Increasing volume

Sam;
Good question. Based on everything you have said above I would tend to agree that you have reached a temporary plateau in training load. Here are some suggestions to help you get through this period without having to resort to quitting your teaching job or wearing a Hazmat suit in class,

MORE MODULATION IN TRAINING LOAD: Make sure that your easy days are truly very easy. Reduce intensity but not volume there. Stay well below your AeT in long run/hikes.

CUT VOLUME 50% IN RECOVERY WEEKS: These weeks should be focused on getting recovered not on training. Be aggressive with recovery techniques. Sleep lots etc.

You can’t get away from the stress of daily life. Training close to your current load limit WILL lower your resistance to illness. If you are getting sick often then this is your body telling you that you are close to that limit.

I’m going to try to get Scott Semple to add comments here because he used to have this problem but is managing training and sickness much better than in the past. He may have some other insights.

Scott

Thanks, Scott.

Hi Sam,

I’m in a similar boat. I’m 43 and married with two school age kids. I had more volume twenty years ago, but it was much less consistent and with almost no intensity. For the past couple years, whenever our youngest son would get sick, so would I. And then I’d lose a lot of valuable fitness and training time.

Most of the credit for the changes to my training program have to go to Scott J. He’s the mastermind that put this Humpy Dumpty back together again. When we started working together last October, I thought that I had done permanent damage to myself. My race results were still okay, but each year I was tolerating less and less volume. Not good.

Here are the differences that I’ve noticed between Scott’s approach and my previous “smart like tractor” approach:

• As Scott said, modulation. There’s a ton of variety in my program now. I was pretty good about avoiding the black hole middle zones of intensity, but Scott has clued me in that the variation wasn’t extreme enough.
• Easy sessions are SUPER easy. I think of them as my “grocery list pace”. I make to-do lists in my head without thinking at all about the workout. To put a number on it, these sessions are always <80% AeT, sometimes <75% AeT, and I need an HR alarm to hold me back.
• The hard sessions are SUPER hard. And rare. And short (with reps measured in seconds). We don’t do much high-intensity work, but when we do, I have to “think I can, think I can” to get through them. It feels like I also get some kind of hormonal boost from these workouts. I feel energized right after, and often even a day or two later. When I read your post, the first thing I wondered was whether or not you’re doing any sprint work.
• Up until recently, we haven’t done any AnT work. And I think doing some now is a brief detour because I have a race at the end of the month. I suspect we’ll stop again afterward.
• My volume increases became much more conservative. Do you use Training Peaks? If you’re familiar with CTL, my ramp rate before working with Scott was about 2.8 per week, including recovery weeks. I could hold that for about three months, and then I’d get sick. With Scott, my ramp rate for the first three months was about 1.8. If you’re not familiar with CTL, no problem. The difference in loading per week was ~35% less. A huge difference. But it’s that difference that allowed me to continue to train even though bugs were coming into the house from the boys’ school.
• Look at your weekly training plan as an outline of what is NOT going to happen. I admit I was often a slave to the plan in the past, training when I should have taken some unplanned rest days. Since October, I don’t think Scott and I have had one week go exactly as planned, especially in the beginning. Scott has a great sense of what I can take now, so weekly plans are closer to the mark, but he or I almost always make changes.

Here are a few changes that I’ve made on my end:

• I hired a coach. I’ve thought about hiring a coach for years, but it took three years of mistakes (and a lot of wasted effort) for me to realize that I needed help. I know a lot of theory, but applying it to myself was tricky. It was too easy to convince myself I could take what was coming because I wanted to be able to handle it. I was fooling myself. A coach is a valuable outside view that can provide some objectivity.
• I stopped using HRV apps. I loved the idea of an app that could tell me to train or not to train, to go easy or go hard. Not having to make that decision was a relief. However, they don’t work very well. After using them for a couple years, I did a two-month, daily comparison between the recommendations of two HRV apps (Elite HRV and Ithlete) and a more manual orthostatic heart rate test (OSHR). The OSHR always reflected how I felt or warned me in advance that something wasn’t right. In contrast, both HRV apps gave me false positives, especially Ithlete.
• I started napping. I nap three to four times per week. I’d make it daily if I could. My schedule is flexible, so I admit that it’s easier for me to get naps in than most people. However, when pressed, I’ve had more than one nap in parking lots. Ear plugs and a sleep mask help. Get a mask with eye cavities. They’re much more comfortable.
• I don’t count calories. Endurance sports are obviously weight-centric, especially when they’re uphill. I’ve counted calories in the past, but I don’t think it helped much on either side, whether trying to stay lean or making sure I ate enough to fuel hard efforts. Now my mantra is “Eat healthy. Don’t be a pig. Unless it’s intense.” Now, I’m both lighter and healthier.

When I look back at the above list, I think it’s come down to two things: Scott started training me smarter, and I started recovering smarter.

Sorry for the length of this response… I tried to make it shorter (a couple times). If I can clarify anything, please let me know.

Cheers,
Scott