So, What Happens To You If You Train Too Much?

You get divorced.

All joking aside.  I don't run into AGers who are concerned about training too much.  Their greatest challenge tends to be finding enough time to train after their other commitments.  They would almost all train more if they had the time available.

There are some of us around who remember the old days, the old ways of training. It wasn't a numbers game. No power meters, no HRMs, no GPS... "Nutrition" consisted of whatever was the cheapest per calorie at the 7-11. If you were on top of the tech you had a cyclometer that told you how fast and how far, and that was it. A stop watch function on your digital time piece was really high tech.

And we thrashed ourselves. It was fun, in a macho "I'm not tired, are you?" manner that seems to be lost on most people today. Overtraining? Sure, it happened when your body said "ENOUGH!" and forced you to take a break.

And the idea of the taper came from traditional marathon training. Deplete, then load. Studies have refuted the whole deplete/load cycle, but the taper remains.

And somewhere along the way, some one said "it's better to go to the event undertrained than overtrained". Societal laziness has latched onto that mantra as though their lives depended on it.

There is a funny cultural shift between the U.S. and Europe. If you go to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands or Thailand in the off season where there tend to be a lot of Europeans training they are doing huge, huge mileage. Even up to and before an important race in season they are still going huge- 350 miles a week on the bike and 40+ miles of running.

When Leanda Cave left Tucson to go to Hawaii for her recent Ironman win she told me what kind of general workouts she would be doing going up to Ironman in Hawaii and I was amazed at the volume.

Now, frame that to the U.S. athlete who seems consistently concerned about overtraining, but pretty consistently struggling at the longer distances.

Is the U.S. training doctrine simply too low on volume and too long on "taper" and rest days?

This.

I'm undertrained.  Even compared to last year.  Work picked up, and I had a harder time finding time to fit in training.

At the same time, when I do get a few unencumbered weeks I can't really go from zero to 60 on training without risking injury.

I'm now training for a January Marathon, I'm running more, but I've ramped up faster than is probably wize and I'm worried that some of my aches and pains might be a injury waiting to happen.   So from that perspective I won't rush to catch up on my training, but will continue to gain distance and hopefully go into the Marathon injury free, if not with as many weekly miles as I would like.

Maybe it is perception, but I have always had the impression that work was a little more laid back in Europe, or at least was when you were training there Tom.  Maybe shorter work days or less work from home at the end of the day, lead to more time to train.

I think it would be very hard on the time that I have available for me to overtrain, as I understand that syndrome.  Now, I might have days where I am tired or don't have the motivation, but real overtraining syndrome, again from what I understand of it, I think I would be hard pressed to get to that point on my limited hours.  More likely, and this is actually what does happen, is that if I train too much, particularly run too much, I get injured.  My Achilles will tell me if I'm training too much.

I think the conversation about overtraining comes from a few of different motivations.  One, publishers have to put out their issues, and really, there is only so much new stuff to talk about regarding training that if you take away a topic, it limits what they can print.  Two, I'm not sure we do a good enough job of talking about training for different levels of athletes.  What a pro or a top AG worries about is different from what a athlete with more limited hours has to think about.  (I do recognize that that is a gross generalization, and there is overlap between those camps).  Finally, before this gets too long and I get too far afield of knowing what I'm talking about, so much of training is unknown, especially for Ironman, that the thoughts of "am I doing enough, am I doing it right" really dominate a lot of my thinking.  So, for some, having the knowledge that this thing called "overtraining" exists might just help rationalize not doing more.

For me though, time and injury are the big concerns and limiters.

This!!! Many European countries have mandated vacation time. But i can't imagine how the European athletes with families being able to put in those hundreds of cycling hours, and, 40 plus of running a week. 

I train with every extra minute I can steal. 

Where do you get this idea?

Maybe our perspectives are just different, but threads on here and ST about finding enough time and asking if they're doing enough seem to drastically outnumber those concerned with overtraining.

As I said in my previous post, most athletes I've encountered are always trying to find more time to train, not look for excuses to train less.

I see so many posts about people doing Ironman, here, on other forums and on Facebook, about tapers and relatively (in my opinion) low mileage weeks leading up to Ironman. That's where I get this impression.

I contrast that against the conversations I've heard aroud the breakfast and dinner table in Europe, Asia and New Zealand. My general impression, and the one reinforced by AG and pro results at Hawaii, is that the rank n' file U.S. age grouper is doing somewhat less than the equivalent Euro or Aussie.

Just my take...

I think there is a big focus on what is the right taper, and I think the post about lots of athletes finding more time to train is correct, too.  But I think this comes from not fully understanding what makes for a successful taper coupled with the apparently standard three week taper in most training plans.  People just take for granted that the three week taper is "right" or "needed."  Now, as for what is "right" or "needed," I think that varies per individual, and I will not profess to know what the equivalent European or Aussie athlete is doing.

If you're comparing Leanda's volume with even a good age grouper - that's not exactly fair.  it takes years to be able to build up the kind of volume to be at her level.  12hrs a week could be overtraining to an age-grouper, whereas a pro might be able to train 40hrs/week.

Plus- I don't share your assessment that US Athlete's are consistently concerned about overtraining.  I think, if I had to criticize us for anything- it's that we are an impatient lot and make mistakes in our training.  Too intense, ramp up too quickly and get injured (perhaps I'm just thinking of myself here).

Plus- if I was a european on vacation in the Canary islands or Thailand... yeah- I'd be doing huge volumes too.  It's not exactly the busy life we live in the states.

What does the rank n' file AGer have to do with Kona?

One of the guys from the broadcast had been done over 20 full ironmans and got in on a legacy spot.

Those at Kona, even those near the back, are already decent competitors.

I haven't added them up, but I suspect there might just be a few more Kona slots available in the US, so you might have a more elite group coming in from other countries.

My take on it is this.  Most people are doing the work that they have the time and committment to do.  They might, or might not, take too long to taper.... but I doubt many people really back off because of the risk of over training.  If they do it is the pointy end.

I agree that time is a big limiter for most people.

But there are still people who say that they need to take days off because they are feeling burnt out.  Where they have time to train, but choose not to because of fatigue.  For those cases, I will say that there is more to just training and time in the equation.  Recovery is also a big part of it.  Many people do not get sufficient sleep, thus are not able to train as much as they would like to.

Bryancd preached many times on the forum that he gets 8+ hours of sleep every night religiously.  So for him, 15+ hours of training a week may not seem that bad.  For someone getting 5 hours of sleep a night...12 hours a week might feel like torture and overtraining.

My first thought with the comments about oversees athletes putting in greater volumes was whether their injury rate is higher and if not why?  It seems like there are a huge number (including myself) of athletes that suffer or have suffered overuse injuries.

I guess before I wonder too much about that I'd want to see more data that substantiates whether in fact oversees athletes really do put in more volume. 

I would also wonder what the average age is.  Perhaps the popularity of ITU, and cycling in general, brings the age down to where we are talking more 20 somethings and fewer 40 and 50 somethings.

I'm guessing. ALL of us. No?

Overtraining? Yeah, I believe it exists. Personally, though, I'd redefine it as pushing past the physiological adaptations that training has caused (including the amount of hours per week). We can't go out in our first season as athletes and expect to be able to train as many hours a week and as hard as someone in their third season and not have consequences. Well, usually. We need to trust our coaches or training plans and learn patience. I also think we should err on the side of caution for newer (less than two seasons) of sports until the athlete has gained enough experience and physiological adaptation. After that, and with regular training and racing, I believe an athlete can begin to really minimize a taper and maximize the hours during the week for/during training. And before someone takes offense, I believe it takes that long to gain enough experience in racing different distances to learn pacing and to develop muscle adaptations that cover the range between doing a race and racing a race. The risk of injury is higher outside of that. As far as moderation in training in the US, I have my opinions, but I don't have enough experience to state them in a public forum. But I do think many of us do this on our own with a can do attitude - and without the aid of someone who can recognize when the athlete should push harder or reign it in. Just my opinion.

• Time constraints
• Overtraining/fatigue. This is the primary reason for the taper. I have time for more workouts than my body can recover from, so fatigue is my limiter.
• ROI. Just racking up easy miles is an inefficient way to get faster.

I think it's important to realize that training is just one part of most people's overscheduled, complicated lives. So a volume that might exhaust someone if they are working full time, bringing work home, caring for a family, etc. might be perfectly reasonable for someone with fewer other committments. As a teacher I see this demonstrated every summer when I don't work--I can train nearly twice as much, and still feel better at the end of the day, than during the school year.  A normal day of teaching and coaching for me involves 10 hours, of which probably eight are on my feet, lots of trips up and down the stairs; sometimes I also bring home work after that. Also a few hours a day on the weekend. So of course that's going to influence the volume of training I can handle, in terms of time and energy to train and recover.

I'm not sure what effect the economic crisis has had in Europe, but I have friends and relatives there and definitely in the past, they weren't working nearly as long hours. A friend who's a German middle school teacher typically has half my class load, with the rest as paid planning time at work; I generally can only plan lessons/check work after 4 or 5 PM, when teaching and coaching is done. Workers also have a substantial amount of paid vacation every year.  Then when we talk about pros like Leanda Cave, that's a whole different level of both fitness and time/energy to focus on the sport. I think in the US you simply see more older and busier athletes who possibly can't handle a higher training load in the context of their bodies, athletic experience, and time committments.

I'm gonna say it. For the vast majority of AGers, undertraining >>> overtraining, especially in triathlon where you're mixing it up in 3 sports so it's harder to overdo one. 

I see overtraining thrown around amateur forums so frequently and casually that it seems like there's an overtraining epidemic, when in reality, it's really tough to push that hard volumewise and intensitywise. Not saying it's impossible - I'm sure a few die-hards here definitely do push that overtraining boundary but it's for sure the small, small minority. 

Being tired and beat-down even for 2-3 days after a grueling workout isn't in itself overtraining. Even feeling tired and having slower times for a whole week before a pullback isn't overtraining at all. 

This is all exacerbated by the pros who constantly are talking about rest and recovery. That's absolutely true, but you have to take their words with a HUGE grain of salt. I just read Macca's book and he goes on and on about recovery, but when you read what he considers an low-volume day, it's 6 hours of pretty good effort. A hard day is that 6 hours + 4 more hours of training on top. Even Chrissie, who says how important rest is for her, puts up minimum 3-4 hours a day even on an off day, and routinely hits 10hour training days in her peaks. I bet they'd dramatically change their tune if they were amateur AGers with max 10 hours per week to train - even without a pro career to chase, I'd bet they be saying train, train, train. 

Um, I'm not concerned with overtraining. I don't have TIME to overtrain.

I have:

1. a toddler
2. a husband
3. a 40-50 hour work week

I'd like to see my family at some point during my week.

For me (and I'd guess that for many people on BT) -- tri/ Ironman is part of our lives and not all of our lives.

Tom, you do this for a living. Most of us here don't.