Manual therapy weeks 1-3, unload week 4 along with temp therapy…
Have you tried meditation to help calm the mind or progressive muscle relaxation before sleep. There’s also a yoga thing called yoga nidra which is very good at relaxing the body. I fall asleep every time I use it. There are plenty of apps and you tube channels to guide you. Just some things that have helped me with sleep.
I have not ever used or been advised or taught to do ice baths ever. Charlie never used them, Waldamar never discussed them and my only experience going into cold water with ice was a year ago New Years Day into Lake Ontario in sub zero temperatures and it aggravated my sciatic nerve for just over one year. Not a fan of ice water therefor.
Contast showers have been used by myself since meeting Waldamar and Charlie. That was 30 years ago. I do not ever remember when it was not a good thing for me to do. I do know Ben hated them as he hates cold but did them. I remember hearing about the cold and hot tubs with paraffin wax in Italy in some of the training centers. I have not ever heard of not taking advantage of therapy if and when you are able to get it. If you are the world champion then an ideal protocol would be set out. Until that time routine regeneration is helpful. Not in place of training but that should be obvious.
Sleep issues for some are real and I feel for you if this has been your experience. I don’t know what to say in that regard except I would not ever give up hope and I would be as diligent as you are able but I know in the face of anxiety it’s easy for me to say.
Check out Trudy Scott who discusses a ton about anxiety and it’s connection with various minerals, amino acids and nutritional habits. Almost all of her emails deal with anxiety and she breaks down the various types. She has amazing info and I would check out her stuff.
I tried doing Headspace app for meditation and it hasn’t solved the problem. Not sure if I want to pay for subscription for more programs. I tried some white noise to help sleep, and that too didn’t make much difference.
I will give yours a try as well. Thank you.
Yeah mine is real and has been a misery for my entire life…I will look into Trudy Scott’s information as well. Thank you for the information.
And having been struggling with sciatic nerve issue myself, I hope yours is better…
I’ve been trying all these things, magnesium calm, ZMA, melatonin, but they only seem to do so much. I always spend a lot of time on recovery, including tempos, foam rolling, self myofascial release, stretching, sauna, contrast baths and all. My muscles usually recover very quickly, but my nervous system just won’t let go and relax when the time comes to do so…
I, unfortunately on average, set aside about 9 hours to sleep but only actually sleep 7 hours as usually it takes me about 1.5 hour to fall asleep and then I wake up prematurely (usually about .5-1 hour early) and can’t go back to sleep to finish getting the 8 in that I need.
I’m terrified of having poor nervous system recovery, leading to lack of training results and even sickness and injury due to poor sleep. I dread every night about how bad the night of sleep is going to be because I’m so well aware of such a devastating consequence of not getting enough sleep, which makes it even more difficult to sleep, resulting in this endlss viscious cycle…
I’ve always had anxiety issue all my life, as it is something that runs in my blood unfortunately. How much of sleep do I really need? if I get 7 hours on most days, is it going to keep me from ever getting results? I’ve had SO MUCH injuries throughout my life, that I’m terrified, yet I can never give up on training to get better, unfortunately…
Some people tell me to use strong sleep medications, but I know that most of them reduces the quality of sleep, and/or has addiction and depencence issue, so I don’t think that’s a good solution to this problem.
Somebody really need to invent an ultimate sleeping solution, noone deserves to suffer such a terrible disorder like this. I waste so much time of life trying to sleep…it really sucks.
This has been discussed on UK TV recently.
Basically, reduce time spent in bed rather than spending longer and longer lying there hoping to sleep.
In the past two days I was lucky with initially falling asleep and I was pretty good with the time at which I got into bed. However, I still woke up prematurely after about 6.5 to 7 hours. I am not convinced that this is enough sleep for me to perform optimally and stay healthy training, and terrified of having poor training results, injury or sickness.
I feel no sleepiness, tiredness and feel very awake, alert and all, but there’s no way 6.5 hours is enough to restore me. Wonder what I can do to stay asleep longer as well…
The idea is to train yourself to sleep for a higher proportion of a shorter period of time. Where that shorter period is your current average sleep period. For example, if you currently spend 10 hours in bed sleeping a total of 6 hours with multiple interruptions you are sleeping for 60% of the time. Therefore you now allow yourself 6 hours in bed and aim to sleep for 100% of that time.
I presume the idea is that once you have accustomed yourself to sleeping for a greater proportion of time, your sleep is more efficient (few interruptions). Hence that sleep of 6 hours is more effective.
I guess that once you clear that mental barrier you could aim for a longer period in bed with hopefully a higher proportion of that being efficient sleep.
I am attempting to interpret this article but i think I have got it right. It does not directly address the greater sleep requirements of a keen athlete but the principle appears rational.
Your sleep at the moment may be further interrupted by CNS fatigue or similar. I find, that in theory i should be more tired after high intensity sessions, but sometimes struggle to sleep optimally due to my nervous system being wired. I counter that by taking greater rest between hi sessions and doing all the recover modes already suggested.
So I guess you keep up with the athletic recovery modes and consider the sleep efficiency model described.
I think your constant worrying about sleep is also a factor in you not getting any sleep. 7 hours is plenty of sleep. How many hi intensity workouts do you have a week. How close are they. YOu might want to look into the 2hi-3lo plan. Im doing the 2hi plan now. sunday/wed are my speed days. with 2 tempo and recovery days in between.
Less of a chance of injury when you have less HI days. Plus you have a better chance of being fresh on each hi day.
You’re definitely right about the worry…It sucks. I wish there’s anything that i can do that’s a hard work to put me to sleep, but sleep is like a swamp, the more you try, the worse it gets. I wonder if only 6.5-7 hours can still allow me to improve without injury or sickness…
I do 2 speed, and 1 SE but the SE is really done more like an intensive tempo as I’m going more for technique and rhythm rather than actually having full output and going for time. The daily volumes are very low as well. I’m not worried at all about my current training being too much.
I just worry that my lack of quality sleep restricting me from getting better, and possibly preventing me from increasing volume/intensity when needed to do so to improve further.
For about past 4 days I think I did a decent job of initially falling asleep, but I wake up too early. I am unhappy about the fact that my body wakes itself when it is obviously not fully recovered. There was no inturruption; no light, no noise of any sort that were around to wake me up, my nervous system is messed up and it is fooled somehow into thinking 6.5-7 hours is enough, when it is not.
I’m sorry dude but you are weird. Stop worrying about all the little things and train hard.
Well maybe you need to start looking at worry as the root cause for classic anxiety. Anxiety is a real thing. You may be right about your nervous system. It might be messed up. Why is it messed up? We don’t need to know and you don’t need to tell us or anyone or even know yourself. But trauma is also real and those who may be fortunate enough to not deal with trauma just might not understand.
I don’t know this for sure about you Kwave but seems to me there is something not right. And when you are training you need stuff to go right routinely and constituently or it will feel like a downward spiral.
Big strong football playing ‘everything’ has gone smoothly for them, type people. ( yeah I might be speaking about you RB) might not understand. ( I am not pointing any fingers… i’m just sayin ;)and who cares who understands frankly because for you this might be real.
Not many understand much about the nevous system and it could be right under someones nose ( illness or trauma) and it’s not detected.
I have a bit of a beef about this sort of thing or soft spot because I went from super star young girl athlete to hormonally active teenage girl who got fatter and slower with each moment and I had no clue what was going on.
I coached a very talented group last year as most of you know and in that group was one such kid who had all his life been the fast kid. Adorable kid. Most of them were really.
Anyway, I did not know he was the fast kid but I could tell he was the sad or depressed or dragging his ass kid. When I got the back story from the mom and others I understood.
He gained weight, was smokin weed and a bunch of other things were not falling into place for him least of which some of the kids started to dis him and not want him around.
And of course the dad was no where to be seen. Not the reason but not helpful for a young man that finds himself with issues.
My advice or thought might be to take the assumption that you are experiencing anxiety which is a real mental health issue and treat yourself accordingly. Which by the way might not include training any place near elite sport measurements. You may need to heal first.
I know this forum began as a place to learn from the Chuckster and I know there are so many experts now writing about how awesome they are ( funny how I am not seeing the results translated on the track from all the experts but what do I know LOL) but I learned some things for sure about training hard. IT’s not for the faint of heart and you can not leave any stones un turned.
Nutrition is at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of healing and all other things consistently needed to training hard. Under 30 you can ‘get away’ with lots because of the bodies awesome hormone ability to kick out testo and other important chemicals we need. UNLESS something has not gone right for what ever reason and unless something in your digestion has been damaged. These days damage to digestion has become more normal than any of us might care of focus on.
Here is another point to my rant of sorts.
Going into University the coach at that school I was attending basically had the attitude that all that mattered was the training. And the training sucked the big one to boot. But hey why did this coach need to actually know anything about caring about anyone struggling when he had plenty of kids eating up their training and had little comparison from before as they had not been accomplished at a high enough level to discern any concerns.
Thank gosh I became as frustrated as I did or I would not ever had questioned any of it.
I was not sleeping.
I was not eating much of any protein.
I had gained all this weight.
I sought the help of the coach and surrounding staff to which they replied
" you need to try harder".
If anyone is having issues and not improving there are reasons.
Lots and lots of reasons.
Keep an open curious mind and don’t give up until you find out some of the reasons and learn to help yourself.
All good stuff but when you run 11.8 as a male stop worrying about how many reps you should do OR which great protein drink to have… Develop some goals and attack them daily.
You are missing the point RB.
My suggestion is that to worry may be a symptom of something greater. Anxiety is often an underlaying reason for someone, anyone who may ‘not be able’ to perform something physical.
I am not suggesting protein shakes solve anything per say.
But I tell you what. It sure can’t hurt.
There is an order of how you need to prioritize training. And the order does not skip steps. It might skip steps by trouble shooting but first you need to check things to make sure you can skip steps.
It’s an idea. I never said I was right about it but if things keep going wrong over and over and over again? Well. the definition of crazy is doing the exact same thing over and over again and wondering why nothing changes.
I agree about the goals and targets but you are making all sorts of assumptions with out the possible idea that there is something going on.
Look at Lindsay who lived and trained with us and helped us with James and is featured in GPP along with myself. Charlie and I could not figure out why she was so tight in the hips and why she was not responding to some of the training variables. It made no sense. She had all things on her side except when we finally did an MRI we discovered she had a fracture caused by the extreme running she had done before we met her on cement. Once we knew this we were able to treat her extensively and gradually over time she healed. The kind of injury she had gets missed often in hockey players and it has often ended their careers as no one knows how to train around it or to treat it successfully.
I may not be gifted like many others and I may be full of mental issues and traumas, but I promise you that I have absolutely no work ethic issues…