Basically, how much time is considered enough to take off after a long duration of training before picking it back up again?
In my particular case, I started this current stretch of training with off-season football from June 2005 to August 2005. I had four days off after that, and then I had football season from August 2005 to Decemeber 2005. After football season I took only 6 days of complete rest, after which I went in to track training, which lasted mid-December 2005 to this past week, so early May 2006. The most time I ever took off during that stretch was a 4 day break during February. Other than that I was training either 5 or 6 days a week.
So basically, we’re looking at approximately 11 months of training, split into three distinct blocks separated, on average, by about 5 days of rest.
Right now I’m not really training for any goals in particular other than to stay in shape, but I want to completely recover from all this work that I’ve been doing and get back to feeling normal. In the estimation of the members of the forum, how long is long enough to do nothing, just passive recovery?
I would take at least a week, maybe two man… It’s been a long training period, a little rest and relaxation isn’t gonna hurt anything. Give yourself some time off, then come back and you’ll be fresh and ready to get back into the swing of things. Just my opinion. Others ?
i just took 3 weeks off, recoverd well, haven’t lost much in fitness, maybe lost 1/2-1kg of body weight. i was planning to only take 2 weeks, but i felt i wasnt rested enought so i added the extra week, well worth it.
Thanks for the feedback, and right now I’m leaning towards two weeks of recovery. I’ve got one week under my belt so far and I still feel like I could use some more. So at a minimum I’m looking at 14 days of passive rest, possibly as many as 17.
My one concern is detraining. I’m not sure, but I think I read somewhere that after 10 days the detraining becomes so significant that it’s like starting back at square 1. Is this true? I’m kind of worried about losing everything that I’ve worked so hard for, but I really see no other way if I want to recover fully and properly. Thoughts?
As a rule of thumb I usually take a full week off after my indoor track season, then two full weeks off after the outdoor .
From what I have read muscular gains do begin to dimish after a short amount of time around 2 weeks give or take a few days depending on the study, however cardiovascular endurance seems to dimish at a slower rate with a 2 week rest having only a negligible effect. For purposes of sprinting a two week rest period will benefit the runner with physical and mental recuperation time with relatively little detraining occuring. In my opinion it is better to caution on the side of too much rest than not enough.
Thanks for that, and that kind of validates what I figured after thinking about it a while. Better to go with too much then not enough. As of right now, tomorrow will be exactly two weeks off from and running and 3 weeks off from any weightlifting. So the day after that I’ll start training again.
How do you know if you’ve recovered enough though?
I know it sounds silly, but is there some way to tell. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have any great motivation to go back to work yet, but I think that’s in part due to the fact that I have no particular sport to be training for yet. I find that my energy levels are down, but that might be a combination of the fact that I havent been getting enough sleep, a poor diet, and because I’m NOT working out.
Should I just suck it up and get back to the routine of things since I’ve been two weeks out, or should I give it a few more days and see what happens?
yes better to much than too little because with all the training uve done this season-u might have developed stress injuries that you dont know about (stress fractures might be developing right now) so just take 2-3 weeks off i suggest.
but what i dont understand is this:
are u going to start training again at end of may? therefore u start training for football and track again therefore giving u a longer training season than last year. your body might not be ready for that.
Oh no, I’m no longer training particularly for football or track (although I love track training and that’s HOW I’m gonna be training there, as of now, is no actual track season that I’m training for). The working out that’s starting here at the end of May is just to stay in shape, get faster (short speed), and add muscle mass. If I feel tired, I can take a day off. This isn’t the kill myself to reach a goal on a set time frame, and so it shouldn’t be as stressful as my training in the past year.
Another thing, could involuntary muscle twitches and contractions during sleep mean anything or indicate CNS tiredness or overtraining?
I ask this because I never knew it before, but just today, even with two weeks off, my girlfriend told me that a lot of times when I fall asleep I do that and it wakes her up. Is this normal or is it an indicator of something greater?
my girl friend says i do it all the time…ive done it since i was young. i think its normal. during the day tho would reveal cns exhaustion and overtraining