Stress and rest: it all flows together
The hard days are the stimulus for the improvement but the rest is when the improvement happens.
This is something I often remind the runners I coach, as well as myself.
Why is this important?
…Training
All things training. Mostly advice and tips but maybe questions, general comments, or who knows what else.
Time off: How much do you lose? How long to get it back?
Last week, I discussed the importance of taking time off early if you feel something that might be an impending injury.
You might have left that asking how much am I going to lose? How much is that going to set me back?
Well, hopefully it goes without saying that a few days off before something is bad is far better than taking weeks or month off after it got bad but here are some details on what you lose and how much time it takes to get it back.
…Time off: How much do you lose? How long to get it back?Read More »
Take time off when you need it
Are you feeling beat up? Feel like you might have an injury coming on?
A lot of us try to push through these things. We don’t want to lose fitness, we don’t want to lose ground on our competitors. The problem is we try to push through instead of taking a day or two off early, then we end up needing weeks off later.
…Train based on your current fitness
We all know we should accept where our current fitness is when racing. If you don’t, you’ll go out over your head and the race experience won’t be good.
However, some of us have trouble accepting that we should also be training based on our current fitness level. We want to train to the level we believe we “should” be at or we want to train at the level we want to race at months from now.
This is a mistake.
…Evolve
I once believed that strength training for distance runners could be minimal and weights were very overrated (note: that was originally written over 20 years ago). As the article I linked to in that post makes clear, I was far from alone on my belief and the science then painted a different picture (studying largely different exercises) than current science does.
As knowledge has evolved, so has my belief. This is how things are supposed to work.
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