I natuarally am born with tendency to get anxious easily and excited more than others, on the flipside, never can really chill out. Even good things make me too excited to let me go to sleep often times…it’s just the way I am born. On top of that, my life is full of traumas as well, so both nature and nurture are working against me psychologically. Basically, born with a lot of “excitability” in general + a lot of painful experiences (mostly devastating failures).
I know what it is like to work hard, there’s no need to question my work ethic. If anything, I’ve gotten too many injuries from working too hard and not recovering enough. I want to work hard but recover hard too. I never take a vacation or time off unless I have injury. I only go out maybe once a month or so, and I still come home early.
My body weight stayed very consistent and I am in full control of it. I know I can add/shave a good 5-10 lbs at any time whenever I want at will as needed.
I always do my best to avoid a lot of processed food and get protein, fruits, nuts, seeds, fermented food and vegetables every day. Though not perfect, I believe I’m working hard for my given time and budget.
I don’t have a lot of money to do all kinds of thorough medical testing, but I’m pretty confident I don’t have any major issues other than psychological issues. I just need to sleep well and perform better, and that’s really all I need.
I am about to give tart cherry products a try. Just read an article about how it contains antioxidants and melatonin, as well as to help increase serotonin level, which helps to relax and to go to sleep.
I’m reading more product reviews to see how it worked for others, I’m hoping this may be something that can help with my situation.
I’m doing the juice tonight and I’ll probably do gel capsules since it is cheaper and more store-able.
Thank you, there are so many herbs that I need to learn about with regards to how they work. What is your thought on how many hours of sleep are essential, for recovering from training if everything else is good?
Dr Ferber was ( is?) a pioneer on sleep with babies. We used to hear and parents still discuss " did you or are you Ferberizing your kid" Ie = Did you read the book and are you following Dr. Ferber’s sleep methods.
We had an amazing masters client John O’Neil who worked until he was well over his 75th b day and he got less than 5 hours sleep.
They know from space research and military training and research that humans can survive on very little sleep but that is not to say there are not negative follow outs.
When we discuss min sleep needs vs how to thrive for high performance we are discussing very different things.
Sport is also unique because say you are high performing outside of sport like Warren Buffet or Steve Jobs. ( Jobs may not be a good example as he died prematurely)
We know some interesting things now about the brain.
One is it’s been and will continue to be for sometime well into the future that it’s the new medical frontier.
Neuroplasticity is a fascinating area of work and when I first met Charlie he spoke of the idea regarding using any amount of something positive to grow all areas. Now his comments were specifically regarding training but as a society we still want to deal face to face with the bad even if it gets someone no where. Instead why not take the good from yourself and grow that into what ever that can be to possibly bridge over to help other areas you are suffering from.
Do contrast baths do anything for you? I am curious because it’s a nervous system reboot if and when done well. Do you like to swim and do you like the water at all? What are the things that make you feel really really good?
You need to get to the root cause of your problem - if there actually is one.
Are you lacking sleep and feeling tired most of the time ? If so consider a check from a medical practicioner to establish if there is an underlying medical cause.
If your symptoms are clustered around training activities look at the comments on training intensities and volumes + recovery. Or take a break from training and see if it fixes the problem.
If your problems have an underlying psychological root cause and are noticeable in other parts of your life, look at the suggestions on yoga, meditation, anxiety management etc made on this thread. Again consider an assessment from someone qualified to help professionally.
You may be close to your genetic potential as an athlete. Or need a more personally tailored training programme to get faster.
Do you truly feel that lack of sleep is slowing you down are you running out of ideas as to how to get faster and looking at something else to try (more sleep) ?
Why respond to a suggestion on anxiety management with another observation on herbs, is that really going to fix your problem if you dont even know which of the above causes may be relevant. And there are no doubt others I am not aware of.
All good suggestions Oldbloke but do you really think he needs to know or fully understand the root cause?
You could go to 5 doctors, each not having the knowledge of the the other experts thoughts and feasibly get 5 different takes and each one might have a golden nugget of wisdom or not.
That does not mean don’t go. Go by all means but again consider how much time and energy you will invest while you could be at home or where ever doing your training and improving your nutrition and solidifying other rock solid proactive health habits and what would the down side of this approach?
Clearly anxiety is an issue. Begin to treat it and move ahead and move on and keep learning and leave no stones unturned and don’t give up trying to get to the bottom of what you believe. And be prepared to be wrong and try something else.
I’m not missing the point… I have been following this kid for over a year now and everyone from myself to James have giving solid training tips etc… At some point you need to get off the internet and go train and use all the advice instead of looking for more shit to confuse the overall process… All this talk about sleeping and anxiety I’m not buying it.
I know that I am sleeping enough to stay alive for sure, but I was wondering how much sleep is needed to train to improve performance, stay healthy and not get sick or injured.
I know that mind body are all seperate, yet connected and influence each other. I know that doing things to help my body does have some helpful reliving effect on my mind as well. As you said, contrast baths gave me immediate boost in recovery when I started doing them. I get less soreness from training and I recover from soreness probably 2-3times faster than I would without. I don’t really swim nowadays, but I do go into the pool for some easy drills. I also do spa, sauna, and steam room. I like spending time in the water, and find it very helpful for my recovery.
Those things really help my muscular local recovery tremendously, and it has some influence on the relaxation of my mental side, but it is very limited from what I can feel.
Anxiety is caused by different issues, even though symptoms may be different, so solution A may work for one but not another, who needs solution B. I don’t know if I’ll find the solution I need, but as you said, I need to keep doing research and experiment with myself whenever I have the opportunity. Thank you.
Lately I’ve been lacking sleep a lot but I actually don’t feel that tired. It feels like I’ve been “numbed” from feeling tireeness.
I’ve been training low volume as of late and doing a lot of active recovery, and based on how quickly my muscles tend to recover, it suggests that I’m taking care of my body well, just not so well mentally.
Because of time restraints, I was only able to do meditation at home with apps and youtube audios, and they seeem to alleviate, but not enough to resolve the issue. I tried sleep sonography before and was told I was perfectly fine, suggesting no physiological issue. I would love to try some good hypnosis practitioner if I had good testimonial and some money to spend on that.
I don’t know for sure if I am close to my limit, but on the technique side of things, I still see plenty of room to improve, which I’m working on and I’ve been seeing a lot of nice improvement on that lately. Also, I’m coming back from a devastating injury that put me out of training for like 2 months, so my strength and explosiveness at this point is way below my previous best. I know that I can definitely improve AT LEAST to where I was before injury. I’m more so worried about injury and sickness I think at this point, as I see that if I’m healthy I can still improve.
Being able to sleep well and recover will help any athlete at any level, because it will help reduce likelihood of injury and sickness, and whenever you get supercompensation to supass your current “baseline”, your supercompensation curve will tend to rise a bit higher with better sleep thant without for sure.
Herbs may or may not help. Many psychological issues often are associated with imbalances in neurotransmitters, and some herbs are said to modify the levels of certain neurotransmitters in your body. Though I haven’t done any tests, I am suspecting I’m very low in serotonin and high in norepinephrine. Perhaps, if that is true, and I find herbs that help balance those, my psychological issues may improve.
Once again, I AM training, I just want to get my supercompensation from training little higher, and most importantly, reduce the likelihood of injury and sickness, as I am traumatized from the sciatic injury I had in March especially.
It is not like I’m saying “I am not going to train until I get perfect sleep every day for a month” I AM training, I am about to go to the track in like 2 hours today as well. I am working on improving my technique and rhythm, which are my priorities, and increasing my force output gradually while not compromising the aforementioned two. I’ve been seeing improvements in both, I just don’t want to get hurt and have to start all over again, as I had to earlier this year.
I don’t mean to be rude or annoying, but I want to make it clear to you that I AM training. NO excuse sir
Dude, you are overthinking things… two months out with an injury is not devastating, it is disappointing but hardly devastating. Having a terminal illness would be devastating. Don’t sweat the small stuff. There appears to be a psychological issue here with catastrophic thinking that is making you anxious. I would suggest a psychologist to get some tools to change your thought patterns. But you may not want to hear this as you seem preoccupied with what you can’t do and the 1%s before tackling the 99%s. Just my thoughts, as it appears to be going in circles, I agree with RB, train, get it sorted and the outcome will look after itself.
I am addressing everything. Good recovery is just as important as good training. If you’re genetically gifted, you can get away with a lot, but when you’re not, you have very little room to mess up, and that applies to not only training, but also with rest.
Volume issue from total training volume or too frequent Hi workouts, including tempo volume.
Stress from outside sources. Running a business, close family divorces, lack of sleep from kids, etc…
If outside stress is the case, you usually can’t remove it, so you have to drop the volume. I don’t know your age but if you are older injuries can/will start to creep up. I don’t notice real recovery problems with age, but primarily joint based injury issues.
If it’s not one of these two then you need to talk to someone and toughen up a little. If you feel drained for the day then throttle back or reduce the volume. Don’t feel sorry for yourself and don’t over analyze. Take a toke, get some drinks, take some time off.
My man, failure is the seed for success. What kind of failures are you talking about?
I know multiple people who have had nothing that turned themselves into deca-millionaires. I also know people who had businesses that they had to file bankruptcy on that continued bust it and once again became multi-millionaires.
I’m pretty wired as well, especially as I get older, so I feel you with the anxiousness and fear of failure. But when I distill it, what’s the worst that can happen, you fail and some pussy who doesn’t even have the balls to try something talks shit about you… Who cares!
If you live in the USA, Canada, or Europe you will be fine from a sustenance perspective. If you desire more, financially or athletically, then you will have to deal with the risks that takes.
I also don’t believe it’s a big deal to go talk to a doc and get some low dose med to help you sleep and reduce anxiety.
And for the record Charlie was a very anxious man.
The worst thing he could have ever done was stop training and guess what was one of the first things he stopped doing not long after we met? He stopped training.
Stress is an important aspect of learning and succeeding. I like this saying a lot " failure is the seed for success".
I appreciate everyones perspective and I also appreciate everyone’s will to add something to a discussion that seemingly has zero to do with training.
I wish it was all about dead lifts and spirits and the training but it’s not at all and in fact it’s one of life’s biggest challenges to juggle the training in the face of all that goes on whether you ask for the stress or not.
I made a decision in 1988. We could sink or float. I chose the latter.
It’s not really that I feel drained or anything, but because I was told by so many so many times that 8-10 hours sleep is very important in order to improve and stay healthy, that’s what makes me worried about it. I physically feel fine most of the time, but I don’t trust that I truly am fine.
My life is all full of failures in all aspects…including academics, interpersonal relationships, financial situation, etc. but the most painful one is the fact that I’m not athletic. I hate being told that I’m not allowed to have ambition to be better just because I’m not born with outstanding abilities and talents. Though I admit I am at a great disadvantage, I can’t help having an ambition no less than any world class athlete out there. I don’t deserve to be any of lesser being, I’m not like a criminal or anything…
Although I’m in the US I’m not smart and competent enough to be financially well off…I have a lot of struggles on that end too and I would love to see a good hypnotherapist about this to fix bad wiring of me always worrying and not believing in myself, which can further limit what I’m capable of, if I had the right person to help me and also the money to do so.
I really envy you and many others, to be able to work hard and be rewarded for the hard work. I can handle anything, I will endure and embrace all hardships and failures, as long as my end result don’t end up as failure, which is the only thing that I will never be able to embrace.
Screw what everyone else thinks and go define your self and your life as you wish it to be.
Dima is Angie Issajenko’s son. He is the runner for George who is legally blind. George ran a few Canadian records this summer at the world Championships in London with Dima running right along side him.
George is an amazing kid. He has a girlfriend also blind, sings and records his music and lives a full, active life unlike most people who don’t have physical or mental health issues.
George was pissed off this summer as he knows he can be faster and wants to train harder and improve.
You have what sounds to be excellent self introspection and you are not interested in giving up. Keep at and don’t let go what you want.
I agree with Angela. It sounds like you are listening to other people and not your body. If your body is recovered with 7 hours of sleep, you feel good, things are improving, etc., then that is enough for you. As someone in the healthcare field in a couple of different areas, I can tell you that the recommendations made from research are made to fit most people. However, each person is different and will have different needs/requirements. The best thing to do is to learn to listen to your body. It often tells us what we need to know.
