Training life is just like a 3-legged stool!
When we start out on a new plan, one of the first questions that we ask ourselves is how many hours we have available for training. We often have to squeeze other things in our life, and can find ourselves struggling to fit these hours in.
We tend to forget the preparation time of getting the clothing/equipment/nutrition ready, the travel to get to and from the session, the time to recover, shower, and get into the next task.
But there is an even more important calculation that we need to be doing when we start out on a new plan!
We need to plan in the other 2 legs of the stool!
Whilst there are a lot of aspects to the training ‘leg’ of the stool, there are 2 other legs that all endurance athletes need to pay careful attention to. These other two legs are: nutrition and recovery.
Without the right amount of these other two legs, the stool (ie us and our plan) will fall over!
The reason for this is that nutrition is what creates the fuel for the regeneration and adaptation of the muscles, tissues, and nerves that have been used (and damaged) in each training session. And the regeneration itself happens in specific sleep cycles when the hormonal and chemical balances are just right for this process to happen.
So actually, the benefit of training only comes when you sleep!
The training sessions are the stimulus, your nutrition provides the building blocks. But the benefit only comes when you recover and especially when you sleep.
This means that if you have aspects of your life that make sleep difficult, addressing them will be far more beneficial than squeezing in another training session!
Professional athletes take a large amount of recovery – they will routinely sleep for 10 hours a night, and also take an afternoon nap of another couple of hours! Even in their waking hours, most will have interests outside of training that involve relaxing literally with their feet up, or even lying down! Tour de France cyclists are notorious for their obsession on this, and will regularly be found resting lying down on a bed.
But we don’t have the luxuries of professional athletes, do we? We have to get all sorts of other things done in order to fund the triathlon habit! And this is why we need to be realistic about our training hours – including the hours to ensure the right nutrition and sufficient recovery.
Signs that the stool is off-balance
When I first started a structured training plan, I used to painstakingly plan my recovery day as when I got all of the normal-life tasks done that I struggled to squeeze in on training days. Fairly quickly my recovery day was more hectic than other days of the week! This was bad news. I started my training week tired and with my body swimming in stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Whilst these can be very useful for running away from a lion when required (not a frequent issue in my life!), they inhibit all of the regeneration processes (after all, why take the luxury of rebuilding small muscle-fibre damage when there is a lion to escape?)
The body is amazing at just keeping going… but then the ‘tells’ emerge. These are often upper-respiratory-tract infections, cold sores or poor complexion, lower energy levels and motivation, and sometimes a much heavier infection that makes training impossible (often coming in about March or April in the northern hemisphere training and weather cycles).
These are all examples of the stool not being balanced. The outcome starts as poorer outputs training sessions – which might be quite hard to spot since the adrenaline and determination will probably allow the training goal to be hit, but the price paid by the body will be much higher. This will start to be observable in the heart rate to achieve the output (which should be getting lower with training, instead of starting to move the other way) and also in the rate of heart-rate recovery at the end of the session starting to slow.
This is why training with a heart-rate strap is useful
Not to always train to heart rate (although this can be very useful at times), but to pick up times when we are not listening to our bodies very well.
It also helps us look at useful metrics. Sometimes when we are pushing ourselves hard for progress, we want signs that we are making big steps. But by the time we get to signals like heavily aching muscles, significant weight loss, noticeable exhaustion etc – we have gone too far. If we are lucky we will be over-reaching and a rebalance over a couple of weeks will allow us to recharge and start again. But if this has progressed into significant over-training then we can be into the Unexplained Under-Performance Syndrome (UUPS) or Overtraining Syndrome. The only way back from this is a significant and complete break.
In summary
The simple way to think about training is the 3 legs of the stool – when the training leg gets longer we need more nutrition and recovery as well. This needs to be quality as well as quantity, and whilst there are some very useful pieces of research you will also need to tune it to your chemical make-up, circadian rhythms, tissue responses and lifestyle factors. This is something that you should talk over with your coach in order to have access to the latest research and insights.
If this does not seem intuitive – then reversing it probably is more intuitive. When we back off training for a period, we know that we need to reduce the amount that we eat if we are not going to put on weight and we also notice that we can get away with more late nights and less quality nutrition.
So as you set out on your new training plan – it is better to have slightly fewer training hours but supported with the right amount of recovery and nutrition than it is to squeeze every last minute into training and cut back on sleep, grab meals on the go and create a lifestyle that is constantly, always on the go.