in: Orienteering; Training & Technique;
| # Posted 2006-02-21 05:08:42 | |
| piutepro: | I have increased my training this year. I do longer runs, I added intervals and tempo runs. Why do I push myself? Am I getting too hard on my body?
I alternate intense and easier days. Every fourth week I do less running and more relaxed practice. As I run an easy 7 k today, I think about what I am doing. Why do I run? Do I wear myself out? Until now I have stayed healthy, no colds, no injury. I had some foot pain a month ago, changed the shoes and stretched more. I wonder: Am I (are we) caught in some obsession, that more is always better? Probably I got started thinking when I read about the doping at the Olympics. Or about the skier Janica Kostelic, who has 12 knee operations and is still skiing. Also, I read the training logs at Attackpoint, people struggling with colds, injury and sickness. Is it really smart to train through an injury or sickness or exhaustion? |
| # Posted 2006-02-21 07:15:44 | |
| ebone: | I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'll spout off like I do, anyway. I can think of three reasons that people fixate on high volumes in their training:
1. Because it improves athletic performance (if you are one of the few that can do it without injury, sickness, mental or physical burn-out, or loss of sufficient time and energy to pursue other important life activities, such as work and social activities.) 2. Because it is a simple training recipe, whereby one has only to worry primarily about a single variable: quantity. 3. Because people enjoy training. It is a form of recreation, and a welcome counterpoint to their sedentary jobs. If the question is not about volume (hours/week) but about why people train for and pursue high-performance, then there are different answers. |
| # Posted 2006-02-21 07:59:59 | |
| piutepro: | I try to figure what the limit is between a healthy training volume and when it gets obsessive and hurts oneself, e.g. with overtraining, training despite injuries and losing the balance between recovery and running.
I enjoy running tremendously. I run in subpolor cold, snow, rain, heat, wherever and whenever, sometimes 3 AM in the morning I was hurt for many years after overtraining as a junior, because I run too much, about 60-100 k/week when I was 16 years old. My knee healed after many years, when I started running gently, 10 minutes a day over a year or two. So maybe I have some more years of runnning in me, because I took a break for 10 or 15 years. This might be a reason why I watch out for a balance and ask myself if I do the right thing. And also because running and orienteering is a game for me, to figure out things in life as well. |
| # Posted 2006-02-21 08:35:56 | |
| feet: | It's always bothered me a little that certain former marathon runners (some of us on Attackpoint know some of them reasonably well) can't really run any more. Given my less than perfect biomechanics, this is my current excuse for doing a fair amount of training (when I train...) on the elliptical - even though it's more boring, it's not taking knee impacts from my lifetime allotment of them. Better to save the knees for orienteering rather than running on pavement.
This is also an argument for living somewhere with snow so you can ski in the winter. |
| # Posted 2006-02-21 08:45:37 | |
| ebuckley: | Overtraining and overuse are certainly possible, but unless people are doing a bunch of non-logged training, nobody on AP is in much danger of that. I'm at less than half the training volume from when athletics was more or less a full-time job for me and I haven't noticed any difference in my injury/sickness rate.
Injuries occur for all kinds of reasons. Professional athletes are injured at least as much as they are healthy. That doesn't stop them from competing at very close to optimal form. Sedentary people get sick, too. I don't think you can blame that on training (although taking a day off to get better is sound advice). One thing that is different when training is added to a "normal" job: sleep deprivation. 500-600 hours a year mandates getting some sleep at night. I try to get at least 7 hours and I usually get 8 or 9. When I was training 1200 hours/year I would get more like 12. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 02:23:36 | |
| bmay: | There are many sides to this question.
Elite athleticism and health are most definitely different things. Optimum athletic performance requires taking things (both training and competition) to the limit. And while everyone is on a quest to go TO the limit, there are many who go BEYOND the limit, which is a sure way to injury (whether adding a 4th twist onto that triple backflip, or running 150 miles per week instead of 120). With running, one must carefully manage one's body's ability to deal with the pounding. Some people have a hard time with this, others seem to be "born to run". From my perspective, I can manage about 10'ish hours of running per week, without spiralling into fatigue and/or injury. Things to avoid if you want to boost the hours without injury: 1) running on pavement, 2) too much intensity. Long easy runs on dirt/trails/woods is a good way to boost training volume - running hard and fast on asphalt is not. Of course, to be fast you need the intense training too, so it's not like you can avoid pushing yourself and still train to your potential. The other thing is to build slowly. There are other aspects to the question of whether running/training is healthy. One must balance one's obsession with other aspects of life (e.g., job, family). For me, I feel like I need about 5 hours of physical activity per week just to feel like I am not a couch potato, whereas 10-15 hours per week would be ideal from a competitive standpoint. I generally end up somewhere in between. Being efficient with time is key (and not something I'm necessarily great at). |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 03:28:16 | |
| ebuckley: | Running roads is very tough on the body. Elite runners have much lower training volumes than any other aerobic athletes (like, around half). That said, I think even those without perfect biomechanics can safely train at 10hrs/wk if some common sense is injected into the plan.
Don't ramp up too quickly. Do your long runs on softer surfaces (or do something other than running for endurance). Tend to injuries immediately. Don't be afraid to take a day off if you think you need one. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 03:34:50 | |
| feet: | I'm not so convinced: I already use orthotics which are fitted by one of the same podiatrists the Australian Olympic team uses (so he knows what he's doing); even with that, together with the right shoes replaced at the right frequency, I've found that I increasingly have sore knees any time after running, and have had this to some degree for years. It's different from the soreness I used to have before the orthotics, which was much closer to acute soreness at a much lower training load - clearly the orthotics are helping. It's the cumulative damage from slightly imperfect weight distribution through the knees over 20 years that bothers me, not the short run injuries - arthritis rather than shin splints.
It's been an ancillary benefit from not training as much for the last two or three months due to work that my knees no longer hurt. And I'm not that old. Maybe I have worse than 'less than perfect' biomechanics, but I suspect a lot of people are more like me and simply cannot train 10 hours a week in impact-bearing exercise, which was what piutepro was talking about. Or maybe my biomechanics are particularly bad. Still, it bothers me. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 19:46:09 | |
| ebuckley: | As I implied and Brian stated explicitly, athletic performance and general health are often at odds. Having aching knees hasn't stopped Will from being one of the top orienteers in North America.
I had tendonitis is various degrees of seriousness for nearly three years. During those years I also had many of my best results. I don't think my right knee will every really work properly again, but it does work. I have no regrets. Puitero's example of Janica Kostelic speaks to this as well. Elite competition frequently results in some life-long injuries. I would certainly not recommend large quantities of any excercise to someone who was looking to maximize health benefits. I wouldn't recommend running at all - there are much gentler forms of activity. The original question was "are we obsessed?" Some are some aren't. But the real question is what are we obsessed with? If it's competition, then one is well advised to put in the hours and take the injuries as they come. If it's health, then moderation is clearly called for. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 19:49:45 | |
| piutepro: | I do have orthotics, too, the one thing the Swiss Olympics sports doctor told me right after seeing me walk into his office. The other doctors had given me anti-inflammation shots right into the knee (the thought of it hurts...) with no good effect. They tried all kind of tricks. The sport doctor, who had worked with many Olympic athletes, looked at the movement pattern, not only at my knee. The high (and weak) arch of the foot hurt the knee by making it work too hard.
I agree that increasing the training load gently helps as well as training in the woods. Stretching and keeping the body relaxed is important, too. As EricW was kidding on Spike's blog, we should learn to fall, too. Not as silly as it sounds. I did Aikido for several years and more than once I did a perfect headover roll in the woods instead of falling flat on the hard Harriman rocks. Falling into a roll has become automatic after some years of martial arts. I train a similar amount as when I was a junior. But it is more fun. We were so bitterly competitive, that every training was hard. Now I allow myself to follow my own rhythm and pay attention to how the body responds. E.g. I have learned that the recovery time slows down with age, so I give myself more time to rebuild after a hard race or training. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 19:58:06 | |
| piutepro: | Concerning orthotics: It is important that they are flexible. The foot support they make for my son seem to be rigid. I got mine in Switzerland some years ago. They are flexible, meaning they roll with the foot, they don't feel like having a wooden board under the foot. A problem is, that orthotics lift the foot and the heel of the shoe doesn't fit right and cuts into the achilles tendon. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 20:05:36 | |
| j-man: | I'd like to think I've become adept at falling, too. And pretty darn lucky. I wonder how PG regards his falling acumen? |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 20:55:00 | |
| PG: | I used to think I was pretty coordinated, and also knew how to fall well, going back to my ski racing days and a variety of high speed crashes. But then I add up the injuries (a couple of broken ankles, several rib jobs, various lacerations that required sewing to legs and head) and perhaps I am just a klutz. Or maybe my percentage of falls that result in injury is very low, it's just that I fall so damn often.
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| # Posted 2006-02-22 21:24:36 | |
| jjcote: | Anecdotal evidence says that you fall a lot. |
| # Posted 2006-02-22 21:42:00 | |
| jtorranc: | Am I crazy or would rolling on one's back to avoid falling onto the front of one's body in Harriman terrain not be extremely risky? Other than the front part of one's skull, what part of the front of the body could sustain worse damage than the spine in hitting an unfortunately placed rock? |
| # Posted 2006-02-23 02:52:45 | |
| piutepro: | Well, here is some online martial arts class. a) Stay on your legs when ever possible. (the equivalent of the martial art rule #1: If you don't have to fight, then don't) b) If you realize than you fall, see that you fall towards the hill side (this is the skiing trick, being a good Swiss boy I learned this early.) c) ONLY as a last resort, when already airborne headfirst in the direction of a rocky or non-rocky surface in an abyss in front of you, get ready to roll.
A proper roll uses the outside edge of the hand, the arm, then a diagonal roll across the back to the back of the leg. One leg is bent at the knee and used to get up again. I can demonstrate this on a reasonably flat surface, some grass or Florida sand or on a leavy forest ground (not in a cacti bed or in a snow snakes nest, though). I don't practice it on Surbridge, except under emergency landing circumstances. The idea is, instead of crashing into a surface you make sure that the body moves over the surface and the energy in dissipated in a the roll instead of the crash. |
| # Posted 2006-02-23 05:33:53 | |
| Nev-Monster: | When should the swearing take place, before, during or after the fall? |
| # Posted 2006-02-23 07:31:42 | |
| piutepro: | Using the proper martial arts etiquette, you emit a hearty "kiahhh" (it almost sounds like a deer bark) when you hit the ground. The sound eases the impact and makes you forget the pain.
I can't teach you any Japanese curses, but some juicy Swiss-German ones are available. JJ can probably teach you cursing in about 24 languages or so, if you need it. Swearing should not be necessary, since you produced an Olympic half pipe move without the half pipe. |
| # Posted 2006-02-23 09:36:22 | |
| jjcote: | Halt Schnurre und suf dis Bier! |
| # Posted 2006-02-23 23:29:45 | |
| Sergey: | Chort poberi! |
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