sstang13

I believe it was on the live stream I just watched about a doping discussion (there was a thread in the 41), I have a bad short term memory so not 100% sure anyway, I think it was johnathon vaughters that said it, but I heard someone say, "overtraining is just a state of mind"...?

Now I know obviously this doesn't mean that I can go out and ride 6 hours a day, 7 days a week with multiple intervals and be fine but, in general, is it really true that overtraining is mostly just a state of mind? Some people say don't ride everyday in a week because it is easy to overtrain yourself, I only ride 4-5 days/week. But would this also have to do with variables like age, experience, skill, even DNA etc??

If you kind BFers wouldn't mind discussing this I'd appretiate to see what you guys think!

Thanks.

Edit : I havn't made a thread in while...LOL, good to be back

gsteinb

"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog." - Unknown?

misterwaterfall

I think he is partially right. With me, I can tell when I am starting to drag mentally, and have to push myself to get on the bike. I can usually ride through pain in my legs without issue, it's the mental fatigue that wears on me and makes me not want to train hard.
When that happens I usually just put on a Pantera playlist and make it happen

caloso

I think the term overtraining is overused and often misapplied. I have thought of myself as "overtrained" in the past. Having learned a bit more about training science and having started to work with a coach, in retrospect it seems that what I was doing was plateauing at a mediocre level. I wasn't going hard enough on what should have been hard days (thereby not sufficiently stressing my system), and too hard on what should have been easy days (thereby not fully recovering). What I ended up with was a lot of tempo-ish riding. I was relatively fit, but I had no snap, and once I buried myself with a hard effort in a race or group ride, I would blow myself up.

echappist

NO

your endocrine system gets severely messed up, and you end up in a physiological funk. Even overreaching represents significant damages to your muscle that would take extended period of time to recover.

Vaughter is a science-driven person and it's probably something he acknowledge as lore of cycling (similar to ride lots) but not something he believes.

gsteinb

Wasn't that something Floyd has said in the past? Sounds like him.

Monkeyclaw

Overreaching, overtraining and burned out. Three different things. Overtraining is a real condition that can be measured with emotional issues, restlessness, trouble sleeping, fatigue, increased hear rate and lack of progress. This can last from weeks to months. People often confuse the term overtraining with getting burned out, which is probably the mental issue Vaughters is talking about.

Overreaching is what you try to do to stimulate physical changes in the body as a result of training. If you overreach to much without giving your body the chance to recover, you can end up with overtraining syndrome. Odds are very few people on the forum are at risk for this.

sstang13

Touche.

@misterwaterfall, I need to push myself on the bike after a while of the same training due to months being on the trainer... but once the warm weather comes I'm usually fine, I'm just lazy when it comes to getting on my back but once my bottles are in the cage and I'm rolling down the driveway I love it

Wait so burning out is just too much riding in a certain period of time? like doing intervals everyday..and what exactly is overreaching, in english?

I'm definintely not going to ride more than I have to now cause indoor's SUCKS but when it comes to the summer, could I ride 6-7 days a week and not hurt my performance/improvments at all? And what about twice a day, because I ride am going to ride with my dad, but have to train seperately for obvious reasons.

mattm

Try riding 6 hours a day for a few weeks in a row, and let us know.

echappist

sign up for the wattage forum and read this thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=...w/oAgLCeDFMRQJ

but by all means, don't let us dissuade you

sstang13

Exageration of course..

It didn't let me.. I don't have a power meter if that's the problem.

grolby

You recently earned a degree in kinesiology or something similar is that right? Your answer (no) is what I thought, and I'm happy to take your word on that.

It wouldn't be surprising if some low-level amateurs who have become hyperconcerned about overtraining are self-diagnosing any degree of overreach or even just more training than they are doing. A couple weekends ago I mentioned to a teammate who hasn't actually done much riding in the last couple years that I had two workouts on deck for that day, for 5-6 hours total. He got very serious about warning me against overtraining. Even with the occasional big day like that, a big week for me is 11 hours; I often have two days a week where I don't ride, except possibly a short commute. All I could do was laugh it off. Another teammate said was concerned about still another teammate who was doing a lot of base miles in January overtraining. This guy did about 1,000 miles in January. That's a lot, sure, but mostly it was just more than what the rest of us were doing; 200 miles a week isn't really excessive.

I think phantom worries of overtraining have become ways for people either to excuse not riding enough for themselves, or to project their own insecurities about not training hard enough onto other people who are training more. It's really pretty silly - all you can so is the amount of training you have time and motivation for every week. Feeling bad about not wanting to do 15 hours a week all the time is just a waste of mental energy, especially if doing that much time would make you resent the riding rather than enjoying it.

HMF

There was a time a while back where I thought I was approaching over-training. Then I kept riding and broke through a barrier where I had a few weeks/weekends in a row that were "no-chain days." Then it all went away so I went into hibernation.

If I kept going hard like that, I might have gotten to a point where I was overtrained, but I think most people who have less than, say, 15 hours a week are probably just getting really tired. You'd have to have a lot of a free time and a borderline mental disorder in dedication/determination to really be at risk for overtraining. Most of us would probably stop somewhere before that.

echappist

Actually chemistry. So no, i'm no expert. Exercise physiology just happens to be something to which i pay a lot of attention. If this is more of your (or anyone else's) area, I'm all ears. That said, i usually have a low tolerance for cycling lore such as "ride up grades" and such as they are glib words from extremely gifted athletes, and these words don't apply to most.

I think there's quite a bit of confusion going on here as far as terminology is concerned. We have three types of response to training: overtraining, over reaching, and normal accumulation of fatigue, and i was referring to the technical over-training, which is a condition in which the endocrine system goes haywire. Most amateurs usually don't end up here. Overreaching is a lot more prevalent amongst amateurs, and then there's the high levels of fatigue from a particularly long or hard effort, which is just effect of training.

ETA: here's a pdf on endocrinology for anyone interested

MrTuner1970

More accurately would be under-resting.

Strength gains come from recovering after hard work. Necessary recovery time will vary with the individual.

Caloso is correct. Last season I rode, rode, and rode. Wasn't going easy enough on recovery days, which limited me on the hard days. Ended up mentally and physically tired...twice. Had to take two separate 2-4 day breaks with no riding. Now, I'm using Training Peaks and already having a much better training season.

jsutkeepspining

all i have is personal experience, but it's hard for me to get to a state of overtraining (life gets in the way far before i can do enough training to make me want to murder small puppies). Burn out comes once every 10 months for me, right after the end of the season, and after two days of my week long break i'm fine. Generally when i'm feeling lack luster, all i need to do is force myself onto the bike and have an easy day if my legs dont wake up, by the next day im fine.


Addressing the glib words, i think they all have meaning to a certain point (i.e. none of us will ever hit our genetic max, it's just too hard. tbh i think i would be 95-99% as fast as i am now if i just raced a lot and rode easy on non race days. 4 race days a week plus one long ride plus two easyish days). power is great because it allows me to do the efforts i would do in a race when i don't have time to race (i.e. the school year. It's hard to drive 4 hours to and from a race just to race my bike). I can go and do a pretty structure workout for 4 hours and say "yippie that was like racing my bike". I could also say **** the power meter and go get someone to motor pace me for 3 hours and get some super speed work going. they have a place for the lower cats, there's no reason to fret so much when you are so far from your limit.

jsutkeepspining

now my lack of overtraining/burn-out could just be that im a stupid 17 year old punk who doesn't follow the same rules as the adults on this forum.

UMassAm

this thread helped me do 30-30's tonight. if only i could fall asleep now...

grolby

In theory, it could be more my area, but I'm an evolutionary biologist who doesn't follow it so closely, so... No. But the comments in this thread reflect my current understanding of the actual probability of people like most of us reaching a true state of overtraining. The major issue is indeed fatigue from training plus everything else we do in our lives, and it's also true that a lot of amateurs probably don't rest enough leading into their target events. Or even week to week. But it seems to me that a big part of being able to deal with training fatigue is adapting to a certain training load. When I was training 3-6 hours a week, if I was lucky, stepping it up even a little was enough to shut me down, but when I suddenly had time to dramatically increase my volume, pushing through that fatigue for a couple of weeks actually gave me some really large gains in fitness, as in, mid-pack to podium contention in crits gains in fitness. Feeling tired doesn't mean you're overworking yourself. Training is supposed to make you tired!

sstang13

I guess what I should be gaining from these answers (thanks everyone) is that I can go ride as much as I want and won't overtrain unless I'm clinically messes up to do so? lol I sorta plan on doing a lot more cycling once the warm weather allows me to do so, I'll see how that turns out, because I need a lot of work to do and I will most likely be doing 2 rides in one day 3-4 days a week with my dad in the summer.

Glad to know it helped and welcome to my life, can't fall asleep until past 1am if I get lucky...

krobinson103

I think there is a threshold where you simply aren't revovering enough. I pushed myself to
ride 3 hours.plus every day I don't do a long ride for the last 2 months. definately feeling the burn in my muscles everyday. I pushed for a fast 25km yesterday and exceeded my personal best but I know I don't have the reserves for a fast 160km without some recovery time. Determonation helps but sometimes you do have to stop for a day.

Racer Ex 

How tall is a tree?

Everyone can go backwards by overdoing racing and/or training. When that happens depends on the person.

mattm

this

sstang13

Never really looked at it this way.. people made it sounds like overtraining was basically what fatigue is for an extended time, like a month or so. I guess if I just catch on to it I'll know when enough is enough. thanks everyone.

MDcatV

it's allot easier to under-rest, than it is to overtrain.