Let me ask you a question – what is an easy way to stop over training and prevent illness, injury and underperforming? Answer…quality of sleep!
As the London Marathon approaches, all the training starts to take its toll. For me I notice it as little niggles and injuries. I am constantly tired, trying to juggle work and family life with the training. Massages, 2XU compression clothing, supplements etc. can only do so much to help the recovery process. There is no substitute for a good night sleep.
On Wednesday after a full day’s work I had to run 10 miles on the track in under 54mins! This was no problem on Wednesday evening but I struggled to get out of bed on Thursday morning.
Luckily I have a little technique I starting using with the Olympic triathletes I used to coach in Japan. They could be doing up to 30 hours training a week and over training was a serious likelihood. However before the body becomes over trained and gets sick or injured, your sleep patterns become disturbed. This usually happens about two weeks before any problems appear in your daily life or training. Hence it is often OK to train really hard for one week, the body can take the overload, so long as you allow recovery afterwards.
If you don’t take time off after a block of hard training your nervous system gets out of whack and you will start to break down. If kept unchecked over a long period of time, not only will it destroy your training and racing times, but you will probably get sick often and most likely injured, but you could even run the risk of getting ME.
So now I have scared you all, what do we do the prevent it? I use what is called a Quality of Sleep Index. QSI It is very simple to employ. When you wake up on a morning before getting out of bed, just note down your resting pulse and grade your sleep on a scale from 1-7. If it was the best night’s sleep ever and you feel like taking on the world give yourself a 1. If you feel as though you have just been run down by a double decker bus, and had the worst night ever then you need a 7.
Often in the early days of over training you feel really bad at night, sleepless, restless, hot and sweaty, but after waking up and having a coffee you feel OK and soon forget the night and dismiss it as a bad dream.
IT IS NOT…it is the early warning system telling you to ease up, and it must be listened to.
I usually grade myself a 4 when I have a typical night’s sleep, at the weekend with an extra lie in bed after an easy day’s training I may get a 3 or once in a while after an easy week I get a 2. After last Wednesday’s track session I struggled and had a restless night. Thursday morning was definite a 5. If these 5′s continue over a week or so I take extra rest days. One or two after hard training are to be expected. A 6 or 7 is an immediate rest day.
Your resting pulse is also another guide to help. If it raises by more than 10% then you are over trained and should consider a rest day or a very easy day’s training.
I slept well last night and gave myself a 4 this morning, my pulse was its’ usual unbelievably low 29. I also take my blood pressure which was 117/63 so all in all an average morning for me. The fact that I am writing this in bed instead of doing my morning run is down to laziness not tiredness today. But at least I know the difference.
I shall just have to get out in my lunch break for my easy run.