Greetings and welcome once again to The Next Level Newsletter. This is Volume I, Issue VI. This is the part where I say something witty, but I’m completely blank. It’s been a long week.
Lots of cool stuff going on! The completely official One Step Beyond Multisport Coaching website has gone through a couple rounds of design and is now ready for you to criticize it. :) The address is www.osbmultisport.com. My world-class art department (a college buddy) and I are working around the clock (he’s getting toasty at a wedding this weekend) to get all the bugs worked out - some links don’t work - but you can get the feel for it now.
We do hope that the website represents the growing nature of OSB Multisport and my coaching abilities. Feel free to send your friends there when they ask who your coach is. Currently, OSB is maxed out on athletes – you folks are it. If anyone asks, I do have a waiting list.
OSB athletes are doing very well with both training and racing. Greg C duly impressed Coach Marty a couple of weeks ago by negative splitting the Lakeshore Marathon…and qualifying for the Boston Marathon. We’ve got a qualifier! Great job, Greg!
Coach Marty, your humble narrator, did manage to put his money where his mouth is, taking seventh overall at the inaugural Georgia Rock-n-Roll Half Ironman (http://www.gamultisports.com). I did race to the finish line on this one, edging out 8th place by 9 seconds, and wow, did it hurt. But like I said last month, you have to give it everything you have on race day. There’s always time to chat and be nice afterwards.
Now that we are well into the racing season, I’d like to briefly address the issue of burnout. Burnout occurs when we try to do too much or go too hard. If it’s caught early, then a couple days of R&R are usually enough to rejuvenate the body and soul. However, it’s easy to overlook the early signs and continue to work, shuffle responsibilities, and overtrain ourselves into the ground.
The schedules I write for you, especially you IM folks, are fairly challenging. I do my best to ensure that they’re well balanced and allow for proper recovery. However, since I neither live near most of you nor see you on a regular basis, I can’t tell when you might need a day or two off. I’m still perfecting my art, and while my psychic skills are good, they’re not all-encompassing. As such, part of our deal is that you need to listen to your body, let me know if you think you might be overdoing it, and I am happy to offer some solutions. Communication, as they say, is key.
Now, all of you are hard workers and dedicated to your training, which makes my job easy. But I have no control over the other stressors in your life, and those, combined with challenging, time-limited schedules are the issues that usually result in temporary burnout (and could lead to overtraining syndrome if not nipped early).
Always take a holistic look at what you’re doing and what you’re trying to accomplish. Your schedules and my advice are tools to be used as guides, but you’re the ones making the final decisions. Please remember that the next time you’re looking at a 14-hour workday with a recommended double workout thrown into the mix!
It’s a given that the more you can train, the better you’ll perform, in general. But big training requires a buildup to be able to handle that workload. Overdoing it early, loading up open days to make up for missed workouts, and/or extended periods of higher volume without adequate recovery are all training schemes that defeat the purpose. Injuries, chronic fatigue, and mental exhaustion are things we want to avoid like the plague.
A few early signs of overtraining/ burnout:
- Extended muscle soreness – lasting more than a couple days
- Mental exhaustion – your body is fine, but you’re sick of this you know what
- Undue fatigue – more than a couple days in a row of being completely wiped out
Now, don’t confuse these with the good fatigue/temporary exhaustion you experience from those quality race rehearsals and challenging bricks. That’s part of the equation of specific preparedness and mental toughness.
Basically, my goal as a coach is to get you as well prepared as is realistically possible, while encouraging you to enjoy the process. In doing so I may ask you to push the boundaries of your current ability, since that’s the only way to get faster. We need to work together to make sure we don’t push too hard, too much, or too soon. But you must realize that those boundaries are what hold all of us back, and the only way to be better is to keep testing them. Therein lies both the challenge, the problem, and the solution.
Until next time!
Enjoy your sport,
Marty Gaal
www.martygaal.com
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