Why you’re training too hard - and yet also not hard enough

The biggest trend I’ve noticed in the past 5 years is that my patients simply haven’t been taught how to train effectively.

Perhaps you fall into this category as well?

It isn’t your fault.

The fitness industry is more inundated than ever with false experts. These days, if you have a 6-pack or a big butt and a YouTube channel/Instagram account, you’re granted ‘expert status’. While there are credible sources out there, the vast majority of what you see is people trying to sell you their ‘get _ quick’ product.

The field of physical therapy isn’t much better. While most PT’s know A TON about individual exercises, nearly all of them struggle to understand the intricacies of writing an effective training program.

As a result of this mixed messaging, it can be difficult to know what to do to accomplish your fitness goals, even if you’re in the fitness or healthcare industry.

What I’d like to do in this post is outline the science behind why your training routine could probably use a makeover.

To do that, I’ll first need you to understand how the human body reacts to exercise.

Super-compensation!

I get excited every time I get to use that term (yes, I am a nerd).

Super-compensation is the reason you wake up at 5 AM to try and get a work-out in before work. Those who do it the best get paid millions of dollars as professional athletes.

So what is it, you might ask?

Simply put, it’s the process of your body getting better. More strength, more endurance, more speed, and a lower resting/training heart rate are all a result of super-compensation.

In more depth, its the processes that occur as a direct result of your training. Your body senses the need to get faster, stronger, or bigger, depending on the kind of training you expose it to. It does that via a process known as super-compensation.

So, how do we help you achieve super-compensation, so that you can perform better?

It’s a delicate balance between training intensity and timing.

To better understand this, we’ll use a picture below:

Rest is Key (but not too much!)

Looking at the picture above, you’ll notice that directly following a training session, your fitness level declines. After enough time, your body responds by getting more fit. Eventually, this training effect goes away, and your body returns to baseline.

As you can see, time is the variable that influences recovery (and performance) the most. If we train before fully recovering, the following occurs:

By failing to wait until the right moment, your decreased fitness level compounds upon itself. Over time, continuing this habit robs you of performance, and makes fatigue and injury more likely.

Conversely, if you wait too much time before training again, then you’ll simply return to your baseline level. If you only train once per month, you’ll effectively be starting at the same place each time.

Clearly, neither of these circumstances is desired.

The Sweet Spot

Now, if you’re able to train at the exact right time, then you’ll reap the benefits of compounding interest. In the picture below, this is represented by the green line.

Continuing to string together correctly timed training sessions over time leads to big performance gains. Ultimately, this means being fitter, faster, or stronger.

Similarly, if you drink more than usual (i.e. a hard training session) from the well, it will take longer to refill. On days where you only take a few sips, you can rest peacefully knowing there will be plenty of water the following day.

Metaphors aside, how can you know you’re ready for the next training session?

It’s Gotta Be The Watch!

These days, just about everyone owns a smartwatch, Whoop strap, or Oura ring. And for good reason! These devices, and apps like Strava, give you valuable information that can answer the above question.

Whoop has even designed its interface to give you a singular score that tells you how ready your body is for its next training session.

Despite how cool this is, there are some downsides to the use of smartwatches and apps for fitness guidance. The Apple Watch provides “nudges” that remind you to be more active. Strava constantly puts you at competition against yourself (and all of your friends).

While these downsides are minor, their result is a community obsessed with “working out”, or their performance during workouts. Too often, people chase these performance markers over other more valuable markers.

And this brings us back to our original topic of why you’re training too hard, and yet not hard enough.

Working Out Is Bad?

“Getting a workout in” has become synonymous with training or exercise, yet these two are quite different.

While training has the intention of improving a specific physical quality, “working out” has the intention of being ‘effortful enough‘. If something feels too easy, it simply isn’t considered a ‘work out’.

Take walking for example. Most fit people wouldn’t consider walking to be a ‘work out’, unless it is done quickly (or long) enough to elicit a mild sweat. However, walking is an excellent training tool that builds bone density, increases resiliency, and improves recovery.

As a result of this, most people would trade the walk for a brief run, as the run feels like its “more of a work out”. After all, no one got fit from just walking, right?!

In reality, it’s often the walk that would be more beneficial for you to reach your fitness goal.

Take A Page From The Best

When we think of a professional or Olympic athlete, we inherently know that they are physically elite humans. While we realize they are more physically gifted than us, we also tend to believe that they must be ‘working out’ harder than we ever could.

In reality, these athletes spend much more time at an “easy” effort level than you do.

While their ‘easy’ training might be harder than your ‘hard’ training, they structure their entire week (and month) around a few hard sessions. In fact, elite athletes typically only push themselves once per week (twice max!).

Rather than chasing the recovery modalities that professional athletes do (i.e. TheraGun, Normatec boots, Cryotherapy, etc.), you would be better served by instead chasing their training habits.

I’m Talking to You, Runners

Contrast this to the average runner. They will typically run 3-4x per week, at roughly the same pace, for roughly the same distance. There is no consideration to the difficulty of a run, save for the weekly ‘long run’.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at your data from your last 5 runs. Did you run the same distance at the same pace 80% of the time? Did you spend most of that time at the same heart rate?

If that’s the case, you’re living in ‘no-man’s land’. This is typically where your run or training session feels like a ‘good work out’.

In reality, this means that you are training too hard to improve endurance, and too easy to improve speed. As a result, you get a ‘good work out’, but do little to move yourself toward your actual fitness goals.

Stacking weeks and months of these ‘good work outs’ means that you’re never letting your body get the training or rest that it needs to adapt. As a result, you’ll eventually run into a wall, whether it’s a failure to improve distance or pace, or an overuse injury.

Where Do You Go From Here?

So what the heck can you do? Am I just going to tell you that you’re doing it wrong?

Of course not.

My best advice to you is to ‘work out’ less, and to ‘train’ more. This means to be intentional with your exercise schedule.

Each time you want to exercise, think of what you’re trying to accomplish. Is it a big draw from the well kind of day, or a small one?

If it is a big draw day, it should feel hard. Hardly comfortable to be exact. But remember, a big draw means more time for the well to replenish. This means a minimum of 2-3 days before you take another big draw.

It also means to fill your week with small draws. These small draws should feel EASY. So easy that you feel like you leave the run or training session with a lot still in the tank. These will help you to build a strong base, and make your well even bigger.

Closing Thoughts

Having structure around your training schedule is perhaps the easiest way to implement this approach. A training journal or plan is helpful to keep you on track.

If you still don’t know how to incorporate this, or would like some guidance with your training, then consider us for help. We offer sports training, running coaching, and runner-specific training to help you achieve your fitness goals. If you’ve already suffered an injury or are seeing limited performance gains, schedule a Free Phone Consultation to see how we can help out.

And the next time your smart watch ‘nudges’ you, remember, you’re smarter than it.