Struggles of a training athlete. Monitoring for Overtraining

In my last post we discussed some of the symptoms of overtraining. These are things to look for incase you are suffering from overtraining. This post now will focus on how to look for these symptoms more effectively.
The aim of doing these things is not just to pick up on when you been overtraining and therefore know when to take a rest but to notice possible overtraining issues as early as possible to minimise the negative effects.
This is why I use the word "monitoring." Monitoring suggests a constant regular process, one that looks continuously for changes and addresses them as soon as they arise. This is how you should be when it comes to overtraining.
So what steps can you take to monitor your training...

• KEEP A DIARY!

Diaries are great ways of keeping track of every aspect of your training. If the word diary brings to mind young girls writing down their new crush before bed, then you can call it something else, perhaps a "training log." Your training diary will not be a long text but instead more of a checklist of items that you will keep track of during your training. You should every day or every session, mark down the list of things in the diary and how they felt/went that time. For instance a rating scale of how well you thought you trained that session.

There will be a more detailed post on the sort of things to include in a training diary HERE

But this will focus on the things to include that relate specifically to overtraining.
Thinking back to the post looking at symptoms of overtraining we want to monitor these in the diary.

• Tiredness, lack of energy - on a scale of 1-10 note down how much energy you felt you had in that session
• motivation - on a scale of 1-10, how keen were you to practice that session
• concentration - on a scale of 1-10, how well did you feel you concentrated in that session
• injuries - note down any little niggles, injuries or pain you felt in that session

Plan regular checks, where you take time to look back over the past few weeks of training and look for any steady decline in energy levels, motivation and concentration. Athletes training regularly will have ups and downs in these but overall there is a general level where these values will be. If there is a steady decline then this shows that the level of training is not maintainable on a long term basis- something which will lead to overtraining problems.
Similarly everybody will have little injuries or the odd big injury but if you look back in your diary and see the amount and severity of injuries building up more and more, or a particular type of injury in one part of the body regularly occurring, then this is a sign that you are perhaps pushing your body too hard and overtraining.

• Discuss regularly with your coach

use your diary and discuss this with your coach. People are subjective when they fill in their diary, this is both a strength and a weakness. It is a strength because nobody knows how you feel better than you. It is a weakness because you might be biased. You may feel like your concentration is good but your coach has noticed it isn't as good as it used to be. Or, because you have steadily improved in training, you don't feel any different but in fact from an outside perspective your concentration and energy has really improved.

Therefore, discussing these things with your coach can be helpful to put your thoughts into perspective and also, if you are regularly discussing these things with your coach, then your coach will be in a better position to know how to vary training accordingly.

So, now we have learned what to look for and how to look for it, how do we fix it?! Find out in the next post Struggles of a training athlete. Avoiding overtraining HERE 

To see the original article that inspired this series of posts check it out HERE.

To see what else will be talked about in this series click HERE.

Setting up effective monitoring processes is just one way which Brain-SPEC can help with your/your team's performance. If you are interested in working with Brain-SPEC check out the Services tab at the top or get in touch via email

Struggles of a training athlete. Diagnosing Overtraining

Overtraining is a dangerous thing that people don't often talk about but is a big potential problem for those taking their training seriously.
People who are suffering from this are often worried about bringing it up as it is perhaps seen as a sign of weakness. It is definitely not a sign of weakness and it can have a lot of very important negative effects both mentally and physically!

Here are a few signs you may be suffering from overtraining

• after/before each session you are feeling more stiff and tired than the last one. 

This is a sign that your energy resources and muscles are unable to keep up with the training schedule. They are not being given sufficient time to fully recover and get stronger (muscles getting stronger is often one of the main aims of training!)

• you are losing motivation and enjoyment of training

your mind, just like your body, can get fatigued. Everybody has sessions where they don't 100% feel like going- their favourite programme is on TV, its too early/late in the day, you don't feel like putting 100% effort in today. Or they don't fully enjoy training (naturally there are parts of training that few people enjoy- who enjoys that feeling of oxygen debt?!)

But if the overall enthusiasm and enjoyment of training is consistently dwindling then this could be a sign you are overtraining

• you are picking up lots of little injuries and perhaps a few big injuries

Is your wrist consistently swelling up after training sessions? Are your quadriceps consistently sore?Have you had a few muscle strains recently? Picking up injuries are sometimes a part of training and are difficult to be avoided, but if you are getting lots of them it is perhaps time to stop and think about why this could be! Swelling of joints and tightness of muscles is often a sign of muscle overuse, so if you are getting these a lot it is a sign you might be overtraining

• do you find it more and more difficult to focus during training

you used to be able to focus for hours working hard on one specific exercise given in training. Now you're finding 5 minutes of one drill leaves you losing concentration, chatting, messing about, staring at the ceiling. Everybody is different with how easily they can concentrate and you may not find it as easy to focus for as long as your training partner. But, have you noticed that, compared to yourself, you seem to be a lot worse than normal. If the answer is consistently yes, then you could be overtraining!

These are just some of the symptoms of overtraining. One of the important things to note is that in all of these symptoms there is an emphasis on CONSISTENCY. Everybody has natural ups and downs in these things but if it is a consistent downward pattern then it could indicate overtraining.

They can be easily looked for and a number of things can be done to combat overtraining. These are discussed in part 2- Monitoring Overtraining and part 3 - Avoiding Overtraining

If you found this interesting and have comments then please comment below.

Implementing training structures to avoid overtraining is just one of the ways Brain-SPEC can work with you/your club. If you are interested in working with Brain-SPEC then get in touch via email.

Struggles of a training athlete

Recently Sam Priestley, the protege of the Expert in a year project being led by Ben Larcombe, has released his own recent thoughts about his training and his progress in the project. It is a great read and really gives an insight into the thoughts going through his head, the highlights and particularly the struggles that he is going through. A lot of these are common struggles that a lot of athletes go through, both professional and recreational, in their quest to improve.
In the a series of posts I will discuss these troubles in more depth and give some tips to help overcome these struggles and continue to improve your performance.

To understand the starting position for these posts read the words of Sam himself here

So from this here are some of the struggles that he and I am sure many of you have

• Overtraining - Sam got sick of training, lost motivation and his training was suffering

This is a difficult one because lots of people think that not training as much as physically possible to fit in is laziness. But a sustainable schedule is important, as Sam found, your motivation suffers and as a result the quality of training both physically and mentally suffers. Bad habits form, injuries occur, and all of this is definitely bad news in both a short and long term viewpoint. For the in-depth ways to look at if you're overtraining and how to avoid doing this read the full article Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3

• Focusing on one thing at a time - Sam was very happy in Denmark and Hungary because he could focus his mind on just the one thing and saw big benefits to his motivation, general mental health and also performance

Not everybody is able to take weeks off from work to train full-time, and even if you can you will still need to balance work/school/family/everyday life with your training. The key is switching off each of those things when you're training and vice versa. This is a difficult thing to do but is key to getting the most out of your training. There are some methods to do this discussed in this article in the series HERE

• Difficulty transferring training performances into matches - Sam had the basic technique and good shots but in matches he is finding it difficult to transfer this and perform well.

This is a very common problem that almost everybody has at some point and few people find a way to truly overcome it. There are a few ways to overcome this including altering your thoughts in both training and matches and altering your training to help transfer these skills into a match. These are discussed in depth in this article of the series HERE

• Being professional in your training when others aren't - Sam found this part of the camps he visited to be very good but this shows the contrast to what happens if these conditions/mentality of others is not as good

Staying focused and training at 100% when other people aren't taking it as seriously is a difficult thing. As humans we are naturally swayed by social interaction and observation, so how do we shut out that and really get the most from our training? Read about a few tips HERE

• Fear of wasting other peoples time - Sam talks about not being good enough at blocking for his practice partner and feeling the need to apologise

The only way to improve is to push yourself slightly beyond your capabilities (read the article I created on the ZPD here) therefore practicing with players better than you needs to happen So how do you keep them happy, while being able to get the most out of it for yourself? I discuss this in this article of the series HERE.

(Not all these articles are yet written and will be added as they are completed so, if there is no link where it says there should be, please be patient!)

Don't forget to check out the rest of the goings on at Expert in a year and the rest of my blog, and comment below some more of the problems you are having. I will read each one and look into writing posts on how to overcome these in the future.

If you are interested in working on a more individual, tailored basis, contact me via email at brainspecsports@gmail.com and check out the services page of the website for ideas as to how I could potentially help you to improve you/your teams training and performances.

4 Effective ways to use music for your run

Music is a very powerful tool. It can alter your mood, perceived energy levels, focus, determination and many other things. When used correctly, music can enhance your workout and performance, when used badly it can ruin it. Therefore it is important how to use music in its most effective ways to ensure your run is the best it can be. Here are are a few pointers to how to use music. It is important to point out these are general rules and may not work for everybody but why not give them a try, research has shown these to be effective for a significant amount of people so the chances are you could be like those people!

1. Pick the tempo for your run and match it to your music.
People have a natural call towards rhythm, its what makes people want to dance, its what makes people unknowingly tap their foot along with the beat. If that tap is out of tempo with the music the brain gets confused and feels unnatural. Therefore it will naturally want to join with the beat of the music. This will also happen with your strides. So if you have a set speed you want to run, pick music at that speed and your brain will naturally drag you towards that pace. There are apps available that can help you to do this, but I am yet to personally try them so I don't know how good they are, since I still use my old-fashioned, heavy, non-touch-screen iPod.

2. Pick music that will lift your mood.
Sad, slow music or music with unhappy lyrics can potentially have a negative effect on your mood, which will in turn affect your motivation to push yourself during the run, it can also build up an association between being in an unhappy mood and exercising/running. This means your brain will learn that you are often unhappy when you are running, and therefore start to not want to go running as that makes you unhappy.upbeat, positive music can have the opposite effect and make your subconscious feelings towards running more positive and also help you feel as though you have more energy to push yourself during your run.

3. Have distraction/emergency songs.
use music with a meaning to you or something you really like and save them for later in the playlist or queue them ready to be played when you most need it.It seems obvious but music can distract you from the pain, the boredom, the tiredness of the run. Putting the music that is most powerful at distracting you in the parts of the run you will most struggle with (most likely the end!) will help you to forget those troubles and power through.

4. Have a Get-ready-to-run song. 
Sometimes the hardest part of running is forcing yourself to actually get up, get ready and set-off. Having a Energetic, motivating song that you always play when getting ready to run will put in you into run-mode! It can be as cheesy as you like, for instance the theme tune from the film Rocky is a sure winner, but it needs to be a positive, energetic song that will help get that blood flowing. Continuously doing this will create the link in your brain that hearing that song means it will prepare the body to run... one suggestion here is perhaps not picking a song that is popular at the moment and regularly on the radio... not only will that lessen the effect but also you don't your body to start getting ready to run, e.g. sweating, breathing heavier while you're stuck driving to work in a traffic jam.

These are 4 simple tips that can help to improve your running, so give them a try, see how the work and feel free to comment with your own tips in the feedback. If you would like to work with Brain-SPEC to optimise your training and performance get in touch via the email address for more information.