How can you tell if you're overtraining? I'd like some "expert" advice from some 50 somethings (or a coach of 50 somethings!) about how to know when what I'm doing is too much. I've added weights to my swimming - I go three times a week for weights - which I follow by a fairly easy swim to loosen up my muscles. I'm still frequently sore the next day (and the next, and the next) however - but I know this is to be expected - if I didn't feel sore, I wouldn't feel like I was actually even pushing myself. the other three days of the week, I generally put in a good 90-120 minutes workout, getting in from 4500-6000m. Sometimes, like today, I get to the point where I just can NOT muster up the energy to put any real effort into the swimming - today, for instance, I did fairly well for the first 3000m, but then once we started the "real" workout, the first main set, I was just pooped. I could swim, but at only a slow pace. (By this I mean that an interval I usually can keep on a 200 by about 10 seconds, I missed by 1 second - and I was wearing zoomers. And the thought of doing like a 50 sprint, was out of the question.) This was NOT a day that I swam following weights, BTW.
Do you think this is a nutrition problem, and that I'm just not getting enough protein in my diet? I have to say categorically, that eating BEFORE practice is out of the question - I swim at 5:30 in the morning, and would probably barf if I ate before practice, although I do sometimes eat some Shot Blox. Am I overtraining & need to cut back somewhere? Or is this a short term transition (it's been going on & off for weeks now) & I need to just hang in there?
Thanks in advance!
It sounds like your body thinks you are stringing together 6 hard days in a week even if you think of it as 3 hard swim days and 3 days of recovery swimming + weights.
I agree with some of the things said above; when you get to a certain point with the weights, think about maintaining rather than constantly ramping up. Your body will adapt to that level and before too long you will be doing the weights without the extra soreness (which is holding you back on those hard swim days).
As far as nutrition goes, what you describe at about 3K in your planned 4.5-6K workouts does sound like a bonk rather than overtraining... especially because your body has more nutritional needs to help it recover from the added strength training and you are beginning your morning swim in a fasting mode. That may have worked well when you were just swimming, but your body is deploying the nutritional intake differently now that it's trying to repair and recharge muscles. I don't like having a lot of food in my stomach before a workout either, but liquid calories might be an option... have you experimented with sports drinks? Remember after about an hour, your muscles have burned all of their stored glycogen and you need to replace it for them to keep going... if you started out with a deficit, you're going to feel it a lot sooner.
I'm not a 50-something yet, still a 40-something, but toward the end of OW season last year had definitely overtrained myself... much higher than average RHR, trouble sleeping, constant unexplained fatigue in the legs, general malaise, ever poorer performances... even accounting for good nutrition. I took off 4-5 days and came back slowly, still feeling the blahs. It took about a month to recharge. Check your resting heart rate and look up some of the other symptoms... it sounds like in your case you might be able to avoid overtraining by just making a couple of little adjustments here and there. Small set back of a week or so would be much better than the month-long setback I had at the end of last summer.
It sounds like your body thinks you are stringing together 6 hard days in a week even if you think of it as 3 hard swim days and 3 days of recovery swimming + weights.
I agree with some of the things said above; when you get to a certain point with the weights, think about maintaining rather than constantly ramping up. Your body will adapt to that level and before too long you will be doing the weights without the extra soreness (which is holding you back on those hard swim days).
As far as nutrition goes, what you describe at about 3K in your planned 4.5-6K workouts does sound like a bonk rather than overtraining... especially because your body has more nutritional needs to help it recover from the added strength training and you are beginning your morning swim in a fasting mode. That may have worked well when you were just swimming, but your body is deploying the nutritional intake differently now that it's trying to repair and recharge muscles. I don't like having a lot of food in my stomach before a workout either, but liquid calories might be an option... have you experimented with sports drinks? Remember after about an hour, your muscles have burned all of their stored glycogen and you need to replace it for them to keep going... if you started out with a deficit, you're going to feel it a lot sooner.
I'm not a 50-something yet, still a 40-something, but toward the end of OW season last year had definitely overtrained myself... much higher than average RHR, trouble sleeping, constant unexplained fatigue in the legs, general malaise, ever poorer performances... even accounting for good nutrition. I took off 4-5 days and came back slowly, still feeling the blahs. It took about a month to recharge. Check your resting heart rate and look up some of the other symptoms... it sounds like in your case you might be able to avoid overtraining by just making a couple of little adjustments here and there. Small set back of a week or so would be much better than the month-long setback I had at the end of last summer.
