Kerry warned me about this.
And apparently I forget sometimes that I am 39 (40 this July).
I severely overtrained my legs in March in my quest for our team yardage record. He told me that I might not recover for our Pac Champs (I didn't), and I might not even recover for Nats (obviously I didn't). I was ok, not great, for 50s and 100s. But anything over a 100 and I was toast as my legs were just non-functional.
I am not complaining/making excuses, for 2 reasons: I achieved my goal and broke our team record, and two, the meet is over and I need to move on.
But my question is this: how do you recover o/t legs? I've looked at a lot of sites and haven't seen any good ones, a lot of body building stuff too.
I wanted to start running today, but I don't want to dig an even bigger hole than the one I'm in.
I've never overtrained anything, so this is new for me. All suggestions are welcome.
Stretching- how often?
Massage- how often, type?
Other?
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Former Member
fmracing- good ideas. We don't do a lot of kick sets, in fact not much at all. I never wear fins. In March I only had so much time to do so many yards. I had to do all of my 100s at 1:10-1:12 pace. The only way that was happening was with fins, and fins with paddles.
So I basically went from no fins to fin-crazed, and upped my yardage by about 10K/day. In retrospect, not too bright. In the future, not doing this again!
If I'm reading your response correctly... I guess I question the "must do XXX amount of yards on XXX interval in XXX amount of days." idea. There's nothing wrong with throwing hard sets out there, but your description makes it sound like a requirement with a time limit that was set too difficult. If the only way you were making practices was with fins and paddles that's probably not good either. Those are usable tools in certain situations but not all the time. If I'm giving practices, and someone consistently can't keep up without them, the distance should be reduced or the time interval lengthened to compensate for that individual.
In the example mentioned, if I saw you needed fins/paddles to even make the 1:10-1:12 interval over a course of a practice (especially 10k yards a day!), I'd have suggested perhaps that you do some kind of alternating 75's / 100's or 2x75/1x100 on the same interval if keeping intensity intervals was the important part of the workout. Unrealistic paces just to get yardage in encourages garbage swimming imo. People will thrash, drop technique, and injure themselves in whatever way they can just to make an interval. It's not only arguable that it is counterproductive, but I think perhaps proven in your case. Ditch the fins and drop the pace for a while til the legs feel better. You won't lose ground. I'm also a believer in the "Quality not quantity" philosophy when it comes to yardage.
fmracing- good ideas. We don't do a lot of kick sets, in fact not much at all. I never wear fins. In March I only had so much time to do so many yards. I had to do all of my 100s at 1:10-1:12 pace. The only way that was happening was with fins, and fins with paddles.
So I basically went from no fins to fin-crazed, and upped my yardage by about 10K/day. In retrospect, not too bright. In the future, not doing this again!
If I'm reading your response correctly... I guess I question the "must do XXX amount of yards on XXX interval in XXX amount of days." idea. There's nothing wrong with throwing hard sets out there, but your description makes it sound like a requirement with a time limit that was set too difficult. If the only way you were making practices was with fins and paddles that's probably not good either. Those are usable tools in certain situations but not all the time. If I'm giving practices, and someone consistently can't keep up without them, the distance should be reduced or the time interval lengthened to compensate for that individual.
In the example mentioned, if I saw you needed fins/paddles to even make the 1:10-1:12 interval over a course of a practice (especially 10k yards a day!), I'd have suggested perhaps that you do some kind of alternating 75's / 100's or 2x75/1x100 on the same interval if keeping intensity intervals was the important part of the workout. Unrealistic paces just to get yardage in encourages garbage swimming imo. People will thrash, drop technique, and injure themselves in whatever way they can just to make an interval. It's not only arguable that it is counterproductive, but I think perhaps proven in your case. Ditch the fins and drop the pace for a while til the legs feel better. You won't lose ground. I'm also a believer in the "Quality not quantity" philosophy when it comes to yardage.
