torque to the pedals has a significant effect on performance.

In Part 2 I’ll go over what the research reveals are affective ways to train to improve your economy.

More on Power Meters

The diagram here (click to enlarge)  illustrates what happens to heart rate, rating of perceived exertion (RPE), speed, and power while riding a bike steadily uphill, coasting downhill, and then on flat terrain. (Please pardon my crude drawing—an artist I’m not.)

Notice that as the hill is steadily climbed heart rate and RPE rise while speed and power remain fairly constant. Coasting down the hill, speed increases as heart rate, RPE, and power decline.

Note that heart rate was slow to respond as the rider started up the hill and continued to increase in the early part of the descent. This lag is common with heart rate.

RPE increased on the climb also as fatigue gradually set in. It rather quickly decreased on the downhill side before rising again as pedaling was resumed on flat terrain.

Speed remained constantly low on the uphill, increased on the descent, and eventually settled in at a steady rate with the return to flat terrain.

Following a steady level on the climb, power quickly responds to the transition from climbing to coasting and from coasting to pedaling on the flat section. It reflects some of the changes taking place in the other three, but does so rather quickly.

The higher the power up the hill and on the flat terrain, the greater the rider’s performance. The same can be said of speed. Only power and speed are directly related to performance. Heart rate and RPE tell us nothing about performance—they simply reflect what the rider is experiencing. But when compared with power, heart rate and RPE also tell us something about the rider’s fitness. When power is high and heart rate and RPE relatively low compared with previous rides on that same hill, we know that the athlete is fitter and faster.

Both the performance and the experience of creating the performance are important. These may be referred to as “output” (power and speed) and “input” (heart rate and RPE). The most reliable for training and racing purposes are power and heart rate (the exception being in bicycle road racing when RPE is critical to dealing with all of the sudden changes in intensity). Comparing these two makes measuring progress in training much more meaningful. If you know only your heart rate you are lacking the most critical piece of information—what you are accomplishing with your input. Training with a power meter is like watching a movie in 3D instead of only in 2 dimensions—much greater depth and meaning.

Why You Need a Power Meter

Should you buy a power meter? After all, they aren’t cheap and sport is already expensive. You’ve spent a small fortune on bicycles and all of their assorted and costly components. And don’t forget the entry fees, travel to races, special foods and supplements, and on, and on, and on.

And why get a power meter since you already have a perfectly good heart rate monitor? It’s just one more gizmo to have to figure out.

So why should you get a power meter? The short answer is that you simply are more likely to achieve your race goals by training—and racing—with a power meter than without. It is the most affective tool you can get to go faster on a bike.

Here’s Why

Don’t get me wrong, heart rate monitors are great intensity-measuring devices, also. But heart rate by itself actually doesn’t tell you much. It’s like the tachometer on a car—it tells you how hard the engine is working. Nothing more.

For example, what if your heart rate is 10 beats higher than usual? What does that mean? Is it good or bad? The only way to answer that question is to know if you were putting out more power or less than usual.

Input data such as heart rate isn’t meaningful until it is compared with some measure of output. Output is critical to success; input isn’t. After all, they don’t give awards at races to those who worked the hardest or had the highest heart rates (input), but rather to those who had the fastest time which results from high power (output).

Let’s get back to why you should get a power meter.

No More Guessing

Should you buy a power meter or fast wheels? Given the choice I’d recommend a power meter every time. When it comes to speed the engine is always the most important part. A power meter will help you develop a bigger one. With sleek wheels you still have a small engine.

How do they make your engine bigger? Power meters remove most of the guesswork that goes into training and racing. For example, I’ve known athletes who when doing intervals with heart rate monitors don’t call the work interval “started” until their heart rates reach the targeted level which could take several minutes. During that time they are guessing how hard to work. With a power meter you soon learn that the interval starts as soon as the power hits the targeted zone—which means right away. You get the intensity correct immediately with no guesswork. The intervals don’t taper off near the ends any more either. This means no wasted training time and precise intensity.

Also, realize that you’re not trying to train the heart solely when doing intervals or any workout, for that matter. In fact, what happens in the muscles during workouts, not the heart, is really the key to your success. Heart rate monitors, while quite valuable to training, have many believing that training is just about the heart. It isn’t. Power meters allow you to focus more on muscle.

Cheating With Power

Using a power meter in a long steady-state race such as a triathlon or long time trial is almost like cheating. When everyone else is fighting a head wind, excitedly going too fast down wind or guessing how hard to push when going up hill, the athlete with a power meter is just rolling along at the prescribed power. He or she will produce the fastest possible ride given the conditions so long as the optimal target power has been determined through training and observed closely during the race. While something similar can be done with heart rate there are some confounding factors such as the excitement of a race, cardiac drift, the acute effect of diet and the slow response of pulse on hills, accelerating out of corners or when passing others.

Power meters also provide highly accurate details about how your fitness is changing throughout the season. I test the athletes I coach regularly using a combination of heart rate and power. Without this information I really wouldn’t know for sure if they are making progress. I’d just be guessing. Now I can precisely compare output with input by dividing the average (or, preferably, “normalized”) power for a workout by the average heart rate. An increasing value for similar workouts tells me fitness is improving.

Moving On Up

There are many benefits of training with power. But perhaps the best indicator of their value for performance is the elite athletes who use them. Power meters are common with pro road cyclists and they are becoming increasingly popular with pro triathletes. Cyclists are increasingly using them. Age group triathletes have been slow to adopt this technology, which is unusual. Over the past twenty years triathletes were the first to adopt such innovations as aero bars, beam bikes, deep-dish rims, clipless pedals and gels.

The trend is definitely toward the adoption of power meters in road racing, triathlon and mountain biking. Many are leaning that a power meter will help them race faster. Start setting aside a few bucks aweek so that some day you can get one. It will definitely change how well you train and race.