I’ve lost a couple pounds (keep regular track), and a lot of other people report the same thing. I remember Charlie, saying how Asafa Powell got leaner after the osaka world champs, what is the reason for this? Since I’ve been doing high intensity work all year. Is it because of the longer sprints + races?
It’s typical. A slight weight gain follows from the hard training with subsequent muscular development and a slight loss comes from the taper period where work load is reduced with a slight loss of mass- but not enough to outweigh the benefits of being fresher, hopefully for the entire duration of the competition period.
I was able to drop 10lbs+ by adding SE work, and longer tempo runs in the 200-300m range.
I remember Dan Pfaff talking about a certain amount of weight loss for Donovan Bailey heading into 96 Olympics. I’m still trying to understand the hows and whys of this happening and do athletes lose lean mass? How much of a loss is acceptable?
As a general rule, athletes gain weight/muscle throughout the heavy training cycle, even if only slight and weight loss during that period may indicate overtraining if the athlete is already lean. In the taper period, when the training load drops, there is often a slight drop as long as the athlete eats very carefully.