Train or rest when tired

I'd say like everything else, it depends...

Specifically it depends on where I am in my annual cycle and how long I've been pushing hard or feeling tired as well as how likely I think it is that I can do a decent workout of some form or another after the hard day.

But this time of year (winter build phase) I'll tend towards doing that second or third day even if I'm tired as long as I can do some quality work. If I get out and don't have the legs for the intended workout I'll typically drop down to the next lowest training level (e.g. from a scheduled 2x20 L4 day to perhaps an hour and a half of mid to high Tempo). If that's still not in the cards then I turn around and call it day and figure my body has told me it needs more rest.

If I were in a competition period I'd lean towards your 'more rest' option but IMO, it's not only acceptable, but more or less necessary to do some of your training while tired during off season build phases. Quality workouts is always a primary goal, but for the next few months building CTL will be one of my secondary goals and that pretty much requires me to train on days when I'm not 100%.

YMMV,
-Dave

Hi Koger,

Excellent question and one I deal with everyday. You're absolutely correct in regards to the "stimulus, followed by recovery for improvement" notion you lay out. The trick here is to know WHEN to purposely increase training load to result in "overreaching" and subsequently "improvements in fitness" and when to BACK OFF on training load to allow the body to rebuild stronger.

Both are correct, based on 1) the time of year of the training block 2) the current fitness and recovery level of the individual and 3) the demand for overreaching.

Typically, during the off-season and early season build blocks, like in my Cyclo-PLAN 4P, it is NOT advisable to continue to overreach your fitness as this period of time is FOUNDATIONAL in nature and moving into an intense workout when your body is commanding rest, will only lead to catabolism of the work previously done.

That being said, there are periods during our P2 Build Plans and definitely our P3 PEAKING PLANS where absolutely YES, you want to increase training load ON PURPOSE to result in overreaching. It is the individual that struggles to "know the difference" and to know when and how much to "execute" that problems set in. Usually, a result of the "if a little increase in training load is good, a lot, all the time--must be great!!" Yah, that will get you in some trouble.

Something to think about...

You always want to be pushing the body further through increases in stimulus, BUT that does not mean that every workout has to be gut-busting hard, like a Z4-5+ workout to achieve that. In fact, most of our toughest workouts in http://cyclo-club.com do not involve high HR's (cardio-respiratory stress) at all, but rather attack the body from weak areas such as the core, back, muscular endurance, flexibility, neuro-muscular performance, etc. THIS IS THE SECRET to be able to add more training days to your plan when you're fatigued in one way from a bike workout and can move to a Cyclo-CORE like training workout on the opposing day, allowing your body to recover. As training load increases from phase to phase, obviously you will see a marked improvement in recovery (you should, or something else is wrong) and the ability to add more intensity training load as you get closer to your goal.

Last thing...

Never, ever make the common everyday cyclist mistake in thinking that your "high end fitness" can always be improving month after month, etc. THIS is why so many of us cyclists continue to ride more and more (junk miles) and achieve MUCH LESS in tangible results because we're simply GETTING IN THE WAY. This is the discipline we discuss in our Everyday Cyclist Podcast that I think you'll enjoy regarding many of these issues.

I hope this has been helpful, my friend. You've got a good head on your shoulders. Listen to your body, and you are NEVER WRONG!

Best,

Graeme Street
Owner for Cyclo-CLUB and Creator for Cyclo-CORE Training

I never bother doing intervals unless i'm recovered, I find doing them tired is not only a waste of time, but it wears me down mentally.

Short answer is - drum roll please - periodisation. This was touched on by the two coaches above. Do some studying on this concept and all (well, 95%) of your questions regarding training impulse and recovery, and the interrelated timing of the two, will be answered/addressed...

I generally push through tiredness and fatigue during my training, an athlete with mental tuffness will always prevail compared to someone who wants to rest cause its hard.

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by daveryanwyoming [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG]

I'd say like everything else, it depends...

Specifically it depends on where I am in my annual cycle and how long I've been pushing hard or feeling tired as well as how likely I think it is that I can do a decent workout of some form or another after the hard day.

But this time of year (winter build phase) I'll tend towards doing that second or third day even if I'm tired as long as I can do some quality work. If I get out and don't have the legs for the intended workout I'll typically drop down to the next lowest training level (e.g. from a scheduled 2x20 L4 day to perhaps an hour and a half of mid to high Tempo). If that's still not in the cards then I turn around and call it day and figure my body has told me it needs more rest.

If I were in a competition period I'd lean towards your 'more rest' option but IMO, it's not only acceptable, but more or less necessary to do some of your training while tired during off season build phases. Quality workouts is always a primary goal, but for the next few months building CTL will be one of my secondary goals and that pretty much requires me to train on days when I'm not 100%.

YMMV,
-Dave

I am actually really glad that you said that, because that is my feeling too right now. I took some unstructured time after the road season ended, and now feel ready to start my next build phase. I have some early season A-races, and want to peak by late March, so I kinda feel like I HAVE to work right now. So I am beating myself up a bit physically, and digging pretty deep to push through some hard workouts. Some of my teammates think I am doing too much too soon since it is just December. However, I do have rest weeks planned, and like you said, am not contending with the stress and requirements of competition, so I feel like I should push myself a bit in my training.

Good luck, and I'll keep you posted as to my progress :-)

Quoted post said:

Originally Posted by CalicoCat [IMG]/img/forum/go_quote.gif[/IMG] ...Some of my teammates think I am doing too much too soon since it is just December. ..

Seems to me there are two different but related things here, whether individual workout intensity should be high in December and whether overall workload should be relatively high in December.

The first depends a lot on your overall training philosophy and your goals. If you base your training off of LSD and are coming off a big season or working your way towards 15 to 20+ hour training weeks then there could be good reason to limit the intensity of your individual workouts and avoid going hard this time of year. But for the average amateur racer balancing part time racing with full time work, family, etc. it isn't necessarily best to mimic what the full time riders and pro's are doing within the scope of a dozen or fewer hours per week on the bike. But sure, many folks do back off ride intensity this time of year and some have great results after riding less intense base miles in early winter it's just not universally best and it depends a lot on how you'll approach the rest of the year.

The second question of overall workload is similar, but if you look at it from a CTL (or average daily/weekly calories or kj burned or other workload metrics) standpoint the goal over the next few months should be to progressively build overall training workload. From that standpoint you can't build CTL or progressively burn more calories or kj of energy each week without being somewhat tired. If the goal is to gradually but consistently work harder as the build cycle progresses (allowing for the occasional rest week to come up for air) then most of the time you'll be working a bit harder than what you've been doing over recent months or IOW most of the time you'll be a bit tired regardless of whether you build CTL on an LSD, SST or HIIT program.

So yeah, there's debate about how hard each workout should be but there shouldn't be nearly as much debate about whether the overall workload should be progressively increasing or whether that should occasionally leave you tired after a training session. Whether you're doing hour long 2x20 L4 sessions or five hour LSD rides you won't always be fresh if you're trying to steadily increase your training load to lay down a deep training base. Regardless of your philosophy regarding appropriate training intensity vs. duration you'll be tired sometimes during a build and per the OPs question if you want to keep building the depth of that base you'll want to train through some of that fatigue. It sure helps to have tools like the PMC in WKO+ to remind us of when we might have been pushing it a bit too hard and to remind us to come up for air from time to time but it's hard to build if you only train when fresh even though that can be a great strategy during race prep or peaking phases.

-Dave

Hi guys

I just want to give a big thanks for your posts and some great advices that I'm going to think about.
Thanks! :-)