Too much or too little?

One of the most important questions that athletes have is whether they are doing too much or too little training. That is a big question to answer, but here I share some thoughts you might find interesting.

Generally, athletes are highly motivated, and therefore have a tendency to do too much training. For example, many years ago a study was conducted with high-level swimmers. One group had their training load halved compared to the comparitor group for a large portion of the season. However, they performed at least equally as well as the comparitor group. This was a landmark study which stimulated much debate about more intelligent training loads.

One of the problems in this area is that there are actually few studies on training load and the outcomes, and those studies show huge inter-individual differences. To get around this problem, some experts have taken a different approach, and have examined the training loads of successful athletes, and explored whether there are any general findings. This is a practical alternative to the traditional 'experimental' approach which we have realised has major short-comings.

These contemporary investigations have revealed some surprising findings. Successful endurance athletes tend to do a high proportion of lower intensity training, and a small proportion of high intensity training. They tend to largely omit training intensities in the middle or the moderate intensities. So that is the observed pattern. The question, then, is why that is so effective, and slightly counter to traditional approaches which were based on a lot of training at the moderate intensities.

Firstly, the mechanisms of adaptation are known to be similar for the low and moderate intensity training. However, the moderate intensities are known to be very fatiguing, and so avoiding those leads to similar adaptations without such a fatiguing effect. Secondly, the fatiguing effect, over prolonged periods, is known to be a precursor to overtraining syndrome, which must be avoided at all costs.

In summary, it is therefore important to be getting the right balance of types (intensities) of training to avoid problems with overtraining. Also, there has traditionally been a tendency to do too much rather than too little, and doing too much is mitigated to some degree if the balance of intensities is carefully considered.

Let us know your thoughts on this important topic.