When we’re training for a triathlon we can often enter a thick fog without realizing it – this is never good for your performance – here’s how to recognize it.
What Do you Think About When Training?
As an endurance athlete and coach people often ask what I think about while swimming, cycling, or running for long periods of time. I often say that I am monitoring my bodies systems, as a pilot does while fly a plane. These systems, depending on the activity are different, but some are relevant regardless the sport — such as cadence.
I also pay close attention to if my mind seems sharp and alert, or hazy. This is important in during long, hard training sessions or hard training cycles, found during the build phase of a training cycle.
Overtraining Makes You Stupid
A recent French study which appeared this past April in the Journal of medicine of Science in Sport — a Scandinavian publication, looked at 11 male athletes participating in endurance sports and increased their training volume for a two-week period by 100-percent. Researchers then cut the training volume in half the third week. Tests performed on the 11-athletes after the three-week training cycle concluded the cognitive performance declined, meaning they were not in the fog-of-war, but rather the fog-of- training. This would seem to suggest that over-training impacts an athlete’s ability to think clearly
When You Mentally Struggle at Work Cut Back
Therefore, you can conclude from this study, and perhaps from your own experiences that if you have an unusually hard time focusing throughout the day, or even during a difficult training session, you may be pushing the limits of your physical ability and heading towards over-training, injury or burnout. Dial it back a notch or two, and take note of the results. As always, make notes in your training log, and share this information with your coach.
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