This past year, I have been considering the “stress” of my days. I touched on it with my recovery rates article (on this site).
In my recovery rates article, I asked you to think about the speed of recovery as a proxy for how much a specific session took out of you.
Our recovery rate is a sign of stress.
It takes uncommon maturity to place stress effectively.
Why?
The athletes best able to do hard training are the least likely to believe the benefits of easy training.
Load monitoring struggles to objectively monitor certain types of stress...
Soreness
Eccentric Load
Neuromuscular Fatigue
Do you know the sorts of training that kicks your butt?
For me, it’s high intensity workouts, close to true max efforts. Even brief efforts, near maximum velocity, generate a lot of fatigue.
Knowing the rest of 2024 will be lower volume… I’m going to see if I can improve my tolerance for this particular form of stress.
As I add a new form of stress, I remember…
If we want to add stress then we need to create space, first.
The stress I want to add is velocity-focused run training (Speed, then vVO2, then Threshold). If you’re unfamiliar with these terms - our run chapter will bring you up to speed.
I am creating space by reducing overall load & volume. Below is last year’s training hours, by week.
Stress, Healing & Adaptation
With your training.
What am I willing to trade?
…to absorb a new stress?
The new stress need not be training stress. The classic example is healing from an injury.
An injury is new stressor we need to address.
How best can I increase my healing capacity?
Adapting from training is a form of healing and… …most injuries are maladaptation resulting in breakdown.
Sleep
Nutrition
Positive Energy Balance
Low Stress Days
Of that list, the last two are the toughest for many of us. Eating more, settling our nervous systems and patiently assembling the pieces for next season.
I’ve had truly outstanding results when I’ve combined anabolic stress with eating more. I’m managing a slow upward climb in my weight. This started with a climb back to “normal weight” from my summer racing weight. Yesterday morning, I was ~10lbs heavier than what I weighed at the start of the Alpe Triathlon.
I shared my experience about Getting To Race Weight, inside our Nutrition Chapter. My best performances have been associated with years where I cycled both my training and my weight. Those of you familiar with Nils van der Poel’s book may have noticed he did the same. It was nice to see a World Champion, and gold medalist, use a similar approach.
Weight is an emotive topic. I’ve done best taking advice from veteran athletes, who demonstrate long-term health, strength and stable performances.
Nervous System Stressors
Fatigue from very high velocity training (Z5 and Z5+) will not appear in typical load tracking metrics.
An example from a track session.
The workout took ~50 minutes and scored 45 TSS points on the TrainingPeaks system.
32 of those points were in the warm-up & cool down.
The 13 points that remained hit me hard.
Putting those points in context, my summer peak load saw daily averages of 200 points.
If we smashing our nervous system AND train big then the clock is ticking.
Ticking even faster with periods of low energy availability.
Chronic nervous system fatigue explains a lot of injuries, staleness and underperformance.
If you have an anxious temperament then you may not notice when you’re overstimulated and neurologically fatigued.
Three things to keep in mind.
Novel Stress - “Fast” is a powerful stimuli, especially when I haven’t done it in years.
There are two parts (at least) of the stress…
from the session itself; and
from the session being new.
Nervous System Stress - Most training logs fail to capture nervous system stress. I’ve been seeing unusual HRV readings (high) that might be related. However, they are transient and I’m not confident they are accurate.
What I do know, I can “feel” this form of stress and I keep it below the level that impacts my sleep.1
Biomechanical Stress - since June 2023, not an issue. Two years ago, even strides would cause problems in my program. This high velocity session (designed by me alone) overloaded my biomechanics as well. Having the moderating influence of a coach (or listening to my existing coach) is smart.
As an aside, my coach confided that… while she was sorry I nuked myself, it was reassuring to see I was capable of error…
With anything that’s going to light up our nervous system:
Create space.
Feed for recovery.
Within the week, keep it “Green” as long as required afterwards.
Place risk away from key events.
(#3) Group Training & Recovery Needs
Beware of group training.
In a group, someone is always ready to go hard.”This results in our endurance training being pulled into Stephen’s “kinda hard” bucket.
How to spot a “kinda hard” trainer with low energy availability.
Chronic niggles.
Slow healing - cuts, bruises, cuticles.
No ability to change speed.
No ability to reach high velocities.
We want to avoid this pattern in ourselves.
(#4) Placing Risk
Certain training phases are high risk. If you try them at all… place them away from key events. Know that compound gains, rather than tactical overload, will carry the day. Judge overload blocks by what happens in the days following. Any choice requiring more than a few days to absorb probably wasn’t worth it.
High Volume
High Intensity
Max Strength Phases
Place these phases well away from the A-priority event.
As you approach your key event, remember you’re already fit.
Long Term Greedy
With my goal event 42 weeks away, I have time to:
Work on my weaknesses.
Focus on long-term adaptations.
Deal with possible setbacks.
The rest of this year is about setting up the ability to do outstanding training later.
PS - If you are operating on an Olympic cycle then NOW IS THE TIME to address the issues that limit outstanding training in 2027. Take advantage of the post-Olympic year, even if you didn’t make the team this time around. Peak your health and strength over the next 12 months.
PPS - Same deal if you had a disappointing season. Stop racing, shed fatigue and, only then, build yourself up. While building up… get support to break the habit of chronic beatdown. Ask your best friend what they really think, then repeat back what you think you heard.
We can want the result so much we use ourselves up in the chase.
Intensity is a stimulant. Initially, disrupted sleep is a caution flag. A pattern of sleep disruptions is a red flag. See The Tired Athlete, Chapter Eleven.
Great post. Metcon style gym workouts (which I no longer do since taking on structured cycling) often resulted in instant illness. Some say session RPE (Borg 20 scale) x session minutes is still the best way to track volume, along with implementing a questionnaire like RESTQ. At 56, I have also resigned to carrying 3-5% more body fat that in younger years. If I strive for previous leanness, my recovery (and muscle mass and max strength) suffer noticeably
Thanks Gordo, great read and it makes a lot of sense.
Stress post workout is definitely getting on my radar, I have been neglecting the refueling I think. C’