When in Doubt, Rest is Best
With the racing season in full swing, athletes are training longer and harder than other times of the year. While maximizing the quality of your training is important, rest is also critical to the training process and it can be easy to get carried away with too many hard workouts in a row.
The key is simply to listen to your body.
Typical muscle soreness – If you are feeling soreness in your muscles, then you may need a day or two of less intense (easy) workouts, but you should not necessarily take a day off. Your body needs to work through soreness, and sweating helps remove lactic acid from muscle tissue. Recovery days are always built into quality training plans.
Potential injury – If you are feeling soreness or pain in joints or bones, or the pain in the middle of a muscle is sharp then training on it can lead to more serious issues. A day completely off is best. When resuming workouts, be sure to stretch well and take it easy at first. Focus on the problem spot for signs of improvement or digression, and STOP if your condition continues or worsens.
Overtraining – If you are constantly feeling fatigued it can be a sign of over training. The body takes time to realize the effects of strenuous workouts, and loading on too much for too long will set you back significantly through injury or burnout. Look back over the past 1 to 2 weeks to determine how hard you have been working. I suggest using a training log (my preference is www.runningahead.com). You may need a day or two off to allow your body to bounce back.
Diet – Your diet is also critical to training, and may also affect endurance athletes most noticeably as a condition of fatigue. The higher your exercise duration and intensity, the greater your caloric intake must be. Distance runners and multisport athletes are subject to mild anemia (low blood iron levels). If your recent training history does not seem to be over bearing then your nutrition is quite often the next place to look. Green leafy vegetables, red meet, and cooking with an iron skillet are a few good ways to boost your iron intake. You can also always take a multivitamin to help out as well; however they do not all contain iron so check the label.
A couple of my rules of thumb:
Training on a minor injury can cause long term effects, and it can also cause over compensation injuries to another areas of your body.
I try to steer clear of taking an anti inflammatory too often – once every other week or so is the most often I ever suggest.
Ice can make a big difference. Minimum of 5 minutes on, 5 minutes off (max 10 min segments).
When in doubt rest is best!
