I wanted to ask a question - just out of curiosity.
I had a too strenuous training regime a couple of weeks ago and I ended up a bit overtrained. I suffered then from chronic exhaustion and my results became much poorer. All improvement that I had made during the past three months was gone. I started to swim 50m fc at terrifying time of 41-43 secs, though I had already been able to do the same in 38 secs for 50m (not great, I know, but my swimming career is yet rather short).
I decided to have a rest. I was going to the pool only two - three times a week, decreased the volume to 1500-2000 and abandoned any demanding tasks. Just leisure swimming - technique and turns.
After about 10-12 days I was feeling great. No sign of exhaustion. In fact the fatigue disappeared already after about three days of rest.
But then, whenever I tried to experiment with speed and swim one or two 50s or 100s I found my results still as poor as at the time when my exhaustion reached its peak. I could not understand why my body does not want to stand a heavier effort even though my subjective symptoms of overtraining (i.e. fatigue etc) are no longer felt.
Now I am back in form - even did my pb at 50m :) (probably because I focussed so much on technique during the past three weeks).
Still I am very curious why it was so hard to me to swim faster, even though I did not feel any chronic exhaustion any longer? Is it possible that the effects of the overtraining last still longer than you subjectively experience them?
Parents
Former Member
Is it an ordinary course of affairs, a regular scheme of the training cycle, that one overtrains and than tapers? I thought that overtraining is something undesirable and that you must be careful to avoid it.
We need to be careful with what terms we use. Just because a swimmer needs to taper doesn't mean they have "overtrained" as such. Strictly speaking, the term "overtraining" could be argued to only cover the case where the swimmer has sent their body into a catabolic state and is breaking down their muscle tissue rather than building it up. A swimmer who does this will become detrained, and even with sufficient rest will not perform as well as they did previously, because they have reversed their previous training adaptation by losing muscle tissue.
What is very different to this is slowing down due to not being fully recovered each time you swim. In my case, for example, I only swim at my best in training if I haven't trained the day before. But if I always did this I would only train 3.5 times per week. I know from experience that if I train 4 times a week, my long term improvement is better than if I train 3 times a week, even though I will be tired for one of those sessions each week. And if I train 5 times a week, I will only have two of these sessions where I am fresh from a day's rest before the training, but my long term improvement will be even better.
Here's one way to look at it. Suppose each training session takes 30 hours to recover from. If I train two consecutive days, I will not be fully recovered because only 24 hours have elapsed, so I have a "debt" of 6 hours of recovery at that point. But after my next session my total debt is still only 36 hours of recovery required, so I will still be fully recovered after a day of complete rest before my next training session. Even if I train 3 consecutive days, my debt after each session will be 30 hours, then 36 hours, then 42 hours, so I can still fully recover with one day's complete rest before a further session. In theory, if my recovery from each session takes 30 hours, I would optimise my training by doing 5.6 sessions per week.
But then what I've said above, having periods of training where you don't fully recover followed by periods when you do recover, can be applied over even longer timescales, and this is what macro training cycles are about. So yes, I would say it is normal to have periods where you don't allow for complete recovery, but also periods where you do fully recover. Indeed I would say it is essential to train this way because most of us are limited to training at specific times of day, so can't simply train every 30 hours, or whatever our personal recovery period is.
Is it an ordinary course of affairs, a regular scheme of the training cycle, that one overtrains and than tapers? I thought that overtraining is something undesirable and that you must be careful to avoid it.
We need to be careful with what terms we use. Just because a swimmer needs to taper doesn't mean they have "overtrained" as such. Strictly speaking, the term "overtraining" could be argued to only cover the case where the swimmer has sent their body into a catabolic state and is breaking down their muscle tissue rather than building it up. A swimmer who does this will become detrained, and even with sufficient rest will not perform as well as they did previously, because they have reversed their previous training adaptation by losing muscle tissue.
What is very different to this is slowing down due to not being fully recovered each time you swim. In my case, for example, I only swim at my best in training if I haven't trained the day before. But if I always did this I would only train 3.5 times per week. I know from experience that if I train 4 times a week, my long term improvement is better than if I train 3 times a week, even though I will be tired for one of those sessions each week. And if I train 5 times a week, I will only have two of these sessions where I am fresh from a day's rest before the training, but my long term improvement will be even better.
Here's one way to look at it. Suppose each training session takes 30 hours to recover from. If I train two consecutive days, I will not be fully recovered because only 24 hours have elapsed, so I have a "debt" of 6 hours of recovery at that point. But after my next session my total debt is still only 36 hours of recovery required, so I will still be fully recovered after a day of complete rest before my next training session. Even if I train 3 consecutive days, my debt after each session will be 30 hours, then 36 hours, then 42 hours, so I can still fully recover with one day's complete rest before a further session. In theory, if my recovery from each session takes 30 hours, I would optimise my training by doing 5.6 sessions per week.
But then what I've said above, having periods of training where you don't fully recover followed by periods when you do recover, can be applied over even longer timescales, and this is what macro training cycles are about. So yes, I would say it is normal to have periods where you don't allow for complete recovery, but also periods where you do fully recover. Indeed I would say it is essential to train this way because most of us are limited to training at specific times of day, so can't simply train every 30 hours, or whatever our personal recovery period is.
