I am just playing around these days and dont have any plan to run competition. therefore I experimented with training to see how it effects me.
I did 9 days period of relatively hard training.
medium hard
hard
easy
medium hard
hard
medium hard
rest
hard
hard
It all went fine until today. I feel crap today. But until yesterday I felt fine.
Maybe I have overreached?
This was very different from normal training which is:
hard
easy
medium hard
easy
hard
Rest
easy
I now plan to take just easy days until I am recovered again.
Is this kind of “crash training” a bad idea? Or can you get a bigger supercompensation that give you better improvement in the long term?
Maybe this type of crash training can be done for short periods a few times of the year?
Potential pros of crash training; you might get a bigger supercompesnation afterwards. Coaches have long used shock or double shock microcycles where they load up an athlete for 1, maximum 2 weeks to try to do this.
Potential cons: you get injured, you engrain bad technical habits by running tired all the time. You dig too big a hole to recover from.
It’s YOUR call whether you think the potential pros outweigh the potential cons.
I understand. I think this can be done for 1 week max. 2 weeks would be way too risky in my opinion. (but it all depends HOW hard the days during the period is of course.
Since the injury risk is higher and potential risk of burnout is higher (if you dont have a proper and long enogh recovery period afterwards) I think I will be careful with this both to myself and my athletes.
Should have been invented a special tool/test for checking the recovery status of an athlete so that ones know exatcly when he/she is recovered to do high intensity training again
i did a very similar set up through my fall and i just plateud really hard but when i reduced volume all my weights shot up like a rocket but i didnt really get any faster. then i got overtrained
Omega-Wave and other HRV technology are able to give the function of the Autonomic Nervous System without any invasive testing, which can give an idea of when it is appropriate to continue with CNS Intensive means.
I’ve never worked with this technology, merely have read and talked with those who have; and still-even with this sort of technology-it is up to the coaches intuition and consultation with the athlete to ultimately decide what training should be done on a given day in terms of means and load adjustment.
In this case training was mainly running. hill runs, extensive tempo and intensive tempo.
For myself I think its very difficult to know which state my body is in. Yesterday I felt crap, but during my easy run today I felt quite good. So I could be tempted to do a hard session tomorrow, but looking at the training the past week (many intense sessions) Its probably NOT a good idea to run hard tomorrow, even tough I can feel ready for it.
Understand my dilemma?
The question to ask: what is the potential benefit to performance. How is this outweighed by the potential negatives.
So say that a normal trainig cycle nets you 0.25% improvement but with only 1% risk of injury and no risk of burnout.
Say a crash cycle nets you 0.75% improvement but with a 5% injury risk and 5% rksk of burnout.
Is what you gained potentially worth what you’re risking. Because an injury can end a season, burnout a career.
Note: numbers are made up for illustration purposes.
How you “feel” is only a very limited factor in the performance equation,and by definition a scarce index for any analysis. Athletes may feel like crap at the top level of performance output. We are training for performance,not to feel good.
Feeling good happens by definition between the boundaries of one’s upper and lower comfort zone,where by equal definition there is very limited potential for change,and no growth or evolution.
Over-reaching and over-training are constructs which are used often inappropriately to make up for proper understanding of adaptation processes of humans (and mammalians in general).
Pakewi, I think u misunderstood me. I didnt mean my actual feeling DURING training but how I FELT in my daily life/sleep beetween the training session. How well recovered I felt. Of course I know that sometimes you feel not good during a hard session, even if you are in great shape. But in this case I was talking about the feeling in body when resting beetween training sessions.
Thank you for your clarification. My observation stands equally appropriate.If you have questions,please go ahead.I’ll be travelling,but I’ll do my best to get back and contribute.
Agreed. More than anything either OW and/or HRV provide a meaningful index of NS function.
The real problem is not in “CNS intensive” training means,whose definition may well be considered a purely artificial construct of doubtful scientificity,but in the lack of understanding of the levels of NS function and responses.
You can still keep using means generally defined as above day in day out and very successfully manage a training system.
