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experiencelifemag.com
Print › | Back ›
Give It a Rest
You're willing to push yourself, even when it hurts. You know how to
tough it out, even when you're tired. But do you know when to back off – and
why? Here's what all fitness buffs need to know about giving their body a
break.
Toward the end of last winter, cross-country skier Steve Waitt took a major tumble during a race, badly injuring his shoulder. He finished the event anyway, skiing the final eight miles in enormous pain. A few days later he began to suffer stomach problems.
A seasoned athlete, Waitt, 48, wasn't surprised. He knew that both extreme exertion and trauma could impact immunity. He'd been training hard for months gearing up for the race and figured his fall and final push had put him over.
What Waitt wasn't prepared for was a double whammy: What seemed like a stomach bug soon developed into a serious digestive disorder that stopped him in his tracks, causing the already-lean athlete to begin losing weight precipitously. Alarmed, he sought help from a series of doctors, had tests run, and was eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which devastated the health-conscious Waitt. "I've always been in touch with my body and very careful about tracking and maintaining my health," he explains. "I'd just never gone through anything like this before. It was like it came out of nowhere."
After months of serious illness, Waitt is doing well, but he says he still can't be certain whether the inflammatory disease was his body's reaction to the trauma, or to the large amounts of ibuprofen he was taking for the pain, some combination of the two, or a total coincidence, but he perceives a strong connection. "It seems like my body got pushed past some limit," he says, "and it just went sort of haywire."
As a result of injury and illness, Waitt was forced to seriously scale back his training activities. He took it easy for a few months, forgoing his regular training regimen of intense running and roller-skiing in favor of walking and long, easy road cycling. He also included some strength and flexibility work to keep from losing all his athletic conditioning.
By late fall, with his health improving, Waitt resumed serious training, faced with what he thought could be the long and frustrating task of rebuilding his fitness. Early snow in Minnesota allowed him to hit the trails in November. The first time he stepped into his skis, he didn't know what to expect – and was a little afraid to discover just how much conditioning he had lost.
Waitt was surprised and delighted to learn that he hadn't lost much of anything. In fact, he felt better than ever. "I had this new level of endurance," says Waitt. "I didn't tire as easily, and I was amazed at how strong and full of energy I felt."
According to Waitt, it was like his body had just been waiting for a little time off in order to do some much-needed repair work. Apparently, it made use of the opportunity to do some upgrades. "I'm finding now that I'm able to ski faster with less effort," says Waitt. "Laying off and resting after so many years of hard training seems to have really paid off."
Waitt's story is no anomaly, according to many expert trainers. In order to get stronger, faster and more powerful, they explain, sometimes rather than bearing down, an athlete needs to lighten up.
Closed for Repairs
Clearly, your body requires a certain amount of stressful stimulus in order to grow stronger. In fact, that damage-recovery cycle is the whole basis of fitness training: You break your body down and it responds by building itself back up even better than before. But if you've been putting your body through its paces without much opportunity for full recovery, or if you've been under additional stresses (physical, mental or emotional), you may not be giving your body a chance to restore itself. To do so, you may need to change your routine, pare down your training load or, in some cases, walk away from training altogether – at least for a little while.
"You can only make fitness gains when your body has time to recover from the training loads you put it under," asserts Chris Carmichael, founder of Carmichael Training Systems in Colorado Springs, and coach of five-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and other competitive cyclists. That means the harder you push, the more carefully you must observe the low points of your periodization schedule.
For an elite athlete like Armstrong, Carmichael not only inserts rest days into a training schedule, he also prescribes rest weeks and even months. After every three days of hard training, he instructs all his elite athletes to take a 24- to 48-hour break. After every three weeks, he recommends one week at half the normal training volume and intensity. Carmichael advises many of his clients to take anywhere from one to three months off from formal training after they peak for a big event. During this time off, they can run or walk, bike or swim, but they are not supposed to time themselves or monitor their heart rates.
After the Tour de France, for example, Armstrong takes a three-and-a-half month break. He still rides and even races, but he doesn't follow a set schedule. "It gets extremely intense in the months leading up to the Tour. We're measuring the amount of food Lance is eating and monitoring every workout," ? says Carmichael. "But when the Tour de France is over, Lance just wants to go out and ride his bike and enjoy himself. This type of regeneration period allows your body to recharge not only your energy stores, but also your mental focus. After a regeneration phase, you begin fresh and have a more positive and confident outlook on what you want to accomplish."
Wuss or Workaholic?
If a world-class competitor like Armstrong has no trouble taking a step back from time to time, why do we mere mortals feel so guilty when we opt for a power walk over an intense sprinting session? In many cases, it's because we put so much emphasis on our effort as a means to an end that we don't trust anything but effort – and lots of it – to get us there. We forget that training is not an either/or proposition where you have to choose between always pushing hard or quickly falling behind.
We are also creatures of habit. "It's easy to get sucked up into the routine of training rather than the goal of training," says Ian Adamson, a three-time Eco-Challenge champion from Boulder, Colo., and author of Runner's World Guide to Adventure Racing (Rodale, 2004). It's important, says Adamson, to always keep in mind why you are training, and to remember that strategic periods of rest and recovery are part of every good training plan.
"Taking a day or two off may make us feel as though we are going to lose all of that hard work and wake up a puffy, puny person," notes Adamson. "But in reality, time off can be mentally, physically and emotionally liberating."
Daring to Desist
If you have a consistent workout regimen, you needn't live in mortal fear of losing all momentum the instant you take your foot off the pedal. It takes much longer than a day or two for the body to detrain. As long as you've been training consistently for six months or more, it would probably take at least two weeks of complete bed rest before you'd see your muscles begin to wither away (see "Rest Assured" sidebar). Do even a little work on a weekly basis and you can stave off significant losses for months.
"Train hard just one day a week and you can maintain your fitness almost indefinitely," says Melinda Sothern, PhD, an exercise physiologist at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Sothern does not suggest that an untrained person will make fitness strides with this approach, or that seasoned athletes will want to embrace this sort of training plan long term. Her point is simply that most athletes can coast longer than they think and won't lose ground nearly as rapidly as they fear.
That's important to understand, says Sothern, because failing to take breaks – going too hard for too long, too often – can lower your performance. It can also negatively impact immunity and mood, and deplete your energy reserves, setting you up for other problems, like illness, depression and burnout. And, of course, it can take all the fun out of fitness. Many athletes put themselves in a near constant state of overtraining, notes Sothern, and needlessly sacrifice energy and vitality as a result.
Ian Adamson agrees. He has had plenty of experience with overdoing it, particularly during multi-day adventure races, when he and his teammates hike, paddle, bike and climb on little food and even less sleep. One such race included nine 20-hour days of climbing to altitudes of 18,000 feet. By its completion Adamson had lost 22 pounds – nearly 15 percent of his body weight.
According to Adamson, that may not be all he lost. "Half of my weight loss came from lean muscle mass," he says, "and I suspect one-sixth of it came from gray matter. It took nine months for me to recover my physical conditioning after that race, and I still haven't found all the lost brain cells."
This may be a good thing, Adamson adds, "because I think those cells contained the memory of my suffering."
Diminishing Returns
While most hardcore athletes pride themselves on being able to work through pain and pathos, the smart ones also understand the value of backing off every once in a while. Knowing when and how to moderate your training plan is critically important to your athletic success – as well as your health and vitality. Failing to reduce your training load when your body needs a breather can set you up for the following problems:
Compromised immunity. Pushing your body to its limits causes it to release stress hormones, including cortisol. As this hormone rises, immunity takes a nosedive. When your immune system becomes overloaded, it cannot adequately repair your muscles, nor can it effectively fight off bacteria and viruses. "Periodically lowering your training load reduces cortisol levels, allowing your body to recover better from your training," says Shawn Talbott, PhD, director of the nutrition clinic at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and consultant for the United States Track & Field Association. It also reduces your chances of sustaining an injury or getting an illness that could sideline your training for an extended period.
Reduced strength, power and endurance. A tough strength-training or cardio workout inflicts small tears along the outer coating of your muscle tissue. During your downtime, your body treats the tiny tears much as it does an injury, and satellite cells rush in to patch them up. The repair process creates thicker and longer muscle fibers. When you train too hard, too often, however, your repair system falls behind. Many of the torn muscle fibers remain tattered, explains Carmichael, and thus, your athletic results may begin to plateau.
Another early sign of overtraining is an impaired heart rate: In some athletes, usually sprinters and others who rely on power, the heart beats more slowly than normal. The heart refuses to speed up with exertion and you feel as if you are exercising while half-asleep. Blood doesn't circulate through your body as quickly as usual, preventing oxygen from getting to your working muscles and keeping wastes from getting cleared. In others, usually endurance athletes, the heart rate is elevated, both first thing in the morning and during exercise. No matter whether the heart rate speeds up or slows down, the effect is the same: early fatigue during a workout. "Cyclists who use a power meter on their bikes will also notice their power levels are beginning to decline," notes Carmichael.
As a precautionary and maintenance-oriented measure, some athletes measure their heart rate in the morning in order to assess their body's status. If your heart rate is at least 10 percent above or below normal, the rule goes, you should forgo training.
Reduced energy and motivation for your workouts. If you are overtraining, or if some other aspect of your life is impinging on your limited resources and you haven't adjusted your workouts accordingly, there's a good chance you'll see your outlook and enthusiasm suffer. Part of this may be psychological (you feel pulled in too many directions, for example, and can't get satisfaction from your workouts as a result). But another part of it could be physiological – a biochemical reaction to nutritional and hormonal depletion. Stepping back from your training to rest and rebuild allows you to rebalance your body chemistry, reduce stress and recharge your mental batteries. It's your body-mind's call for a break, says Talbott, and you'll likely emerge from it feeling energized and motivated to do more.
Getting the Message
So how do you know when you should take a break, and how long it should last? Ideally, your training plan should include a formal periodization schedule that calls for "light" periods and days of rest (see article on periodization in the July/Aug. 2003 Experience Life, or in the online archives at lifetimefitness.com/magazine). But even then, particularly if life throws you for a loop, there may be times when you find that the plan simply isn't panning out.
In those cases, it helps to be able to recognize your body's warning signals. Think of them like the check-engine and low-fuel lights on your car's dash: You're supposed to be monitoring the gauges all the time, but it's nice to have the "idiot lights" there as a backup, just in case.
Here are some of the most common indicators that suggest you need to take a step back, along with strategies for when and how to step it up again.
Symptom: You're feeling tired, strung out and crabby.
What your body is trying to tell you: It may be maxed out. Generally, exercise should make you feel better, not worse. But when you're clocking 80-hour weeks or planning your wedding, intense exercise can become one more stressor in your already stressed-out life. It can also further destabilize your body's levels of amino acids and neurotransmitters. You have only 24 hours in a day and your exercise time must come from somewhere. A lot of busy people find time to exercise by cutting back on sleep. But it's during sleep that your body repairs and restores itself. "If you continue to skimp on sleep to fit in workouts, your workouts will feel tougher, you'll get crabbier and you probably won't see results," says Chicago-based fitness and running coach Jenny Hadfield, coauthor of Marathoning for Mortals (Rodale, 2003).
What to do: Focus on quality rather than quantity. Instead of training six days a week, switch to an every-other-day schedule, suggests Talbott. Sleep in on your days off. "The rest and recuperation will reduce cortisol levels," says Talbott. "It's better to have three good workouts during the week than to have five or six so-so workouts."How to Come Back: Once you've completed that merger or said your wedding vows, go ahead and add additional training days to your schedule. Just make sure to continue to get your seven to eight hours of sleep.
Symptom: You're sick – again!
What your body is trying to tell you: If you are getting sick a lot, it's a sign that your body's immune system is struggling and that it may need more attention than your workouts for a while. Regular exercise usually boosts immunity, but intense sessions, particularly those that last two hours or more, can lower it – especially if you don't rest adequately between sessions or you aren't getting adequate nutrition.
What to do: Take stock of your illness. It's OK to continue to exercise through a cold, as long as you lower the intensity and duration. Go at a slower pace and hold yourself to just 30 or 40 minutes, max. Don't overload congested or infection-weakened lungs, though. As a rule, if your symptoms are below the neck – or you have a fever, are vomiting or have diarrhea – stay in bed. Exercising with a fever will raise your body temperature even more, putting undue stress on your immune system and allowing the infection to flourish.
How to come back: The effects of flu or other illness may linger long after your fever subsides. During your first week back, train at no more than three-quarters of your normal intensity and duration, says Talbott. After a week, if you feel energetic during and after your workouts, resume your normal training load. During longer sessions, consume some carbohydrate in the form of a sports drink, energy bar or energy gel. Research suggests that regularly ingesting carbohydrate during endurance training can bolster immunity by stabilizing blood-sugar levels.
In one study, conducted at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and published in the Journal of Sports Science (Jan. 2004), marathon runners and triathletes who consumed a carbohydrate beverage during their race had improved blood-sugar levels, stress-hormone levels and immunity after the race compared to athletes who did not consume the drink. For exercise sessions lasting an hour or longer, consume between 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate (the amount in one to two energy gel packs) for every hour of exercise.
Symptom: You've hit a stubborn plateau.What your body is trying to tell you: After six to nine months on any exercise program, everyone hits a plateau. In many cases, this is an indication the body needs a new challenge. But in some cases an unexpected plateau may be a sign that you are pushing too far, too fast, and not giving your body's repair systems a chance to keep up. Also, remember that your maximum muscle size and metabolism are both partly genetically determined. Trying to overcome genetics by cranking up the intensity and duration of your workouts can backfire by suppressing immunity, which in turn suppresses your metabolism, according to Talbott. High cortisol levels also increase appetite, which may interfere with weight loss.What to do: Evaluate your periodization schedule to see if you might be overtraining. Look at how much support you're offering your body in return for the demands you are placing on it. Consider adding more rest days or recovery workouts to your schedule. Also consider switching to a different fitness pursuit. If you were running, try stair climbing. If you were rowing, try the elliptical trainer. If you were doing step aerobics, try power yoga. In the weight room, switch from super sets to drop sets or from dumbbells to calisthenics. "Mixing it up can often provide enough of a change to stimulate weight loss and increase strength," says Sothern. "It's like slapping your metabolism in the face and waking it up. It keeps your body adapting."How to Come Back: As long as you've stayed reasonably active, you'll probably find that you can return to your original fitness pursuits without much trouble. Changing it up and following a periodization program can help to improve your results.
Symptom: Your workouts aren't making you happy.What your body is trying to tell you: A negative mindset is often the first sign of overtraining syndrome, says Carmichael. With a cluster of symptoms that includes grumpiness, muscle pain, fatigue, insomnia and low immunity, overtraining syndrome results from going too hard and too often without adequate rest. "Overtrained athletes always feel as if they are not doing enough," says Carmichael. "They are never satisfied with their workouts."
Keep overdoing it, and you can expect to see stress-hormone levels rise, testosterone (the hormone in charge of muscle building and repair) levels fall and immunity plummet. You may feel tired as soon as you roll out of bed in the morning, or get more short-tempered as the day wears on.What to do: If you have the bummed-out mindset – but without any physical symptoms – exercise at one-half your normal intensity and duration for one week. If your physical health is already suffering, you may need to stop exercising altogether for one or more weeks. If your physical symptoms have lasted for only three or four weeks, then one week off will do the trick. If you've been dragging around for months, take three weeks off, going for easy walks and doing yoga, tai chi or light calisthenics when you feel like it.
Also, increase your consumption of brightly colored fruits and vegetables (at least eight to 10 servings a day), fatty cold-water fish like salmon (at least twice a week) and lean protein, such as skinless chicken breast (at least twice a day). These foods will help bring down cortisol levels, reduce muscle inflammation and help bolster immunity, says Talbott.How to Come Back: Exercise every other day at half your normal training volume. Do this for two to three weeks, and then begin adding intensity and duration to your workouts. Keep rest days a regular part of your schedule. For every three days of hard training, take off one to two days.
More Rest for the Weary
As Steve Waitt learned from his post-ski-race ordeal, no matter how smart you think you're training, backing off at the right times can have some rich rewards. Counterintuitive as it may seem, working less hard may actually net you results that no amount of Herculean effort ever could.
So if you've been turning a deaf ear to your body's requests for time out, maybe it's time you took notice. Keep in mind that taking a break doesn't necessarily relegate you to lying on the couch and vegging out with DVDs. According to Hadfield, you can (and in most cases, should) continue to exercise at a lower intensity and duration during your power-off periods.
The important thing is that you learn to be observant about the signals your body is sending, and that you see your workouts in the context of your whole life. Exercising harder isn't going to do your athletic capacity much good if it undermines your physical or mental health. If it helps, think of your reduced training load as you would a trip to a spa: You're still doing something healthy for your body, but you're also giving your body the time it needs to rejuvenate.
As a fitting conclusion to his year, Steve Waitt had his two best races ever. "What I learned from that experience – taking a break from intense training and getting such good results – is a lesson I'll benefit from for the rest of my athletic career," says Waitt. "I just wish I hadn't had to learn it the hard way."
Alisa Bauman, a former senior editor at Runner's World, is a freelance writer in Emmaus, Penn.
SIDEBAR: Rest Assured
If an illness, injury or frenzied work schedule has kept you out of the gym, don't despair. Do what you can, and trust your body to ask for what it needs – including total rest, if your system is exhausted or ailing. Your rate of repair depends in part on how depleted your system is to begin with, but unless you are seriously ill, you will probably begin to notice some improvement within just a few days of treating yourself more gently.
The good news: It takes two weeks of total bed rest before your body really begins going to pot. And any movement of any kind – even walking the dog – will help prolong your fitness.
Wondering what you can expect to lose in case of an extended layup? According to exercise physiologist Melinda Sothern, PhD, here's what goes on during a complete layoff from training.
| Amount of time off | What happens | What it means |
| 48 hours | Catecholamine and other fat-burning enzyme levels drop | Your body is burning fat at a slightly reduced level. Fit people burn fat at a higher rate than couch potatoes, so this slight reduction probably won't show up on your waistline, assuming you head back to the gym within the next few weeks. |
| 72 to 120 hours | Insulin response drops | This hormone shuttles sugar into your muscle cells. Insulin works extremely well in fit individuals, so this slight drop is nothing to worry about. | | 1 week | Flexibility declines | Of all fitness variables – strength, endurance and flexibility – flexibility is the hardest to maintain and easiest to lose, which is why it's a good idea to stretch every day, even during a layoff. | | 2 weeks | Endurance and strength begin to drop | Once your endurance and strength begin to drop, they continue to do so rapidly. After three weeks of rest, you'll have lost 50 percent of your strength and endurance. After four weeks, you'll have lost 75 percent, and after six, you'll have lost most everything. |
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Give It a Rest
You're willing to push yourself, even when it hurts. You know how to
tough it out, even when you're tired. But do you know when to back off – and
why? Here's what all fitness buffs need to know about giving their body a
break.
By Alisa Bauman | Features,
May 2004 |
Toward the end of last winter, cross-country skier Steve Waitt took a major tumble during a race, badly injuring his shoulder. He finished the event anyway, skiing the final eight miles in enormous pain. A few days later he began to suffer stomach problems.
A seasoned athlete, Waitt, 48, wasn't surprised. He knew that both extreme exertion and trauma could impact immunity. He'd been training hard for months gearing up for the race and figured his fall and final push had put him over.
What Waitt wasn't prepared for was a double whammy: What seemed like a stomach bug soon developed into a serious digestive disorder that stopped him in his tracks, causing the already-lean athlete to begin losing weight precipitously. Alarmed, he sought help from a series of doctors, had tests run, and was eventually diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, which devastated the health-conscious Waitt. "I've always been in touch with my body and very careful about tracking and maintaining my health," he explains. "I'd just never gone through anything like this before. It was like it came out of nowhere."
After months of serious illness, Waitt is doing well, but he says he still can't be certain whether the inflammatory disease was his body's reaction to the trauma, or to the large amounts of ibuprofen he was taking for the pain, some combination of the two, or a total coincidence, but he perceives a strong connection. "It seems like my body got pushed past some limit," he says, "and it just went sort of haywire."
As a result of injury and illness, Waitt was forced to seriously scale back his training activities. He took it easy for a few months, forgoing his regular training regimen of intense running and roller-skiing in favor of walking and long, easy road cycling. He also included some strength and flexibility work to keep from losing all his athletic conditioning.
By late fall, with his health improving, Waitt resumed serious training, faced with what he thought could be the long and frustrating task of rebuilding his fitness. Early snow in Minnesota allowed him to hit the trails in November. The first time he stepped into his skis, he didn't know what to expect – and was a little afraid to discover just how much conditioning he had lost.
Waitt was surprised and delighted to learn that he hadn't lost much of anything. In fact, he felt better than ever. "I had this new level of endurance," says Waitt. "I didn't tire as easily, and I was amazed at how strong and full of energy I felt."
According to Waitt, it was like his body had just been waiting for a little time off in order to do some much-needed repair work. Apparently, it made use of the opportunity to do some upgrades. "I'm finding now that I'm able to ski faster with less effort," says Waitt. "Laying off and resting after so many years of hard training seems to have really paid off."
Waitt's story is no anomaly, according to many expert trainers. In order to get stronger, faster and more powerful, they explain, sometimes rather than bearing down, an athlete needs to lighten up.
Closed for Repairs
Clearly, your body requires a certain amount of stressful stimulus in order to grow stronger. In fact, that damage-recovery cycle is the whole basis of fitness training: You break your body down and it responds by building itself back up even better than before. But if you've been putting your body through its paces without much opportunity for full recovery, or if you've been under additional stresses (physical, mental or emotional), you may not be giving your body a chance to restore itself. To do so, you may need to change your routine, pare down your training load or, in some cases, walk away from training altogether – at least for a little while.
"You can only make fitness gains when your body has time to recover from the training loads you put it under," asserts Chris Carmichael, founder of Carmichael Training Systems in Colorado Springs, and coach of five-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and other competitive cyclists. That means the harder you push, the more carefully you must observe the low points of your periodization schedule.
For an elite athlete like Armstrong, Carmichael not only inserts rest days into a training schedule, he also prescribes rest weeks and even months. After every three days of hard training, he instructs all his elite athletes to take a 24- to 48-hour break. After every three weeks, he recommends one week at half the normal training volume and intensity. Carmichael advises many of his clients to take anywhere from one to three months off from formal training after they peak for a big event. During this time off, they can run or walk, bike or swim, but they are not supposed to time themselves or monitor their heart rates.
After the Tour de France, for example, Armstrong takes a three-and-a-half month break. He still rides and even races, but he doesn't follow a set schedule. "It gets extremely intense in the months leading up to the Tour. We're measuring the amount of food Lance is eating and monitoring every workout," ? says Carmichael. "But when the Tour de France is over, Lance just wants to go out and ride his bike and enjoy himself. This type of regeneration period allows your body to recharge not only your energy stores, but also your mental focus. After a regeneration phase, you begin fresh and have a more positive and confident outlook on what you want to accomplish."
Wuss or Workaholic?
If a world-class competitor like Armstrong has no trouble taking a step back from time to time, why do we mere mortals feel so guilty when we opt for a power walk over an intense sprinting session? In many cases, it's because we put so much emphasis on our effort as a means to an end that we don't trust anything but effort – and lots of it – to get us there. We forget that training is not an either/or proposition where you have to choose between always pushing hard or quickly falling behind.
We are also creatures of habit. "It's easy to get sucked up into the routine of training rather than the goal of training," says Ian Adamson, a three-time Eco-Challenge champion from Boulder, Colo., and author of Runner's World Guide to Adventure Racing (Rodale, 2004). It's important, says Adamson, to always keep in mind why you are training, and to remember that strategic periods of rest and recovery are part of every good training plan.
"Taking a day or two off may make us feel as though we are going to lose all of that hard work and wake up a puffy, puny person," notes Adamson. "But in reality, time off can be mentally, physically and emotionally liberating."
Daring to Desist
If you have a consistent workout regimen, you needn't live in mortal fear of losing all momentum the instant you take your foot off the pedal. It takes much longer than a day or two for the body to detrain. As long as you've been training consistently for six months or more, it would probably take at least two weeks of complete bed rest before you'd see your muscles begin to wither away (see "Rest Assured" sidebar). Do even a little work on a weekly basis and you can stave off significant losses for months.
"Train hard just one day a week and you can maintain your fitness almost indefinitely," says Melinda Sothern, PhD, an exercise physiologist at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans. Sothern does not suggest that an untrained person will make fitness strides with this approach, or that seasoned athletes will want to embrace this sort of training plan long term. Her point is simply that most athletes can coast longer than they think and won't lose ground nearly as rapidly as they fear.
That's important to understand, says Sothern, because failing to take breaks – going too hard for too long, too often – can lower your performance. It can also negatively impact immunity and mood, and deplete your energy reserves, setting you up for other problems, like illness, depression and burnout. And, of course, it can take all the fun out of fitness. Many athletes put themselves in a near constant state of overtraining, notes Sothern, and needlessly sacrifice energy and vitality as a result.
Ian Adamson agrees. He has had plenty of experience with overdoing it, particularly during multi-day adventure races, when he and his teammates hike, paddle, bike and climb on little food and even less sleep. One such race included nine 20-hour days of climbing to altitudes of 18,000 feet. By its completion Adamson had lost 22 pounds – nearly 15 percent of his body weight.
According to Adamson, that may not be all he lost. "Half of my weight loss came from lean muscle mass," he says, "and I suspect one-sixth of it came from gray matter. It took nine months for me to recover my physical conditioning after that race, and I still haven't found all the lost brain cells."
This may be a good thing, Adamson adds, "because I think those cells contained the memory of my suffering."
Diminishing Returns
While most hardcore athletes pride themselves on being able to work through pain and pathos, the smart ones also understand the value of backing off every once in a while. Knowing when and how to moderate your training plan is critically important to your athletic success – as well as your health and vitality. Failing to reduce your training load when your body needs a breather can set you up for the following problems:
Compromised immunity. Pushing your body to its limits causes it to release stress hormones, including cortisol. As this hormone rises, immunity takes a nosedive. When your immune system becomes overloaded, it cannot adequately repair your muscles, nor can it effectively fight off bacteria and viruses. "Periodically lowering your training load reduces cortisol levels, allowing your body to recover better from your training," says Shawn Talbott, PhD, director of the nutrition clinic at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and consultant for the United States Track & Field Association. It also reduces your chances of sustaining an injury or getting an illness that could sideline your training for an extended period.
Reduced strength, power and endurance. A tough strength-training or cardio workout inflicts small tears along the outer coating of your muscle tissue. During your downtime, your body treats the tiny tears much as it does an injury, and satellite cells rush in to patch them up. The repair process creates thicker and longer muscle fibers. When you train too hard, too often, however, your repair system falls behind. Many of the torn muscle fibers remain tattered, explains Carmichael, and thus, your athletic results may begin to plateau.
Another early sign of overtraining is an impaired heart rate: In some athletes, usually sprinters and others who rely on power, the heart beats more slowly than normal. The heart refuses to speed up with exertion and you feel as if you are exercising while half-asleep. Blood doesn't circulate through your body as quickly as usual, preventing oxygen from getting to your working muscles and keeping wastes from getting cleared. In others, usually endurance athletes, the heart rate is elevated, both first thing in the morning and during exercise. No matter whether the heart rate speeds up or slows down, the effect is the same: early fatigue during a workout. "Cyclists who use a power meter on their bikes will also notice their power levels are beginning to decline," notes Carmichael.
As a precautionary and maintenance-oriented measure, some athletes measure their heart rate in the morning in order to assess their body's status. If your heart rate is at least 10 percent above or below normal, the rule goes, you should forgo training.
Reduced energy and motivation for your workouts. If you are overtraining, or if some other aspect of your life is impinging on your limited resources and you haven't adjusted your workouts accordingly, there's a good chance you'll see your outlook and enthusiasm suffer. Part of this may be psychological (you feel pulled in too many directions, for example, and can't get satisfaction from your workouts as a result). But another part of it could be physiological – a biochemical reaction to nutritional and hormonal depletion. Stepping back from your training to rest and rebuild allows you to rebalance your body chemistry, reduce stress and recharge your mental batteries. It's your body-mind's call for a break, says Talbott, and you'll likely emerge from it feeling energized and motivated to do more.
Getting the Message
So how do you know when you should take a break, and how long it should last? Ideally, your training plan should include a formal periodization schedule that calls for "light" periods and days of rest (see article on periodization in the July/Aug. 2003 Experience Life, or in the online archives at lifetimefitness.com/magazine). But even then, particularly if life throws you for a loop, there may be times when you find that the plan simply isn't panning out.
In those cases, it helps to be able to recognize your body's warning signals. Think of them like the check-engine and low-fuel lights on your car's dash: You're supposed to be monitoring the gauges all the time, but it's nice to have the "idiot lights" there as a backup, just in case.
Here are some of the most common indicators that suggest you need to take a step back, along with strategies for when and how to step it up again.
Symptom: You're feeling tired, strung out and crabby.
What your body is trying to tell you: It may be maxed out. Generally, exercise should make you feel better, not worse. But when you're clocking 80-hour weeks or planning your wedding, intense exercise can become one more stressor in your already stressed-out life. It can also further destabilize your body's levels of amino acids and neurotransmitters. You have only 24 hours in a day and your exercise time must come from somewhere. A lot of busy people find time to exercise by cutting back on sleep. But it's during sleep that your body repairs and restores itself. "If you continue to skimp on sleep to fit in workouts, your workouts will feel tougher, you'll get crabbier and you probably won't see results," says Chicago-based fitness and running coach Jenny Hadfield, coauthor of Marathoning for Mortals (Rodale, 2003).
What to do: Focus on quality rather than quantity. Instead of training six days a week, switch to an every-other-day schedule, suggests Talbott. Sleep in on your days off. "The rest and recuperation will reduce cortisol levels," says Talbott. "It's better to have three good workouts during the week than to have five or six so-so workouts."How to Come Back: Once you've completed that merger or said your wedding vows, go ahead and add additional training days to your schedule. Just make sure to continue to get your seven to eight hours of sleep.
Symptom: You're sick – again!
What your body is trying to tell you: If you are getting sick a lot, it's a sign that your body's immune system is struggling and that it may need more attention than your workouts for a while. Regular exercise usually boosts immunity, but intense sessions, particularly those that last two hours or more, can lower it – especially if you don't rest adequately between sessions or you aren't getting adequate nutrition.
What to do: Take stock of your illness. It's OK to continue to exercise through a cold, as long as you lower the intensity and duration. Go at a slower pace and hold yourself to just 30 or 40 minutes, max. Don't overload congested or infection-weakened lungs, though. As a rule, if your symptoms are below the neck – or you have a fever, are vomiting or have diarrhea – stay in bed. Exercising with a fever will raise your body temperature even more, putting undue stress on your immune system and allowing the infection to flourish.
How to come back: The effects of flu or other illness may linger long after your fever subsides. During your first week back, train at no more than three-quarters of your normal intensity and duration, says Talbott. After a week, if you feel energetic during and after your workouts, resume your normal training load. During longer sessions, consume some carbohydrate in the form of a sports drink, energy bar or energy gel. Research suggests that regularly ingesting carbohydrate during endurance training can bolster immunity by stabilizing blood-sugar levels.
In one study, conducted at Appalachian State University in Boone, N.C., and published in the Journal of Sports Science (Jan. 2004), marathon runners and triathletes who consumed a carbohydrate beverage during their race had improved blood-sugar levels, stress-hormone levels and immunity after the race compared to athletes who did not consume the drink. For exercise sessions lasting an hour or longer, consume between 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate (the amount in one to two energy gel packs) for every hour of exercise.
Symptom: You've hit a stubborn plateau.What your body is trying to tell you: After six to nine months on any exercise program, everyone hits a plateau. In many cases, this is an indication the body needs a new challenge. But in some cases an unexpected plateau may be a sign that you are pushing too far, too fast, and not giving your body's repair systems a chance to keep up. Also, remember that your maximum muscle size and metabolism are both partly genetically determined. Trying to overcome genetics by cranking up the intensity and duration of your workouts can backfire by suppressing immunity, which in turn suppresses your metabolism, according to Talbott. High cortisol levels also increase appetite, which may interfere with weight loss.What to do: Evaluate your periodization schedule to see if you might be overtraining. Look at how much support you're offering your body in return for the demands you are placing on it. Consider adding more rest days or recovery workouts to your schedule. Also consider switching to a different fitness pursuit. If you were running, try stair climbing. If you were rowing, try the elliptical trainer. If you were doing step aerobics, try power yoga. In the weight room, switch from super sets to drop sets or from dumbbells to calisthenics. "Mixing it up can often provide enough of a change to stimulate weight loss and increase strength," says Sothern. "It's like slapping your metabolism in the face and waking it up. It keeps your body adapting."How to Come Back: As long as you've stayed reasonably active, you'll probably find that you can return to your original fitness pursuits without much trouble. Changing it up and following a periodization program can help to improve your results.
Symptom: Your workouts aren't making you happy.What your body is trying to tell you: A negative mindset is often the first sign of overtraining syndrome, says Carmichael. With a cluster of symptoms that includes grumpiness, muscle pain, fatigue, insomnia and low immunity, overtraining syndrome results from going too hard and too often without adequate rest. "Overtrained athletes always feel as if they are not doing enough," says Carmichael. "They are never satisfied with their workouts."
Keep overdoing it, and you can expect to see stress-hormone levels rise, testosterone (the hormone in charge of muscle building and repair) levels fall and immunity plummet. You may feel tired as soon as you roll out of bed in the morning, or get more short-tempered as the day wears on.What to do: If you have the bummed-out mindset – but without any physical symptoms – exercise at one-half your normal intensity and duration for one week. If your physical health is already suffering, you may need to stop exercising altogether for one or more weeks. If your physical symptoms have lasted for only three or four weeks, then one week off will do the trick. If you've been dragging around for months, take three weeks off, going for easy walks and doing yoga, tai chi or light calisthenics when you feel like it.
Also, increase your consumption of brightly colored fruits and vegetables (at least eight to 10 servings a day), fatty cold-water fish like salmon (at least twice a week) and lean protein, such as skinless chicken breast (at least twice a day). These foods will help bring down cortisol levels, reduce muscle inflammation and help bolster immunity, says Talbott.How to Come Back: Exercise every other day at half your normal training volume. Do this for two to three weeks, and then begin adding intensity and duration to your workouts. Keep rest days a regular part of your schedule. For every three days of hard training, take off one to two days.
More Rest for the Weary
As Steve Waitt learned from his post-ski-race ordeal, no matter how smart you think you're training, backing off at the right times can have some rich rewards. Counterintuitive as it may seem, working less hard may actually net you results that no amount of Herculean effort ever could.
So if you've been turning a deaf ear to your body's requests for time out, maybe it's time you took notice. Keep in mind that taking a break doesn't necessarily relegate you to lying on the couch and vegging out with DVDs. According to Hadfield, you can (and in most cases, should) continue to exercise at a lower intensity and duration during your power-off periods.
The important thing is that you learn to be observant about the signals your body is sending, and that you see your workouts in the context of your whole life. Exercising harder isn't going to do your athletic capacity much good if it undermines your physical or mental health. If it helps, think of your reduced training load as you would a trip to a spa: You're still doing something healthy for your body, but you're also giving your body the time it needs to rejuvenate.
As a fitting conclusion to his year, Steve Waitt had his two best races ever. "What I learned from that experience – taking a break from intense training and getting such good results – is a lesson I'll benefit from for the rest of my athletic career," says Waitt. "I just wish I hadn't had to learn it the hard way."
Alisa Bauman, a former senior editor at Runner's World, is a freelance writer in Emmaus, Penn.
SIDEBAR: Rest Assured
If an illness, injury or frenzied work schedule has kept you out of the gym, don't despair. Do what you can, and trust your body to ask for what it needs – including total rest, if your system is exhausted or ailing. Your rate of repair depends in part on how depleted your system is to begin with, but unless you are seriously ill, you will probably begin to notice some improvement within just a few days of treating yourself more gently.
The good news: It takes two weeks of total bed rest before your body really begins going to pot. And any movement of any kind – even walking the dog – will help prolong your fitness.
Wondering what you can expect to lose in case of an extended layup? According to exercise physiologist Melinda Sothern, PhD, here's what goes on during a complete layoff from training.
| Amount of time off | What happens | What it means |
| 48 hours | Catecholamine and other fat-burning enzyme levels drop | Your body is burning fat at a slightly reduced level. Fit people burn fat at a higher rate than couch potatoes, so this slight reduction probably won't show up on your waistline, assuming you head back to the gym within the next few weeks. |
| 72 to 120 hours | Insulin response drops | This hormone shuttles sugar into your muscle cells. Insulin works extremely well in fit individuals, so this slight drop is nothing to worry about. | | 1 week | Flexibility declines | Of all fitness variables – strength, endurance and flexibility – flexibility is the hardest to maintain and easiest to lose, which is why it's a good idea to stretch every day, even during a layoff. | | 2 weeks | Endurance and strength begin to drop | Once your endurance and strength begin to drop, they continue to do so rapidly. After three weeks of rest, you'll have lost 50 percent of your strength and endurance. After four weeks, you'll have lost 75 percent, and after six, you'll have lost most everything. |
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April 8, 2008
Daryl Jackson says:
My favorite new discovery. Big in Europe new in Minneapolis. I can't wait for them to open!!! ( in two weeks I hear) The ultimate rest! One hour in a float bed is equal to 4 hours of sleep. I'm wondering what you think? I am thinking evey athlete should try it! http://www.rejoovme.com/