I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 09:23:38 GMT

I concur wholeheartedly with Karl S.'s suggestion that you might be coming down with a cold. One other possibility is mental fatigue. Have you been working on something particularly challenging on the cognitive front of late? Don't think I'm coming down with a cold. It's been a while since Tuesday now, no cold, no flu... I think I'm fine. But I'll knock on wood just in case. As for mental fatigue... that's an interesting one. I can't say my schoolwork is any more challenging than usual and my part-time job is as lame and tedious as ever. If I'm mentally fatigued from anything, it's gotta be- dun dun dun, wait for it!- swimming! Up until two weeks ago, my team was doing a lot of speed work, with yardage in the 3.5 to 5k category, usually falling somewhere in the low to mid 4ks. Then two weeks ago, the coach announced that from here until about the end of June we're going to be doing long, repetitive grinds, lots of aerobic stuff, endurance, you know the drill. At about the same time, I rededicated myself to focusing on not taking any kinds of shortcuts in the water, never "zoning out" or anything like that. Really putting my mind into the muscle, you know? So I might just be getting totally sapped.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

jim thornton — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 06:28:17 GMT

If you're used to X, then suddenly switch to Y, it's understandable that your body is going to be tired because it isn't adapted yet to Y. If Y is easy, doing it won't help you get better. Babbling, I know, but I am hoping the point is made! When you switch back to X, chances are that will be initially tiring, too!

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

jim thornton — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 03:39:47 GMT

Thanks Jim, needed that. Perhaps this is the explanation for my semi-comatose state after work in the evenings. . . . Although, just to be contrary, when the weather is beautiful, it's amazing how incredibly rejuvenating physically & mentally, a good run, tennis game or whatever can be after work - especially when you feel like you're sneaking it in! :) It could also be the wild fire smoke that is tiring you out! I was in Gainesville about 10 days ago, and at one point, it was a little hard to breathe without coughing. Are you still getting all that smoke from the GA-FLA border wildfires? Nasty!

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

jim thornton — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 12:46:42 GMT

I concur wholeheartedly with Karl S.'s suggestion that you might be coming down with a cold. Everytime I have a horrible practice, or should I say, a couple of them in a row, I wonder if old age has finally kicked in, or a giant piece of arterial plaque has dislodged and has begun to beaver dam my widow maker artery, or perhaps a tsetse fly has bitten me, and the sleeping sickness is starting. microbeworld.org/.../tsetse_fly.jpg Invariably, I end up coming down with a cold or some other mild infectious malaise. When it clears up, I am back to my usual old but un-infarcted and non-tsetse-bitten state. Note: you don't even need to come down with a full blown cold to be affected. A so-called subsyndromal cold will still sap your energy pretty effectively. One other possibility is mental fatigue. Have you been working on something particularly challenging on the cognitive front of late? People has long suspected this, but a recent study showed it is really true: Mental fatigue impairs physical performance in humans Samuele M. Marcora, Walter Staiano, and Victoria Manning School of Sport, Health and Exercise Sciences, Bangor University, Bangor, Wales, United Kingdom Submitted 4 October 2008; accepted in final form 5 January 2009 J Appl Physiol 106: 857–864, 2009. From the abstract: Mental fatigue is a psychobiological state caused by prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity. Although the impact of mental fatigue on cognitive and skilled performance is well known, its effect on physical performance has not been thoroughly investigated. In this randomized crossover study, 16 subjects cycled to exhaustion at 80% of their peak power output after 90 min of a demanding cognitive task (mental fatigue) or 90 min of watching emotionally neutral documentaries (control). After experimental treatment, a mood questionnaire revealed a state of mental fatigue (P 0.005) that significantly reduced time to exhaustion (640 316 s) compared with the control condition (754 339 s) (P 0.003). This negative effect was not mediated by cardiorespiratory and musculoenergetic factors as physiological responses to intense exercise remained largely unaffected. Self-reported success and intrinsic motivation related to the physical task were also unaffected by prior cognitive activity. However, mentally fatigued subjects rated perception of effort during exercise to be significantly higher compared with the control condition (P 0.007). As ratings of perceived exertion increased similarly over time in both conditions (P 0.001), mentally fatigued subjects reached their maximal level of perceived exertion and disengaged from the physical task earlier than in the control condition. In conclusion, our study provides experimental evidence that mental fatigue limits exercise tolerance in humans through higher perception of effort rather than cardiorespiratory and musculoenergetic mechanisms. Future research in this area should investigate the common neurocognitive resources shared by physical and mental activity.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Celestial — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 01:07:37 GMT

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:29:15 GMT

My vote is the cake. You were hungry and wanted a snack, but didn't have time. The temptations cake stole your attention but a dollop of frosting clearly was not enough to power you through 6000 yards. Not having the adequate nutrition that day resulted in inadequate energy and poor performance. Maybe you should have eaten the cake. I guess the question is did you not eat enough before the practice?

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

ande — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 12:26:36 GMT

Alright, what do you guys think? :) You had trouble in a set, you couldn't do what you normally do. You tried to shrug it off but felt something was wrong. & "felt this way in the water for a pretty long time" There are different ways to feel bad in the water. You can: + be sore and tired but still muscle through. + have been out of the water for a few days and feel like your arms are slipping through the water when you come back. + have been out of the water for multiple weeks and feel like you just started when you come back. you felt like your "muscles evaporated." you've been increasing yardage. Sometimes it catches up with you. "What Went Wrong?" It could happen again & happens for all sorts of reasons. "sometimes there's no rhyme or reason, it just happens." I tend to swim better in the morning when I haven't eaten. this morning we were doing 150 repeats on 1:45 and I felt light headed and weak. What's weird is sometimes I've swum surprisingly fast when I was sick or on the verge of getting sick, & expected to have a crummy practice. "might be tired and broken down" sometimes the training you do finally catches up with you. especially when ramping up yardage or going from tapering back to training. a "full night's sleep" is always helpful sometimes it's attitude, sometimes I just need a break, sometimes fatigue, sometimes not enough sleep, what ever it is shake it off, do what you need to do during that practice and after. Just know that there are better days ahead.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 05:16:44 GMT

sometimes it's attitude, sometimes I just need a break, sometimes fatigue, sometimes not enough sleep, what ever it is shake it off, do what you need to do during that practice and after. Just know that there are better days ahead. You've got the makings of a good country western song there Ande. Sometimes you're the windshield :banana: sometimes you're the bug.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Elaine Krugman — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 02:05:35 GMT

You've got the makings of a good country western song there Ande. Sometimes you're the windshield :banana: sometimes you're the bug. :lmao: Yeah, Ande, I think 'Silver is right; you're on to somethin' here!

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:12:16 GMT

Yeah, definitely wasn't the cake thing. I've been known to eat whole cakes before practice and performance was uneffected :angel: Don't worry so much about practice performance. Think about practice as a measure of how much effort you've put in day to day rather than comparing speeds from day to day. Put forth your total effort (mental and physical), conform to the description of the sets and workouts (do easy swims easy and hard swims hard), and your actual performance will come out at the end of the season.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:55:10 GMT

I can't believe you wrote all of that about a single practice. That thing about the cake icing is just ridiculous. "I didn't eat a whole slice of it before practice or anything." Oh goodness me, I hope not!

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 13:12:22 GMT

Oh, I noticed I made a typo earlier. I meant to say the general consensus seems to be a mix of reasons 2 and 4, not 3 and 4. The cake is not the culprit! I can still have my cake and eat it, too. :cake: Thanks, quicksilver! It's nice to know my hard kicking-specific work over the past year has been paying off.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

knelson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:01:34 GMT

Me too! I only managed a mere 1000 yards this morning before it was time to go warm up the showers! You didn't eat a piece of cake before practice, did you? :) Hope your back isn't still hurting. I know how much that can suck.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

jaadams1 — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:55:28 GMT

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

aztimm — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:44:41 GMT

Sounds like it would make a good blog entry, eh? forums.usms.org/blog.php

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

knelson — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:15:04 GMT

That thing about the cake icing is just ridiculous. "I didn't eat a whole slice of it before practice or anything." Oh goodness me, I hope not! Ditto. This is a bizarre post. Most--if not all-of us are not going to relate to only having one bad practice per year. That's just insane. I usually have at least one practice like that per week. Get over it. You were tired. Your next practice will probably be good.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:14:38 GMT

Get some rest, eat some protein, maybe some cake... and you'll be the Louisville slugger again. :) BTW that's some decent kicking you've got going on over there.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

jaadams1 — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 10:06:59 GMT

You didn't eat a piece of cake before practice, did you? :) Hope your back isn't still hurting. I know how much that can suck. No cake...just a banana. That's probably the reason. :badday: My back is doing better...it just needed a few hours to relax after that quick jerking action it took. I'll be good to go for the meet on Sunday no matter what. Pain, or no pain...they're racin' to be done! :banana:

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Karl_S — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 09:00:18 GMT

My :2cents: Today, my coach gave my team this main set: ...Right before that, we had a set of 8x100s flutter kick w/ board on 1:40. I've been getting better and better at kicking. On most days with this interval and number of 100s, I usually go 1:30. On a really good day, I can go 1:25 for several consecutive 100s. Pretty impressive kicking! "What Went Wrong?" 1.) ...we haven't done very much fly lately and that affected the rest of the set. There are two problems with this: a.) we did fly in warm-up yesterday and that didn't knock me on my rear for most of practice, and b.) that doesn't explain the kicking set before the main set. 'agree this in not the reason. 2.) ...sometimes there's no rhyme or reason, it just happens. Sometimes, for some mystical reason, practice and/or a meet goes bad. Obviously, I don't like this theory because it has an element of extreme uncontrollability about it. Your coach is right in that sometimes these things have no apparent explanation, but I agree there ought to be one, even if it is difficult to identify. 3.) I have this leftover cake from the weekend in my fridge. I didn't eat a whole slice of it before practice or anything, but about an hour before practice started, I took my finger and filched the last of the frosting (which was enough to cover two digits of my index finger).... Not. 4.) Somehow I might be tired and broken down despite not feeling tired and broken down. I had a great practice yesterday that I just absolutely killed. ... Now that sounds very suspicious. ...but I do wonder if I somehow subconsciously knew that today's practice would feel like that one last July and thus it wondered across my mind. Yea, because your body knew it was broken down from the killer workout the day before. Not to worry though, IMO it's good to really kill it in practice sometimes, even if you pay for it the next day or two. Another possible explanation is that you are in the early stages of an illness. I can remember a few times when I had a really tough workout and thought, "why was that so hard?" ... only to find out the next day when I developed some nasty cold or flu. In fact, it is very common that when I become ill I can go back to my workout log and find evidence of it in decreased workout perfomance. This is not a useful way to tell if an illness is incipient, however, because a lot of things can cause a subtle decrease in workout performance. In any case, since the cold/flu season is largely over this seems unlikely, and if you are fine today, you can cross that one off the list.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:41:09 GMT

I don't like this theory because it has an element of extreme uncontrollability about it. I think your answer is already in your post. From what I read perhaps more a mental issue then a physically one. Learn to accept that things not always go as you wish they would have gone, specially when you set your standards high. Interpret certain outcomes in another way so that these thoughts lead to a feeling of selfconfidence, optimism and mental strength. So for instance if a training did not work out well you could think that you did previous trainings to hard or to much yardage. Look at things from a more positive side then negative. Positive thinking will give you energy, the other thinking cost energy. And accept that not everything is (and should be) controllable. PS:advice is based on what you wrote, I don't know who you are, so don't blame me if these advices are not right for you.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:24:57 GMT

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:19:36 GMT

Thanks for the insights, everyone. It seems like the general consensus so far is a mixture of reasons #3 and 4. After sleeping on yesterday's practice and reading your responses, I have to agree, too. A few additional comments: Karl- I don't think I'm becoming ill. At least, I hope not! I also had a flu shot, so I should be okay in that area. On the other hand, that's a really good point about a bad practice possibly predicting falling ill. I remember one year ago I got the flu after a week of really good workouts, except for this one workout at the end of that week that took place two days before I got sick. Bam! Got the flu! quicksilver- Definitely was a bug on the windshield kind of set. I mean, it was a total wipeout. I couldn't even make the intervals! Great song, by the way.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 07:10:08 GMT

I have no idea if this relates, but as a woman of the female persuasion who is getting older, I have found that suddenly I'll be so short of breath and muscles tired in practice that I'm wondering WTH?? Then the next day when nature takes it's peri-menopausal course, I realize I'm temporarily anemic. It doesn't happen all of the time, and when it does it's just for a day, but it's always unexpected and a shocker at first. Another fun thing about getting older. But, hey, that's why G-d invented snorkles and backstroke.

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 06:06:01 GMT

Ditto. This is a bizarre post. Most--if not all-of us are not going to relate to only having one bad practice per year. That's just insane. I usually have at least one practice like that per week. Get over it. You were tired. Your next practice will probably be good. Okay, I am going to respond to some other posts next, but just off the bat, I wanted to clarify that I do have lots of other bad practices. It's just for all of those other bad ones I usually have a ready-made explanation. Then I shrug it off and say I'll do better next time. What gnaws me about yesterday's practice is that I can't explain it, until this morning after reading some of your replies, which I thank you all for. As for the icing on the cake, well, when you have difficulty explaining something, doesn't your mind ever start reaching? I'm glad to find confirmation that the icing on the cake is a laughable suspect, something which I was skeptical of myself in the first place. ty!

RE: I had a bad practice. What is the culprit?

Former Member — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 05:17:31 GMT

My 2 cents... Well it's a strange old game - you learn it slow One step forward and it's back to go You're standing on the throttle You're standing on the brakes In the groove 'til you make a mistake Sometimes you're the windshield Sometimes you're the bug Sometimes it all comes together baby Sometimes you're a fool in love Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger Sometimes you're the ball Sometimes it all comes together baby Sometimes you're going lose it all You gotta know happy - you gotta know glad Because you're gonna know lonely And you're gonna know bad When you're rippin' and a ridin' and you're coming on strong You start slippin' and a slidin' and it all goes wrong, because Sometimes you're the windshield Sometimes you're the bug Sometimes it all comes together baby Sometimes you're a fool in love Sometimes you're the Louisville slugger baby Sometimes you're the ball Sometimes it all comes together baby Sometimes you're going lose it all One day you got the glory One day you got none One day you're a diamond And then you're a stone Everything can change In the blink of an eye So let the good times roll Before we say goodbye