12/06/2022
Life stress = Body stress
We will all experience ups and downs, whether work, personal relationships, sickness, or injury. These are likely to affect sleep and strain the body and your ability to recover. See the following strategies for coping -
Six tips for managing life stress and load balancing training demands
1. Take a rest day; as obvious as it sounds, it could be the best possible strategy
2. Delay morning training 4 hours till lunchtime or 8 hours until evening. This +4 and +8 strategy may make a difference in getting enough recovery time and keeping you sane.
3. Split your long sessions – if you originally had a long run, swim or ride planned for the morning, where the occasion calls, suggest splitting the volume 40/60 or 60/40 depending on how you feel when to wake.
4. Let's talk about volume – your body has no clue what a kilometre or mile is. It is far better to measure your training based on the time at a particular perceived effort, wattage or heart rate. So don't fall into the guilt trap of thinking you have to do X number of Kms for a specific session.
5. Training in extreme heat or humidity – Triathletes or ultra-marathoners need to clock the time and miles to prepare for events. Let's say you have a 6-hour ride or 4-hour run scheduled; I suggest you get an early start, beat the heat and do the first 4 hours on the bike and 3 hours on the run outdoors and then finish the remainder of the session indoors on a turbo trainer, treadmill or similar. That way, you get the volume in plus the heat acclimatisation without the negative downside of excessive dehydration and depletion of trace elements such as magnesium which will undoubtedly result in poor sleep.
6. Exercise is beneficial for health and sleep but what turns it into poison is the dose; the dose is measured in either volume or intensity. Coach of the century Arthur Lydiard had a simple formula for athletic performance that still very much applies today – 87/9/4. 87% of your training should be strength endurance-focused at .7 to .8 of RPE, 9% at threshold and 4% at Vo2 max. Many athletes I know turn this healthy training pyramid upside down, leaving the body struggling to rest enough to recover and overloading the CNS (central nervous system).
Keep it real; you will only benefit from training that you recover from.
