Training load

[BikeMax]

A very interesting article on managing training load using a PM;

Your weekend reading smileys/smiley1.gif

INSTITUTIONALIZED OVERTRAINING

Rushall Thoughts, (1994).

Overtraining has been of concern to coaches over the past few years since training loads have been increased to the point of often being excessive. The avoidance of overtraining has been a central focus of sports science and sports medicine education. There are two common scenarios with regard to coping with overtraining in sports.

 

If a coach develops an annual plan that includes predicted periods of lessened training stress as a precaution to avoid overtraining or maladaptation, it is possible that athletes will come to expect periods of reduced strain. They usually learn that they must have such "recovery" periods otherwise they cannot perform well.

 

If a coach frequently quizzes athletes about the symptoms of overtraining or maladaptation, it is possible that athletes will be sensitized to such symptoms and will exaggerate their slightest existence. In more extreme cases, they become neurotic and imagine the symptoms even though they really do not exist at a critical level. Athletes learn to be weaker rather than stronger in the face of continued exercise stress and overtraining symptom emphasis.

Both the above illustrations exaggerate the symptoms and onset of overtraining. The institutionally validated emphasis on appropriate symptoms and the state causes athletes to expect to feel stress symptoms, often in a neurotic manner. Some athletes even become obsessed with transitory and minor symptoms, particularly those which originate from stresses outside of the sport. That obsession often becomes strong enough to the point that activity is limited because of the way the athlete feels even though assertive activity may be the best therapy to alleviate the outside-of-sport stress symptoms themselves. Thus, the well-meaning coach who does not want to push athletes into excessive and unnecessary long-term fatigue states may actually be producing a counter-productive psychological state in athletes. An athlete's ability to work to the fullest potential is compromised by anticipations of the symptoms and fear of overtraining.

The term "institutionalized overtraining" is used to label this effect. That label recognizes that the origin of the complicating sensitization and expectation is derived from the directing body (i.e., the coach).

Modern coaching actually requires athletes to endure greater amounts of relevant work because the overall volume of training is still one of the most significant factors associated with sporting success. Institutionalized overtraining is counter-productive to this aim.

To avoid its occurrence, the following steps can be taken.

 

Do not plan periods of decreased overload for "recovery" purposes.

Do not plan transitional training phases where fitness is partially lost.

Instead, demand consistent high quality technical performance at practices. When performance quality deteriorates, allow athletes to terminate participation in that practice segment. This facilitates each individual's capacity to tolerate particular levels of strain, avoids performing in detrimental excessive fatigue states, and allows athletes better in-session recovery.

The orientation of athletes is turned from trying to complete all training, to completing the greatest volume of quality training possible. This is particularly beneficial for avoiding maladaptation and has the concomitant benefit of increasing the volume of quality performance and decreasing the volume of inferior performance.

Since athletes are encouraged never to enter excessively fatigued states, the likelihood of their entering an overtrained state is greatly reduced. With that reduction, it becomes unnecessary to plan for unloading macrocycles.

Athletes are continually challenged to do more quality training. The neurotic imagination of symptoms that happens with institutionalized overtraining is avoided.

The success of this approach is dependent upon the sole criterion for cessation of a training stimulus: When performance decreases, despite a compensatory increase in effort, the practice item should be terminated.

For the coach, the following decision making activity is appropriate:

Take note of the performance standard that is initially displayed in the training segment.

When an athlete's technique begins to deteriorate note its effect on performance.

When performance deteriorates despite increased effort on behalf of the athlete, terminate the athlete's involvement in that segment.

This procedure will stimulate athletes to perform the greatest possible amount of quality training while avoiding overtraining or excessive maladaptation. They will not become neurotic about overworking, but rather, will be encouraged to continually "push the envelope" of performance capacity by (a) overriding natural and/or cultural inhibitions, (B) increasing performance efficiency so that a greater volume of work can be accommodated given a finite performance capacity, and/or © increasing the volume of beneficial training and reducing the amount of irrelevant training. It is the last item that is perhaps the most important. Since an athlete has a finite capacity for exercise and performance, it is in his/her best interest to use as much as possible of that capacity in relevant training. Many modern sports programs are being side-tracked by "circus" training, that is, activities which have little to none to counter-productive relationships with intended competition performances. Examples of circus training are: attending "specialized training" camps where programs are not related to the long-term program of development hopefully being undertaken by serious athletes; altitude training camps where the requirements for performance are altered from those required at sea-level; performing "test sets" of training stimuli which have no relationship to actual competitive performances; training with heavy weight programs when such activities have been shown to have little benefit for or relationship to performance and may even be the seeds of injury; competing in contests which do not fit with training objectives; and performing activities to indulge sports science "testing." These examples of dubious activities which are creeping into modern training programs all interfere with consistent training and detract from the opportunities to indulge in relevant activities.

This alternative approach to training will not produce overtrained states because athletes should never be overstressed. Each training stimulus will terminate when its benefits (the repetition of a particular quality of work) are no longer evident. Even when outside-of-sport stresses are transferred into practice, the diminished capacity of an athlete on that day will be accommodated by this approach.

This procedure contrasts markedly with the consistently excessive training program, the extended program that eventually produces overtraining, and the neurotic expectation of overtrained states and symptoms. With the consistent expectation to perform with quality there may be no ceiling to possible performance improvement.

This training orientation is very dependent upon the motivation of athletes to do quality training. It demands that if quality performances cannot be produced then recovery is the next best option. Large percentages of training time performing less than optimal exercises and technique would be forsaken. Some critics would claim that this description is a disguise for a high quality -- low volume orientation. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a method for generating the greatest volume of quality training.

Appropriate motivation will be developed if contingencies that support quality performance are constructed. This most probably will need at least some behavioral goal to be set for every training segment, and at a minimum, perhaps a weekly evaluation of performance change (improvement). Athletes need to have the incentive to constantly strive for the greatest volume of quality training possible. As soon as a below-quality performance occurs they are encouraged to recover rather than to persist with degraded quality while accruing greater levels of detrimental general fatigue.

There are two high profile coaches who program this form of training. Mike Spracklen, arguably the best rowing coach in the world, the current Head Coach of Men's Sweep for US Rowing, and Gregg Troy, the Head Coach of Swimming at The Bolles School in Florida, employ each ingredient of the model.

In San Diego, California, prospective members of the US Men's Eight-oar Crew train mainly in pair-oar boats. At most training sessions all crews row together and are able to see how they are faring in comparison to each other. That competitiveness is an incentive to perform with quality. Each week, all crews perform a time-trial over racing distance. Over time, those athletes with the best technique, physical capacity, and psychological strength will be identifiable. It is those athletes who will be selected for the USA's main boat.

Within Mike Spracklen's program there is nothing said about athletes who drop out of a segment of a training session or have a practice off to have extra recovery. The system that finally locates the athletes with the greatest capacity to do the highest quality of race-simulation type training, will eventually discover those athletes with a lesser capacity. It also should be recognized that Coach Spracklen also programs periods of moderate stress so that the volume of quality rowing actually performed in a season is extremely large when compared to other high profile rowing programs. This is not a "survival of the fittest" program for it is remarkable how many young men are able to adapt to the increased volume of high quality work, something which they have never before experienced.

Coach Spracklen goes further. He attempts to program training sessions which avoid excessive debilitating fatigue. Instead of falling into the traditional pattern of training early and late in the day with long sessions, he ensures opportunities for his rowers to get adequate night and between-practice-sessions rest. Recognizing that in a two-hour practice session it is usually the last half-hour that is of the worst quality but the greatest fatigue, he often programs three practice sessions a day, each being approximately one and a half hours. The detrimental latter portion fatigue of the two-hour practice is avoided, the less stressful shorter practices require less recovery between sessions, and so a greater volume of adaptive and quality training is performed each day and across the particular training phase.

The underlying feature of Mike Spracklen's coaching is the relentless pursuit of vast amounts of excellence in technique. No weakness is institutionalized into the US Men's Sweep Rowing program.

Gregg Troy attempts to extend the work capacity of his swimmers to their greatest levels (Rushall, 1994).

 

He does not allow his swimmers to ever lose conditioning. There are no days off for recovery.

During the winter he does not like his swimmers to enter many competitions. If there are too many races, then swimmers do not get the opportunity to "set up" properly for racing," which he implied, is an important skill and set of procedures.

Coach Troy's programs are long-term oriented. He wants his swimmers to compete well on only a few identified occasions. He stressed that it is of no value to sacrifice training for lesser level competitions.

Any recovery that occurs is done on an individual basis. There is no planned "team" recovery period.

During a taper or period of rest, Coach Troy and the athlete work together to determine the most successful course of training. He cited the example of how little work Greg Burgess does in the last week of a taper and yet he still performs well in races.

This alternative perception of overtraining, on the surface, appears to contradict popular approaches to the phenomenon. However, it is an improvement. Current practice usually has athletes working hard for the full duration of a training session. When the session is completed, usually because no more time remains, athletes are then released to recover before the next scheduled practice. There is no guarantee in this form of time management that: (a) athletes will recover between practice sessions; (B) the total work of the individual practice session is beneficial; © the physical stimuli experienced are accommodated for each individual; and (d) athletes will not become preoccupied with tolerating general fatigue and its personal manifestations. Those weaknesses are removed by this alternative approach to handling training stress and the phenomenon of overtraining.

If a sporting program emphasizes overtraining and the fear of it, the ability to sustain quality training and to explore alternative methods for extending exercise tolerance capacities will be weakened.

Reference:

Rushall, B. S. (1994). Impressions from US Swimming's 1994 National Team Coaches' Meeting. NSWIMMING Coaching Science Bulletin, 5(2), 1-7.

Return to Table of Contents for this issue.

[WorcesterWheelers]

Thanx "Coach" smileys/smiley36.gif

[stulemanski]

While it is difficult to disagree with specifics of the above article - I think this is extremely risky advice to be offering to recreational cyclists. Check the source - US swimming's 1994 national team coaches meeting. A number of points will differ between the group of people about whom this study was written and the people likely to be reading this forum:

1. US national squad swimmers are full time athletes, so any time not spent in the pool can be recovery time for them. Most of the people on this forum have full time jobs as well as their sport.

2. I would debate whether many swimming events are "endurance sports" in the same sense that cycling is an endurance sport. Certainly swimmers spend a lot of time in the pool, but their races are phsyiologically very different to cycle races, and their training necessarily reflects that. This advice might be applicable to a cyclist who was training to become a pure track sprinter...

3. Swimming is generally a young person's sport - relatively few people remain in competitive swimming after their teens, which is (rather obviously) the time in a person's life when powers of recovery are greatest. (How many of us wish that we had the ability to heal/recover like we did when we were teenagers?) Those that do remain in competitive swimming are generally the ones that have already "made it" to elite level competition, and can hence benefit from not having the commitments of a full time job, etc. 

4. The psychological traits that are common to endurance sports people are much more likely to lead to overtraining rather than undertraining (see Noakes, Lore of Running). This is why I think the advice given in the article above is so incredibly bad for cyclists, who are already at risk of overtraining.  

I do however, wholeheartedly agree with the idea that once you can no longer sustain the required intervals in a specific training session, then it is time to move on. For a cyclist, this would be if, say, you were doing 6x5min at 110% FT power, but after the 3rd interval, you couldn't manage to turn more than 100% FT power. There would be little point in trying to bang out further intervals at the lower than required intensity, as it would not provide the correct stimulus to train the response that you are intending to train.

If anyone wants any training advice then please feel free to PM me.

- Stuart

[Marius]

to much reading....smileys/smiley5.gifsmileys/smiley36.gif

[fatcyclist]

to much reading....smileys/smiley5.gifsmileys/smiley36.gif

Yes' date=' we will ask BikeMax and stulemanski to draw pretty pictures for you.. [img']smileys/smiley2.gif[/img]

[Bike-Thingy]

please, will yousmileys/smiley17.gif

[SwissVan]

Swimmers using a PMsmileys/smiley29.gif Ok forgive me for being flippant I just glanced thru the artical.

I have just 1 problem with Power training, well actually 4 BIG PROBLEMS

TREK 8500, SPECIALIZED S WORKS EPIC, EXOCET, SPECIALIZED ROUBAIX

all of which are in use weekly, so till there is an afordable way to accurately measure power output (unlikely) I will have to remain in the "HRMdarkages" at least I can transfer the HRM from bike to bike. 

Bikemax thanks for the artical and other power training info, as they say knowledge is power and every little bit helps.

 

[Bike-Thingy]

yea, I'm with you Swiss. I'll wait till the prices also come down. There was a time when HRM were sooo expensive but now they prices have come down quite a bit over the last few years. I'll wait for it to happen to PM's.

[BikeMax]

While it is difficult to disagree with specifics of the above article - I think this is extremely risky advice to be offering to recreational cyclists. Check the source - US swimming's 1994 national team coaches meeting. A number of points will differ between the group of people about whom this study was written and the people likely to be reading this forum:

1. US national squad swimmers are full time athletes' date=' so any time not spent in the pool can be recovery time for them. Most of the people on this forum have full time jobs as well as their sport.

2. I would debate whether many swimming events are "endurance sports" in the same sense that cycling is an endurance sport. Certainly swimmers spend a lot of time in the pool, but their races are phsyiologically very different to cycle races, and their training necessarily reflects that. This advice might be applicable to a cyclist who was training to become a pure track sprinter...

3. Swimming is generally a young person's sport - relatively few people remain in competitive swimming after their teens, which is (rather obviously) the time in a person's life when powers of recovery are greatest. (How many of us wish that we had the ability to heal/recover like we did when we were teenagers?) Those that do remain in competitive swimming are generally the ones that have already "made it" to elite level competition, and can hence benefit from not having the commitments of a full time job, etc. 

4. The psychological traits that are common to endurance sports people are much more likely to lead to overtraining rather than undertraining (see Noakes, Lore of Running). This is why I think the advice given in the article above is so incredibly bad for cyclists, who are already at risk of overtraining.  

I do however, wholeheartedly agree with the idea that once you can no longer sustain the required intervals in a specific training session, then it is time to move on. For a cyclist, this would be if, say, you were doing 6x5min at 110% FT power, but after the 3rd interval, you couldn't manage to turn more than 100% FT power. There would be little point in trying to bang out further intervals at the lower than required intensity, as it would not provide the correct stimulus to train the response that you are intending to train.

If anyone wants any training advice then please feel free to PM me.

- Stuart

[/quote']

 

Stuart

 

My aim in offering up this article was in fact to reduce the risk of over reaching whilst ensuring guys achieve the most effective sessions. By stopping when the interval becomes un productive the athlete is operating on a much safer footing than he or she would by pushing on through a dropping HR.

 

The beauty of this sort of concept is that it does not matter what your lifestlye is or how much rest etc you can get on a day to day basis. It works on the premise that  if you are too tired to train effectively (for whatever reason) then you stop and rest. In my experience many riders do not so this effectively but just push on OR they stop when they needn't because they have exceeded a certain HR level.

 

Peter

[Mickey]

Have experienced this... just stopped and went home... tried another day when I was fully recovered.

Agree with you Bikemax....  

[CVANC]

smileys/smiley2.gif

 

[stulemanski]

Not sure I can do pictures - I think swimmers using a PM would look pretty stupid... Then again, the article doesn't mention powermeters at all (either for swimmers or for rowers, which are the only two sports mentioned in the article).

Both swimming and rowing are highly technique dependent, hence the advice in the article to "demand consistent high quality technical performance at practices". Note - technical performances, not necessarily high quality physiological sessions. Having rowed at a reasonably high level (I was on the Cambridge lightweight trials squad for the 1997 boat race - though I didn't make the boat race crew itself) I can confirm that once the technique goes, then you might as well pack up and go home.

The idea that "It works on the premise that  if you are too tired to train effectively (for whatever reason) then you stop and rest" isn't going to help much for anyone doing sessions of, say, steady 5 hour endurance rides, or even a couple of hours at tempo. The article implies that athletes should train as long as they can maintain the required performance level - even though they may feel tired. Most people will be able to complete sessions like these day after day (irrespective of how they feel) without much noticeable drop off in performance, but would be chronically overtired by the end of a fortnight of this. 

Similarly, training in such a way that "athletes are encouraged never to enter excessively fatigued states" is (in my opinion) a recipe for mediocrity. The principle of overreaching and supercompensation is referred to widely in sports science literature and regarded as necessary to obtain optimal performance (see reference below).

Whatever the aim of posting the article was, it really isn't much use to 99% of cyclists, but the fact that it is irrelevant isn't really my major objection. Anyone who just glanced at this article (which contains statements like "An athlete's ability to work to the fullest potential is compromised by anticipations of the symptoms and fear of overtraining" and advice to "not plan periods of decreased overload for "recovery" purposes") and tried to apply it to their cycle training (as is pretty likely on a cycling forum about power training) could be opening the door not only to overtraining, but to ignoring the condition until it became chronic. That's why I felt it important to post and point out the potential problems with article that was posted.

If anyone is still interested, an article outlining the more widely accepted viewpoint on overtraining can be found at...

http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/kpub.nsf/v/2SEPT0 3

[BikeMax]

Not sure I can do pictures - I think swimmers using a PM would look pretty stupid... Then again' date=' the article doesn't mention powermeters at all (either for swimmers or for rowers, which are the only two sports mentioned in the article).

Both swimming and rowing are highly technique dependent, hence the advice in the article to "demand consistent high quality technical performance at practices". Note - technical performances, not necessarily high quality physiological sessions. Having rowed at a reasonably high level (I was on the Cambridge lightweight trials squad for the 1997 boat race - though I didn't make the boat race crew itself) I can confirm that once the technique goes, then you might as well pack up and go home.

The idea that "It works on the premise that  if you are too tired to train effectively (for whatever reason) then you stop and rest" isn't going to help much for anyone doing sessions of, say, steady 5 hour endurance rides, or even a couple of hours at tempo. The article implies that athletes should train as long as they can maintain the required performance level - even though they may feel tired. Most people will be able to complete sessions like these day after day (irrespective of how they feel) without much noticeable drop off in performance, but would be chronically overtired by the end of a fortnight of this. 

Similarly, training in such a way that "athletes are encouraged never to enter excessively fatigued states" is (in my opinion) a recipe for mediocrity. The principle of overreaching and supercompensation is referred to widely in sports science literature and regarded as necessary to obtain optimal performance (see reference below).

Whatever the aim of posting the article was, it really isn't much use to 99% of cyclists, but the fact that it is irrelevant isn't really my major objection. Anyone who just glanced at this article (which contains statements like "An athlete's ability to work to the fullest potential is compromised by anticipations of the symptoms and fear of overtraining" and advice to "not plan periods of decreased overload for [i']"recovery"[/i] purposes") and tried to apply it to their cycle training (as is pretty likely on a cycling forum about power training) could be opening the door not only to overtraining, but to ignoring the condition until it became chronic. That's why I felt it important to post and point out the potential problems with article that was posted.

If anyone is still interested, an article outlining the more widely accepted viewpoint on overtraining can be found at...

http://coaching.usolympicteam.com/coaching/kpub.nsf/v/2SEPT0 3

 

Stuart

 

Sorry that you didn't like the article. Have to take issue with a few points;

 

"Most" riders will NOT be able to ride for 5 hours day in a day out as you say, without a significant drop off in performance. Neither will they be able to ride a quality tempo L3 session for 2 hours day in and day out without the same drop off.

I agree that the power zone analogy is better suited to higher intensity sessions but it will still provide a far better element of protection against over reaching than will doing the same sessions using HR or other means.

 

I think you have misunderstood the "training to states of excessive fatigue" element of the article. Any athlete in an "excessively fatigued state" will not be capable of completing any session that is likely to elicit an improvement in fitness and therefore by avoiding this state one avoids wasting training time and in fact maximises recovery - not likely to lead to mediocrity but in fact maximum gains. Please note that it does not advocate avoiding fatigue but just "excessive" fatigue - a critical difference.

 

In my experience in the cycle training industry and having worked with a fair number of cyclists I can assure you that the sort of advice given in the article is likely to be of relevance to most cyclists interested in improving performance and if anything is likely to prevent over reaching or training and not encourage it.

 

Thanks for posting the "more widely accepted view" - it is my aim on this forum however to  challenge accepted norms, with the aim of giving people advice based on the most current thinking  - which I believe this represents.

 

Interested parties can now read both viewpoints and make up their own mind.

[Mickey]

Right on bikemax... smileys/smiley32.gif

[stulemanski]

Peter,

Many riders of a good amateur status (e.g. PPA league riders) would be able to complete 5 hour endurance rides day-in day-out. Although they will feel wrecked after doing this for a couple of days, it will be difficult to notice a drop off in performance during those sessions (what exactly do you use as a measure of "performance" during an endurance ride). 

I'm not saying that their performance (as measured by some objective testing criteria) won't drop off as a result of this sort of overtraining, but it would be very difficult to detect in such a circumstance. 

If you don't believe that this is the case, maybe we should consider Cape Epic riders who ride themselves hard each day and get up and do the same thing the next day and the next, etc. The vast majority don't end up racing at some amazing peak level by the end of the week - they end up riding at a level of diesel-like mediocrity.

Fortunately, even Cape Epic is short enough that riders can recover afterwards, and with some decent time off they may even show overall improvements due to supercompensation. (A week of Epic is unlikely to lead to chronic long term overtraining)

However, if these hypothetical Epic riders were to take he advice of this article and ignore feelings of fatigue "as long as they could maintain their performance" (thought process something along the lines of "hey, I've just finished the Epic yesterday and I feel lousy, but I know I can still turn out a 5 hour diesel-paced ride and as long as I can maintain that level of performance then that's what this article implies I should do") then they would in all probability eventually end up chronically overtrained.

I'm not trying to "have a go at you", but the paper was published in 1994 - that is hardly the "most current thinking". Despite this article having been around for the last 13 years or so, the advice proposed by this article has hardly seems to have taken the cycling (or coaching) world by storm in that time.

Of course, you and your clients are free to try this out. It would be great if you could keep us posted on how you all perform.

- Stuart

[BikeMax]

Hi Stuart

I am happy that you have seen fit to challenge my posting the the above article and associated advice to this forum. I was also pleased to see your recent post re the same subject on Cycling Forums and the responses from some very eminent and highly regarded experts in the field of power training.

I will share some of those responses to your concerns and opinions with this forum as I feel that it is important that we offer a balanced viewpoint.

Peter