The self trained athlete.

This blog post, I'd like to touch on the self trained athletes and the various training issues that one of you may face.

1) Misconceptions of training in general
Training/workout seems to be commonly understood as a painful/suffering ordeal. There is two periods of pain that sedentary or general populations who don't exercise much, are afraid about. First and foremost, During the workout, and then the DOMS (after workout. Delayed Onset of Muscle Soreness). What they do not know is how hard a workout is, is controlled by themselves. It is not necessary to start a run by sprinting out of your house and dying on the first 400m and then fatigue and end up walking the rest of the route before sprinting back home.

Now, this misconception puts a lot of people off from working out. As a PT myself, I ensure that my workout follows a easy--moderately challenging--challenging workout progression over at least 12 Weeks or even 6 Months.

Many people can't get over their inner ego (men especially) to tell them to go hard all the time, even when they are untrained. It's like how layman classify "Joggers" vs "Runners". If I am not running fast then I am not a runner. Technically speaking, isn't jogging and running the same movements?

If you run, you're a runner, if you swim, you're a swimmer. The only thing that separates the faster runners/swimmers and the slower ones.. are endurance/fitness that has been laid down over long period of consistent training and also economy of movements, or what we call Techniques.

We all need to train smart so we can train consistently, day in and day out, without letting the pain and stress of working out get in the way of our life (work, family, social circles, etc.) in general.

To train smart, means shift your focus from just working hard, to:

i) Perfecting your economy of movement through education on your ROM (range of motion) and what are the parts required to be moved during a exercise movement and what are those that are not needed. Why do we do that? To reduce unnecessary strains on joints and prevent chronic injury due to the repetition of movements in any cardio exercise or repetitive exercise regime.

ii) Learning the exact limit of your body and how your body reacts to the level of stimulus you input to your body. One needs to do this from the lightest workout possibly imagined, and progressively move on to see a gradual change in response.

iii) Know that training breaks down your muscle fibers so in time to come when they recover, they'll be bigger and stronger for more workout/training stimulus -- I.e improvements. This leads us to the next and last point.

iv) Making sure there is enough time for recovery. If there is no recovery, there is diminishing returns of training effect. Imagine if you can gain 50% speed improvement from a full fledged speed workout but you only allow half the amount of time to recover and thus your body recovers only half way, then the speed gained from the speed workout will be much lesser than 50%.

Also, it is Not just diminishing return in one workout. But imagine the speed workout takes out so much from you and you're left with a 1/3 filled tank the rest of the day or even two to three days.. How will you be able to continue to train at a proper intensity (i.e going long enough for long workouts and going hard enough for hard workouts) that will give your body the optimal level of stimuli needed?

Next question is even more crucial, HOW will you cope with your work life, reap the most joy out of your social life if one is consistently tired, not being able to wake up on time for group workout or outing or even just enjoy time with your love ones by smiling and laughing whole heartedly like nothing else matter in the world?

Or will you rather choose to just keep thinking about overdoing one workout so that you'll stress about not being able to do the next workout with quality? Unless quality is not a necessity in your regimental routine of consistent workout of course.. but if there is no quality, then why train?


2) Lack of understanding of how a Normal human move within its safe range of motion (Human anatomy)
Everybody is bound by a range of motion that is specific for each individual. The range of motion dictates how much you can extend/flex your joints before hyperextending or basically injuring it. If training is only focused on effort and not proper form/technique that ensures the individual's safe Range of motions then it is very risky for the trainee to participate. When a trainee focus solely on exertion, there is little or no attention paid to making sure that the joints don't hyper extend or flex when trying to accomplish the objective of maximal effort application.

Some factors that affect R.O.M:
i) Flexibility - Muscle/ligament tightness

ii) Muscle bulk - Imagine a guy with a small bicep that is untrained, he'll be able to flex the elbow joint to perhaps 20degrees.. but a guy with a 50cm circumference bicep, he'll definitely not be able to flex the elbow joint as much as the small bicep guy.

iii) Injury - Injury can cause fibrosis or scarring on the muscle fibres that will require manipulation or stretching to release. Injury may also cause one's joint to totally stop working and thus losing it's functionality.

iv) Joint abnormalities - Some people are born with double joint and thus can hyper flex/extend safely, some are born with lesser R.O.M

v) Improper training - When you train a muscle group and don't go through the full range of motion, what happens is that the muscle fibre triggering sequence will be remembered and thus some angles of the improperly trained joint will "lose" it's functionality.

vi) Tension - Tension causes stiff joints as muscles are all contracting. Tension can be due to the anxious emotions and/or improper training (tensing up the upper trapezius or shrugging when shoulder pressing) form.


3) Lack of understanding of how a human body respond to training stimulus of different intensity/nature
I will generally classify training into 2 types for an endurance sport athlete. Firstly, it's general body conditioning (basic strength, flexibility, core strength and technique work). Then it's energy system training (Aerobic, anaerobic, ATP-CP).

Knowing how one's body react to different training stimuli and the reason behind why one's applying that form of stimuli at a specific intensity is important.

Training is unlike the case of "I'm eating this because i'm hungry.".. it is more like "I need more vitamin B complex because I am deficient of it and thus I need to eat this, this and this rather than that, that and that.".

Knowing which level your body is working at right now and how efficient it is is crucial to getting continual improvement and a healthy training program that feeds the body, mind and soul.

For a very vague example, trainee girl A was never a lifetime athlete and being a girl who has never undergone any serious training, the general conditioning of the body was really weak. It will not make sense to put her through hard anaerobic training because she'll not be able to exert at that intensity at all. And even if she does, the joints may not be strong enough to withstand the amount of momentum that will be present during the high exertion rate and thus working out that way will pose a risk to her health instead.

What girl A needs will be to go through general conditioning in the gym under the supervision of an instructor to ensure that A learns all necessary proper movements of her joints and muscle parts before partaking in more sports specific training.

4) Lack of understanding of how progressive overloading is about.
Very often, I see athletes who are disappointed with their training because they don't see result as soon as they expect and in an attempt to achieve more, they increase the training volume (intensity and/or duration of workout) according to their motivation to improve and/or freshness of their body on training day.

That is a very risky form of doing training because whether or not the body is ready for such training is not determined by how fresh you feel but how well verse/understanding you are about your body.

There are a lot of top athletes who swear by "no pain no gain" or "its worth it to take a risk if it presents opportunity for huge growth in physical development". I strongly beg to differ.

I believe in the following:

i) Training is to improve one's life, NOT risk or endanger it.
ii) One should partake in the absolute minimal amount of training that gives the maximal amount of training benefits
iii) Training is NOT life. Life is Family, Love, Friends, Fun, Joy, Laughter and EVERYTHING ELSE that isn't training. Training should merely gives you better fitness to enjoy Life better because of lesser effort needed to accomplish the absolute necessities.
iv) Fitness gained over a long period of time by building a strong base and then gradually and progressively increasing intensity of training will last you longer than fitness that is gained through shorter time spent on base training and lots of high intensity training.
v) We have limited time for everything. If you over trained in this session, you'll have lesser for the next session. That means decreased quality of training. That means Waste of time.

Point V is what I want to elaborate because the rest are easily understandable even by the bicep-brains.

Imagine you have this workout plan for the week.

Monday - Long Swim
Tuesday - Easy run at night
Wednesday - Hard short fast swim in the morning
Thursday - Time Trial effort mid D run
Friday - Sunday Rest

So on Tuesday night, you felt REALLY fresh and strong and have slightly more time than usual for the run. You decided that you might as well go for a 100% increase of run distance and that usually means more than 100% increase in duration of run due to slow down (fatigue).

Will you be able to recover in time for the Hard swim in the morning on Wednesday?

Recently I have a case of an athlete getting insomnia because he overreached in the previous night and totally missing the morning workout on the next day. By right, his fitness for the hard swim the next morning should be very high if he did a normal run at night to boost the Cardio Respiratory system. But the training session in the morning was missed out and the swim fitness would have dropped.

Even if he made it up for the swim in the evening, he'd not be well recovered to do the fast swim fast enough with the lower muscle and liver glycogen level that he used up during the over clocking run the night before. A fast swim swam slow is a wasted workout and in the worst case scenario, a risk of injury is there because of the lack of control by a sharp mind and body.. at the very least, one'll feel demotivated to train because the fast swim will be slow.

This is a classic case of "I feel good." OR "I got more time!" OR "I feel VERY STRONG!" then I do more. Doing more is OK, but how much more? An athlete has to have a progress log handily available to track his/her work load over the weeks and even months to make sure that one is ready for the over clocking/over reaching.

In any case, unless it is a specifically planned breakthrough workout that is accompanied by many days of easy days or rest before and after.. it is not recommended to just increase work load/volume by feel because how we fresh or strong we feel is largely determined by the external stress factors in life. That does not give us the right of path to just overload the body anyway we like.

Risk of injury is priority consideration. Second consideration is the after effect of the uber hard training.. will it affect the rest of the week's workout in anyway? If yes, then you'd have lost fitness in the long running week. Consistent (read daily, weekly, monthly) progressive overloading is KEY to maintaining/improving fitness. If one workout is overdone and it affects the quality of the other workouts, then you'd have wasted many precious hours doing sub-par workout. Is it worth it? Answer the question yourself.

5) Lack of self discipline/neutral party's implementation on the Recovery aspect
Its simple to understand. Really.
Training = breaking down your muscles because you're overloading your ability to work
Does it make you stronger? No. It makes you tired, and gives your body the potential to adapt to the workout once it RECOVERS.

Recovery = Letting the torn muscle fibres heal and grow bigger to withstand a higher load.
Does it make you stronger? Yes. It makes you feel fresh and stronger.. leaves you wanting to do more and more importantly, realises the potential of getting stronger that your body gotten through training.

It's been a long post and I tried very hard not to condense it with scientific details. Thank you guys for reading and I hope all these help you whether a trained "old bird" athlete or aspiring couch potato turning fitness personnels.. to want to strive to know your body better and make better use of your time to do quality workout and quality everything that will expose your body to less risk but more enjoyment. =)

Cheers
Coach KK
Email: kenguwc@uwcsea.edu.sg
H/P: 8180 0621