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
As to the problem of overreaching and overtraining - how can I know where the boarder is? Not that difficult, especially for swimmers. You generally know very well what you're worth on certain type of sets, or certain tests.
Few days off, or a net decrease in overall density (intensity * volume) will generally be enough to get rid of overreaching. After this period, you can swim normally again (testing wise).
With overtraining, if you can get your feelings and performance level back within a month, you can count yourself lucky. It means that you were not *that* overtrained. Deep overtraining, for elite athletes, where nothing works ok in their life anymore, sports, sleep, feeding, sexual life, this type of state will last for months.
I began an overtraining loop once, I was lucky as it only lasted 6 weeks. That was a while ago. But what I do remember, was two incredibly bad things : not being able to swim long sets off 1:30 anymore. And not being able to hold an erection for 6 weeks in a row. (did I really wrote that?)
As to the problem of overreaching and overtraining - how can I know where the boarder is? Not that difficult, especially for swimmers. You generally know very well what you're worth on certain type of sets, or certain tests.
Few days off, or a net decrease in overall density (intensity * volume) will generally be enough to get rid of overreaching. After this period, you can swim normally again (testing wise).
With overtraining, if you can get your feelings and performance level back within a month, you can count yourself lucky. It means that you were not *that* overtrained. Deep overtraining, for elite athletes, where nothing works ok in their life anymore, sports, sleep, feeding, sexual life, this type of state will last for months.
I began an overtraining loop once, I was lucky as it only lasted 6 weeks. That was a while ago. But what I do remember, was two incredibly bad things : not being able to swim long sets off 1:30 anymore. And not being able to hold an erection for 6 weeks in a row. (did I really wrote that?)
