Exercising Every Day - bad idea?
Discussion
I gave up drinking a few weeks ago. I was worried about getting to sleep so I have been making an effort to exercise every day. I was doing a fair bit before anyway.
I either swim, bike, or run every day. A swim session would be 45-60 mins in the pool, either fast sets with minimal rest or longer, slightly slower sets for endurance. Bike will be 1-1.5 hours on the road or an hour on the turbo. A run will be 5k ish.
I sleep like a log and its great, but is it a bad idea to do this much? Should I ease off for a day or so or take a full break? Some days my legs feel tired and heavy.
Dont want to stop but dont want to knacker myself either.
I either swim, bike, or run every day. A swim session would be 45-60 mins in the pool, either fast sets with minimal rest or longer, slightly slower sets for endurance. Bike will be 1-1.5 hours on the road or an hour on the turbo. A run will be 5k ish.
I sleep like a log and its great, but is it a bad idea to do this much? Should I ease off for a day or so or take a full break? Some days my legs feel tired and heavy.
Dont want to stop but dont want to knacker myself either.
You're doing more or less the exact same amount I was most of last year.
A couple things will get you down. Your knees, ligaments and stuff will ache if not given time to recover. You'll be over stressing your body in so many ways but injury may not be immediately apparent. Sure there's a negative hormonal response too, but that's all too clever for me.
Second, the food bill. Be prepared to eat absolutely f*cking everything.
Oh, and if you have any weight loss goals - throw them out the window. You'll lose weight but you'll not get six pack ripped like that. Well, at least I didn't.
A couple things will get you down. Your knees, ligaments and stuff will ache if not given time to recover. You'll be over stressing your body in so many ways but injury may not be immediately apparent. Sure there's a negative hormonal response too, but that's all too clever for me.
Second, the food bill. Be prepared to eat absolutely f*cking everything.
Oh, and if you have any weight loss goals - throw them out the window. You'll lose weight but you'll not get six pack ripped like that. Well, at least I didn't.
Edited by MocMocaMoc on Thursday 23 January 20:59
Well, I stuck to a good clean diet and lost weight but never never quite managed them Brad Pitt in Fight Club abs! All the weight seemed to come off my shoulders and face Haha.
If you want to fuel yourself to put the miles in, and get fast, you need to eat. Loads.
Obviously everyone's different - I can on relate my experience!
If you want to fuel yourself to put the miles in, and get fast, you need to eat. Loads.
Obviously everyone's different - I can on relate my experience!
MocMocaMoc said:
Well, I stuck to a good clean diet and lost weight but never never quite managed them Brad Pitt in Fight Club abs! All the weight seemed to come off my shoulders and face Haha.
If you want to fuel yourself to put the miles in, and get fast, you need to eat. Loads.
Obviously everyone's different - I can on relate my experience!
I'm pretty sure his diet and training was different to yours!If you want to fuel yourself to put the miles in, and get fast, you need to eat. Loads.
Obviously everyone's different - I can on relate my experience!
ewenm said:
IIRC weren't you taking every day hard though? You can exercise daily as long as you listen to your body and have easy/recovery days when you need them.
My body said "in going to catch this fly. And this tonsillitis. And this gastroenteritis. And this sinusitis. And every single itis ever heard of."Most annoying.
Vladimir said:
ewenm said:
IIRC weren't you taking every day hard though? You can exercise daily as long as you listen to your body and have easy/recovery days when you need them.
My body said "in going to catch this fly. And this tonsillitis. And this gastroenteritis. And this sinusitis. And every single itis ever heard of."Most annoying.
944fan said:
I gave up drinking a few weeks ago. I was worried about getting to sleep so I have been making an effort to exercise every day. I was doing a fair bit before anyway.
I either swim, bike, or run every day. A swim session would be 45-60 mins in the pool, either fast sets with minimal rest or longer, slightly slower sets for endurance. Bike will be 1-1.5 hours on the road or an hour on the turbo. A run will be 5k ish.
I sleep like a log and its great, but is it a bad idea to do this much? Should I ease off for a day or so or take a full break? Some days my legs feel tired and heavy.
Dont want to stop but dont want to knacker myself either.
Yes. Look at 100% of tri training plans. They have a full day off. I either swim, bike, or run every day. A swim session would be 45-60 mins in the pool, either fast sets with minimal rest or longer, slightly slower sets for endurance. Bike will be 1-1.5 hours on the road or an hour on the turbo. A run will be 5k ish.
I sleep like a log and its great, but is it a bad idea to do this much? Should I ease off for a day or so or take a full break? Some days my legs feel tired and heavy.
Dont want to stop but dont want to knacker myself either.
In many ways recovery is *more* important than exercise. I learned that the hard way last year with two stress fractures.
Also worth thinking about your plan over the week. Shorter stuff in the week for speed, longer stuff at the weekend for endurance. And remember what African runners say when they see Euros train: the slow runs are too fast and the fast runs are too slow! Slow = embedding good form, not wasting time! Works for the pool too.
Eta: also look at periodisation. Three weeks getting slightly harder, then ease back in week 4, then ramp up again from a higher baseline, ease off, rinse and repeat.
A couple of examples from my training history (running).
Aged 23 I started working with a new coach who didn't believe in complete rest days. His reasoning was at that age I was resilient and recovered quickly. The lightest day was a slow 4 miles or so. The principles were that the hard sessions were HARD and the easy running was EASY. I set my steeplechase PB and placed well at the AAA champs that year, and I didn't get injured at all.
Now aged 37 I'm training 7 times a week but have a complete day off once a week (so obviously one double-run day in the week). I definitely don't recover as quickly now as I used to so need a day of not running to stay healthy. However, it is very rare that the "rest day" isn't active - chasing around after my young daughter, walking into town etc. I usually plan the rest day for one day of the weekend as I can then have time with my family without thinking I need to get out for a run too.
Injury prevention has many facets: Rest, recovery, good biomechanics, core strength, variation of exercise, correct kit, massage, stretching. Some of those are also good for preventing exhaustion/over-training along with a well thought out training plan that is progressive and incorporates easy/rest days.
Aged 23 I started working with a new coach who didn't believe in complete rest days. His reasoning was at that age I was resilient and recovered quickly. The lightest day was a slow 4 miles or so. The principles were that the hard sessions were HARD and the easy running was EASY. I set my steeplechase PB and placed well at the AAA champs that year, and I didn't get injured at all.
Now aged 37 I'm training 7 times a week but have a complete day off once a week (so obviously one double-run day in the week). I definitely don't recover as quickly now as I used to so need a day of not running to stay healthy. However, it is very rare that the "rest day" isn't active - chasing around after my young daughter, walking into town etc. I usually plan the rest day for one day of the weekend as I can then have time with my family without thinking I need to get out for a run too.
Injury prevention has many facets: Rest, recovery, good biomechanics, core strength, variation of exercise, correct kit, massage, stretching. Some of those are also good for preventing exhaustion/over-training along with a well thought out training plan that is progressive and incorporates easy/rest days.
Nothing wrong in training every day - just build recovery into your schedule and you'll be absolutely fine.
What you have to remember when building a plan is that you don't gain fitness whilst you're training, you gain it during recovery. Training stresses your system and subsequent recovery aids your adaptations. You've just got to balance intensity & volume and remember that greater volume doesn't necessarily mean greater fitness.
We're all different, but as a rough rule of thumb, if you're training at aerobic levels (65-75% HRmax) leave 6-8hrs until your next session, if you're training at/slightly above your anaerobic threshold leave 18-36hrs until your next session and if you have a ball breaking HRmax workout, leave 48hrs until your next session (probably not a good idea to have more than 1 of these sessions a week really).
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but if in doubt, rest - you may actually become fitter for it.
What you have to remember when building a plan is that you don't gain fitness whilst you're training, you gain it during recovery. Training stresses your system and subsequent recovery aids your adaptations. You've just got to balance intensity & volume and remember that greater volume doesn't necessarily mean greater fitness.
We're all different, but as a rough rule of thumb, if you're training at aerobic levels (65-75% HRmax) leave 6-8hrs until your next session, if you're training at/slightly above your anaerobic threshold leave 18-36hrs until your next session and if you have a ball breaking HRmax workout, leave 48hrs until your next session (probably not a good idea to have more than 1 of these sessions a week really).
I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but if in doubt, rest - you may actually become fitter for it.
ewenm said:
. . . The principles were that the hard sessions were HARD and the easy running was EASY.
I TOTALLY agree with this!What happens with most people (and me before I did a lot of reading) is that they think that EASY is too easy, so they train a bit harder in those sessions and HARD is too hard, so they back off a bit . . . so all they end up doing is training in a "moderate" zone all the time.
Junk miles.
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