In any competitive environment, the desire to become better, and the desire to progress in general, very quickly gives fuel and support to the little voice we all have that says “Do more! More is better!”  If you aren’t progressing, or if you are continually symptomatic (whatever those symptoms may be) you could probably safely say that your bucket is full. Your physiological load has become too high and it’s time to change, before you have a forced 3-4 year break. What I’d like to do is offer an idea of how to manage your training load so that you achieve more by doing less.

First and foremost, we are all human, and to become superhuman takes time, appropriate stimulus, and appropriate rest to allow adaption. In saying that my first suggestion is to respect the S.A.I.D principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand). The basic rule here is that one needs to introduce density of exercise and intensity of exercise at an appropriate rate, coupled with an appropriate amount of rest, to enable adaptation to the newly imposed demands. As one adapts, ones ability to deal with higher loads of stress improves, so the density and intensity of the stimulus can be increased. Basically that means you can safely train harder. There are some ‘buts’ with this.

The buts are as follows:  The bigger the human, the longer the recovery time, in general. This is true during workouts and between workouts. Also, the degree to which you can push yourself is indicative of the degree to which you need to rest. Regardless of how close you are to your natural end potential, your capacity to work to your current potential is fairly constant, and as you push those limits, you will find you require more rest to recover.  Examples of this are; the week following a competition, everyone has felt the flatness that that week provides, and/or just having a mammoth session. The S.A.I.D principle, as stated above will minimise this to a degree, but there will often be moments and days where your Physiological Load and/or Training Load will stretch your current potential to its limits, and this will require more time than usual to recover from. Train hard, rest hard, it’s that simple really.

Based on your knowledge of Physiological Load, how it intermingles with Training Load, and how your Training Load should progress (the S.A.I.D Principle), you should now hopefully understand why most sessions should be easy, and moderate, and why the hard sessions should be few and far in-between. That’s not really enough though. One needs a method for deciding what hard actually is and what easy actually is etc. For simplicities sake, the easiest way to decide this is to monitor your breathing. That is to say, use the conversation rule. That may not be scientific enough for some, but it is a valuable method used by some of the top coaches in the world to monitor their Olympic and world champion athletes. One such coach is Dr Jeff Spencer who outlines the approach below.

Easy sessions can be deciphered by the awareness that you could quite easily keep up a full conversation with someone whilst exercising. There would be no real need to stop to take a breather from the conversation. It’s a good idea to break up your hard sessions with 2 to 3 easy sessions each week.

Moderate sessions will leave you feeling like you can talk in sporadic bursts of words, but unable to create full sentences and as a result will most likely not actually want to talk.  Try to separate your moderate workouts by a couple of days to promote full functional recovery. And what I mean by that is recovery that a) returns your system back to homeostasis (balance) and b) as a result, has allowed some conditioning to take effect.

Hard sessions are ones in which it is basically impossible to talk. You are too involved physically and mentally to be able to spare the energy and breath. These types of workouts should be done once, maybe twice, a week, allowing about 3 days in-between to recover.

Probably the most important point to remember here is that you won’t improve by making your easy sessions slightly harder and your harder sessions slightly easier. This would leave you with the conundrum that I have experienced, and that so many athletes have and continue to experience. It’s the more is better approach. It leads to all workouts having similar intensities and very often leads to frustration at the lack results, and suboptimal performance in competition, because of overtraining. Make your easy sessions easy, and your hard sessions hard!

What you will find if you get good at following these guidelines is that your overall effort should decrease, and your conditioning will increase and maintain itself better. What you are striving for is a healthy overall Training Load. Remember that your Training Load will effect your overall Physiological Load, and vice versa! The necessity for balance here is why one needs a flexible approach to their training regimen. Routines and plans are excellent for self-discipline and motivation, just don’t let ego get the better of you. If you feel smashed, you probably are, take a day off. If you feel like you are dragging your feet around and motivation is lower than usual (and I don’t just mean the old ‘it’s cold, wet, and dark, I want my bed’ process) chances are you need an easy session or a day off. Learn to listen to your body. If you start doing this, you may find you suddenly have time to do that technique, mobility, flexibility, rehab and prehab work that you keep promising yourself you’ll get to.

As a final note, here are some good guidelines as to whether you were successful in looking after yourself during any particular training day:

• You actually feel better after the workout than when you started.

• You should have quick and full recovery. A prolonged recovery is a sign for taking it easy. To elaborate, read the next point.

• You can experience soreness but beyond 2 days is getting excessive. Excessive soreness is often the result of not respecting the S.A.ID Principle or sometimes just putting in a mammoth effort. A conditioned body will feel exercise enduced soreness with less and less severity and frequency. When sore, it’s a good time to throw in some easy workouts.

Above all remember that you are an individual, with individual capabilities, an individual Physiological Load, and unique genetics that help determine how you will respond to it all.  As frustrating as this may be sometimes, it means your approach needs to be you specific, and not like the freak you are training next to, whom we all want to be.

• Listen to your body

• Remember the body doesn’t differentiate from stress, and stress is cumulative

• Be flexible in your training

• Keep your easy sessions easy, and your hard sessions hard.

• Strive for balance in your routine, recovery properly, and excel!

Train smart!