Explain it to me- Training tired and sore- no rest days

I'm interested in this too... Also when does "training through fatigue" become over training?

No, take the rest days.  You will be better served in my opinion.

You have to know when to say when and listen to your body.  If you start a workout tired and it doesn't get better within the first 15 minutes or so, bag it and rest.  If you start it tired, and things click into place as the workout goes on?  That is a well designed plan and you are recovering well overall.

Too many athletes do not listen to their body and continue to push.  This is why so many of the elite runners are only at the pinnacle of their sport for 2 or 3 years.  They simply do too much and don't rest.

The idea should be "Do the least amount to get the most out" when it comes to training.  For some this will be 10 - 12 hours.  For others this may be 15+.

Edited by Daremo 2009-08-17 10:00 AM

Not sure about you, but I don't train much when I'm sore and tired. At least not the sore and tired parts, and at least not by my interpretation of those words. And I haven't missed a day of doing *something* in over a year.

If my legs are sore and tired, I swim and do upper body stength. If they're just a little sore/tired I'll do a recovery ride on the bike. That generally makes them feel better.



Edited by the bear 2009-08-17 10:03 AM

Well today, that would be my entire body. My quads are sore, my back is sore. It's all sore.

But last year during IM training, if I had done something different training wise because something was sore, I would have been riding and running a lot less. I trained sore for a good 3 months. It's just how it was.

I know there has to be a fine line of sucking it up and calling it quits on a workout.

Lately I my performance has been decreasing ever so slightly. My bike averages are slowing down, my run averages are slowing down. Does that mean I need more rest (which means less training and not hitting my weekly numbers) or does it mean I just need to suck it up and keep training so my body will adapt to the workload?

The best way to get adaptation to training is to alternate hard and easy days. You are stressing your system then letting it recover stronger than before.

In the beginning when you have less fitness, a hard day is any exersise and an easy day is complete rest.

As you get fitter, your hard days will be an interval workout, or a brick or some long run/swim/bike. And your easy days will not be complete rest, but a recovery exercise day short run,bike,swim. When you're fitter, your body will recover during these easy days, so you can stress it again. These easy days are very important not only for recovery but also for the added volume.

If I find I'm not recovered after an easy day, for me a 30-40 min run, 1600 swim, 20 mile bike, and am still fatigued 2-3 days after my tough workouts, one of a few things is true. I went too hard on my hard day, I didn't go easy enough on my easy day, or I don't have the fitness to sustain the level of training I'm currently trying to accomplish. In these cases I listen to my inner motivation, if I'm motivated, but just sore likely I'm not over training and probably just over did it. If my motivation is waning and I have a more general fatigue, I will take an immediate day off or even two off, and follow that by an easy day.

I am not sure if I am qualified to answer this but I am a decent triathlete so I will give it a shot. 

I actually had a converstaion about this yesterday with my "soon to be coach". 

You get stronger and faster by resting.  Also if your body is tired and worn down and you push through that you risk an injury (this is what happened to me this year). 

So there is nothing wrong with a day or two off a week.  You need this rest to get stronger and faster. 

IM training is a little different but you should still listen to your body. 

I know that it is hard to take the time off but when you do it, you should see a gain in your athletic ability.

I'm not a high end athlete but I know the principles. Rest is part of training. If you can't get yourself to rest try yoga, pilates or something like that which doesn't have the same muscle stress as you do in your normal training. If your muscles are extra sore and you are tired your body is trying to tell you something.

rick pretty much nailed it on the head for me.

i am used to training a bit tired, in any sport at a high level you are going to do this.

being sore or beat up though is not a good thing, or a sigh you need to rest/better eating habits, etc.

if i am sore, and in the first bit of hte workout, (10 min running, 15-30 on the bike, first 800 swimming or so), and things do not loosen up, i bag it and take a rest day.

Who says triathletes don't take rest days?

I rest at least one day each week (although I may do a VERY easy active recovery ride). Also, like many here probably do, I work out hard for three weeks either building volume or intensity, then cut the volume by 30-50% for the fourth week for recovery.

Well I do have one rest day a week. I make sure of that.

Whereas my boyfriend has a training plan that doesn't give him a rest day for 2-3 weeks. I also know a lot of triathletes who do not have rest days.

See, sometimes I get to feeling better after I get warmed up. For me to warm up it can take 15-30 minutes. I have had runs where I felt horrible the first 5-6 miles and then I feel great all of a sudden and finish off strong.

So unless I'm completely broken down I will push through what I'm doing to finish the workout.

For example, one day I went to do a 6 mile run. I was feeling horrible. Everything below the knees hurt. I knew it wasn't going to get better with more distance. I told myself to make it at least a mile before I called it a day. I felt even worse at a mile and called it a day.

Whereas, I went to do a ride on Saturday and I was struggling to keep up with the group. In fact, I wasn't. And I was doing a 16.7 mph average... whereas I have been known to keep a 17.3-19.3 mph average. So it wasn't above my skill set, but for the life of me I couldn't keep up. And thus, I struggled for the next 50 miles of not riding with the group and catching them at lights.

Everyone has bad days.  It could be as simple as going too hard the day before, not eating right to recover, stress through the day at work or not sleeping well.  That happens.

But if each workout continues to be "bad" and your averages are on a consistent downward trend ......  you need a break!

It is easy to tell an athlete to do a workout and have them do it.  It is really hard to tell an athlete to rest and have them do it.  They always want to "sneak" in a short ride or run and then they wonder why they have plateaud or even worse, gotten slower.

Edited by Daremo 2009-08-17 10:32 AM

I don't think it is overly unusual for triathlete's to go weeks before rest days, especially elite ones.  However, to successfully do that you really need to treat your easy days as easy, and I best most of us don't do that.  We have this one speed we go at and that's the speed we use day in and out.  Which could be ok, but you then really do need to ensure proper rest days.  I don't schedule my rest days but they are there. 

But it  is not.  At least not to be an effective training plan.

I understand what you are saying otherwise though.

As others have said, you get stronger when you recover properly.  This is the hardest thing to get through the head of a triathlete (myself included).

A bad workout here and there will happen.  If you see a trend, it's time to take a break.  I personally do not take recovery days, but have an easy swim every monday.  I take a full rest day when my body tells me to because I am listening to it.

Here is my quick and dirty for a 5 min look at your logs.

This past week you increased by 3.5 hrs.  Your body is adapting to the added stress so when you look at your trends for your average speeds (which I did not do), take into account not just this week but average them out for at least a month or so.  It usually takes 5-6 weeks for you body to get use to a training cycle, FYI

I know you are in the 'I'm a good swimmer so I don't swim much camp", but keep in mind that swimming is a great way to improve your general aerobic engine and not put much stress on your body.  Rest on your rest days.  There are a lot of people that take their rest days and work in the yard, etc and then don't know why they are still tired.

Plan it out.  Hope that helps.

Nope.  I've gone as much as 10 weeks of tri training with no rest days...and had no injuries (or real fatigue or soreness) during that stretch.  Before taking up tri's, I used to run 7 days a week, 35-40 mpw...did that for at least two years straight and never had an overuse injury.  (I only ever started getting overuse injuries--only have had a couple--when trying to balance marathon training with continuing to bike and swim.)

One of the keys is a fairly balanced schedule of cross training.  Another is not going hard every time out there.  Then there's periodization, which has been mentioned more than once in this thread.  And yet another is eating well.

Hey, thanks for taking a look at my logs. They are 100% accurate.

Well, if you looked at my past history, I have had other weeks were I average 700 minutes. Last week was a recovery week, thus the drop in minutes and then the drastic increase.

I have a run and swim scheduled for tonight, but thinking about ditching the run. My quads are pretty sore.

Then again, I got a new bed and my back is KILLING me today... the thought of swimming sounds equally painful right now. My back really hurts (the bed might be getting exchanged soon!).

i;m not suer you are going to get the answer you are looking for here as this is going to be wildly diff for each person and coach.

the amount youcan train without rest is going to have a lot of factors involved: genetics of how fast you recover, how smart you are about recovery, how mard you are training, your background, training leading up to this point and so on.

i structure my training so i have 4-8 weeks of gradual build up, back off and taper for a race, then do this again. i tried the 3 weeks on, one week easy for two years and saw marginal gains, and after giving this a shot its worked a lot better for me.
its given me a setup i can repeat week after week, with some workouts each week that are pushing me harder, but very few if any that on their own flatten me.

using this setup I AM very comfortable taking a rest day on ave every 10-18 days.
all the little things that make me the althete i am are what allow me to do this. someone else the same speed doing the same workouts may need to take a rest day every week, or not at all, its simply not as easy as saying you need to rest X days a ewek, or month.

i like to listen to my body and take rest based on that. other prefer to have to scheduled in and use it weekly. we are all diff and go about this in our own ways. one of the great thigns about this sport, there are a million and one ways to get to our goals, which are very diff for everyone,.

i;m not suer you are going to get the answer you are looking for here as this is going to be wildly diff for each person and coach.

the amount youcan train without rest is going to have a lot of factors involved: genetics of how fast you recover, how smart you are about recovery, how mard you are training, your background, training leading up to this point and so on.

i structure my training so i have 4-8 weeks of gradual build up, back off and taper for a race, then do this again. i tried the 3 weeks on, one week easy for two years and saw marginal gains, and after giving this a shot its worked a lot better for me.
its given me a setup i can repeat week after week, with some workouts each week that are pushing me harder, but very few if any that on their own flatten me.

using this setup I AM very comfortable taking a rest day on ave every 10-18 days.
all the little things that make me the althete i am are what allow me to do this. someone else the same speed doing the same workouts may need to take a rest day every week, or not at all, its simply not as easy as saying you need to rest X days a ewek, or month.

i like to listen to my body and take rest based on that. other prefer to have to scheduled in and use it weekly. we are all diff and go about this in our own ways. one of the great thigns about this sport, there are a million and one ways to get to our goals, which are very diff for everyone,.

try to rest, it is the best thing you can do for your body!! there is no secret your body will take fully advantage of a day off. there is a lot more things into resting other than taking a day of training since you might not do any swim/bike/run work out you probably have to work, go shopping etc etc which means that you are going to be putting some stress in your body.

don't want to be tired and too sore? easy make sure you stretch before and after each session, also make sure you are eating right, taking supplements or at least a multi vitamin, I don't really know how is your training plan like but you got to make sure you are mixing things up. i.e don't go out for pace rides every day or the same run or go to the pool and swim 20 min straight. Making your body get used to different scenarios will help you with your fitness all around.

but most important and even if you don't want to "take a rest day" it could be every week or every 10 days but that is up to your training plan.

Good luck and wish the best

As I said, I only did a quick glance of your logs.

Don't know if you have a coach or not, but if you do, have them assess the situation.  Also, instead of purely focusing on pace, think about your RPE (Rated Perceived Effort).  I keep track of that on my logs as well. 

If you are at 17 mph at an RPE of 5 (1-10 scale) 2 weeks ago and that same ride with similiar conditions now requires an RPE of 7-8 for the 17 mph, that is a flag of sorts.  So it's not all about pace, it's about effort and long term tracking.

The way *I* figure out if I'm tired or my mind doesn't want to do a workout is by doing the warm up.  If I get through the warm up and I'm ready to go, it was my mind not wanting to do it.  Or, like this Sunday, if my body isn't up for the workout, you pack it up and head home. 

Sometimes its better to be smart than tough.

That, in my opinion is the problem with generic training plans. They are designed for some poorly defined representative slice of triathlete population (such as "Beginner", "Intermediate"), and don't consider that everybody reacts differently to training sessions. IMO, with a coach he/she should be getting some feedback from you and using that as a major input to design workouts.

But no one can consider your body's condition better than you. I really never train when muscles are "sore", because "soreness" is an obvious signal from your muscles. That's an easy one. "Tired" is harder and I usually make that analysis based on how the first 15-20 minutes of my session are going. I don't "bag" workouts but I will drop to glacial pace if I feel I need it. My general goal is to push hard when "fresh" and easy when I'm "tired".

However, I do not buy the theory that the only time you're improving is when your body is rebuilding itself during rest. IMO, the human body gets better at things the more it does them even without significant rest (as long as you've ramped up correctly to avoid injury and adapt to higher/more-often training loads). Obviously, there is some optimal "training vs. rest" balance for everyone but it's unknown. IMO, many triathletes tend to ramp up way too fast and then rest too often, which I think is the opposite of the way it should be if one wants to improve.