Friday, 23 October 2009

Body by Science Session 18: Maintenance amid Less Sleep, Less Food, Less Rest

Location: Woodcock Sports Centre, Aston University
Date: 23th October

18th BBS Big 5 session:


Session 19*Session 18*Session 17Session 16Session 15Session 14Session 13Session 12Session 11Session 10Session 9

Session 8Session 7Session 6Session 5Session 4Session 3Session 2Session 1

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL
Pull Down155
1551:501551:431551:451551:48155-1551:551551:511551:491502:131501:51
Seated Row1201:441201:421152:021151:561151:311102:021002:15803:08
Overhead Press60
601:39601:32601:43601:5060-601:36601:44601:48601:38601:36
Chest Press951:37951:52951:39902:01901:391001:111001:17901:28
Seated Row105
1051:301051:261051:421051:48105-1051:481051:391051:381101:291201:04
Pull Down1451:561451:461402:091352:111302:151301:561252:151102:26
Chest Press85
851:15851:24851:19851:2085-851:32 *851:1485(1:10)901:13951:03
Overhead Press601:33601:28601:37601:49601:37601:38601:4480, 700:35, 0:25
Leg Press340
3400:553401:33--3302:193301:42330-330-3301:333202:14320-
Leg Press3102:303002:012903:242802:12260-2503:02230, 2704.312002:57
Total Time
10 mins11 mins9 mins11 mins3 mins8 mins8 mins11 mins14 mins10 mins

25 mins14 mins25 mins25 mins22 mins28 mins27 mins
Rest period
7 days9 days13 days14 days (8 for legs)20 days (for legs)7 days7 days7 days7 days8 days

9 days11 days6 days8 days7 days7 days8 days
Notes
 Low sleep & low calorie week & only seven days rest. Yet no other exercise between. Leg press first rep burned me out: maybe seat position wrong.
 Running at the weekend, swimming on Tuesday and bad sleep may have eroded benefits of longer, 9-day rest. Could have done more on legs but demoralisation set in. No leg due to recent fell face and another on saturday. snagnation across the board. Fatigue from race? Rest period too long? Calorie deficit? In spite of alcoholic weekend, some good progress. Could legs have benefited from the weekend laziness? Chest is blue because it's the best time on the correct machine. Leg press only this week due to recently skipping it - but no upper body because seeking longer rest period overall. Full session next week. No leg press because recovering from race. *Chest press not on ususal machine so may have affected time. Still feel like stagnation rules. No leg press because race on Sat. Stagnation on all exercises suggests 7 days rest no enough. Or not enough calories?Finally got that 4th rep with OH press. Because the chest press was in use, did leg press before chest and chest press on a different machine. Lack of progress in pressing is mitigated by pulldown and leg success. Overhead felt better even tho TUL staticLess rest and a change in exercise order threw timings into disarray. Surprised by Overhead Press not being better

Baffling underperformance on chest and surprising improvement on legs, which may partly reflect increased intensity.Finally finding the sweet spot for leg press. Much less rest, so not surprised by overhead press suffering. Previous week's overhead press gains may have been due to slower reps. First real signs of progress now that I have stability on the weights.No leg press, hence shorter workout time. Was saving myself for fell race at the weekend.Still finding it hard to judge the right weight for leg press.Struggled to find right weight for leg press. Still finding the correct weight for all exercises.Had to change weight with overhead because misjudged it.


"TUL" = Time Under Load
Red = got worse
Blue = improved
Black = weight changed or improvement did not exceed a previous best

Post Workout Nutrition: 6 scrambled organic, fre-range eggs + chopped apple & cinnamon, 1hr 50 minutes later.

There were a few key differences this week:
  1. No exercise except walking between this session and the last.
  2. 7 days rest (had no choice, as we are flying to France early tomorrow)
  3. Alternate day fasts since Monday - this has been an especially low-calorie week.
  4. Especially poor sleep - caused, I suspect, by a combination of stress (we are moving house imminently) and possibly also by the low calories - unlike others, I find going to bed hungry is not conducive to sleep
I am marking Pull Downs, Overhead Press and Seated Row in black, in spite of the times being worse than previous bests. This is because they are, nevertheless, better than last week, so marking them in red seems inappropriate. Chest Press does deserve to be red.

Something went wrong with Leg Press - it took be about 5 seconds to get the plate moving, so I was virtually burned out from the start. I am wondering whether the angle of the back rest was not the same as usual. I recall feeling too vertical. This is the one setting I have never noted. It was on 5 today, so I will perhaps recline it further than that next time.

My next session will not be for 10 days, during which I plan to avoid intense exercise and hopefully sleep well while enjoying the relaxation of a holiday. ... Read more
Posted by Methuselah at 18:37 2 comments
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Saturday, 17 October 2009

Body by Science Session 17: Longer Rest Spoiled by Other Exercise?

Location: Woodcock Sports Centre, Aston University
Date: 16th October

17th BBS Big 5 session:


Session 18*Session 17*Session 16Session 15Session 14Session 13Session 12Session 11Session 10Session 9

Session 8Session 7Session 6Session 5Session 4Session 3Session 2Session 1

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL
Pull Down155
1551:431551:451551:48155-1551:551551:511551:491502:131501:51
Seated Row1201:441201:421152:021151:561151:311102:021002:15803:08
Overhead Press60
601:32601:43601:5060-601:36601:44601:48601:38601:36
Chest Press951:37951:52951:39902:01901:391001:111001:17901:28
Seated Row105
1051:261051:421051:48105-1051:481051:391051:381101:291201:04
Pull Down1451:561451:461402:091352:111302:151301:561252:151102:26
Chest Press85
851:24851:19851:2085-851:32 *851:1485(1:10)901:13951:03
Overhead Press601:33601:28601:37601:49601:37601:38601:4480, 700:35, 0:25
Leg Press340
3401:33--3302:193301:42330-330-3301:333202:14320-
Leg Press3102:303002:012903:242802:12260-2503:02230, 2704.312002:57
Total Time
11 mins9 mins11 mins3 mins8 mins8 mins11 mins14 mins10 mins

25 mins14 mins25 mins25 mins22 mins28 mins27 mins
Rest period
9 days13 days14 days (8 for legs)20 days (for legs)7 days7 days7 days7 days8 days

9 days11 days6 days8 days7 days7 days8 days
Notes
 Running at the weekend, swimming on Tuesday and bad sleep may have eroded benefits of longer, 9-day rest. Could have done more on legs but demoralisation set in. No leg due to recent fell face and another on saturday. snagnation across the board. Fatigue from race? Rest period too long? Calorie deficit? In spite of alcoholic weekend, some good progress. Could legs have benefited from the weekend laziness? Chest is blue because it's the best time on the correct machine. Leg press only this week due to recently skipping it - but no upper body because seeking longer rest period overall. Full session next week. No leg press because recovering from race. *Chest press not on ususal machine so may have affected time. Still feel like stagnation rules. No leg press because race on Sat. Stagnation on all exercises suggests 7 days rest no enough. Or not enough calories?Finally got that 4th rep with OH press. Because the chest press was in use, did leg press before chest and chest press on a different machine. Lack of progress in pressing is mitigated by pulldown and leg success. Overhead felt better even tho TUL staticLess rest and a change in exercise order threw timings into disarray. Surprised by Overhead Press not being better

Baffling underperformance on chest and surprising improvement on legs, which may partly reflect increased intensity.Finally finding the sweet spot for leg press. Much less rest, so not surprised by overhead press suffering. Previous week's overhead press gains may have been due to slower reps. First real signs of progress now that I have stability on the weights.No leg press, hence shorter workout time. Was saving myself for fell race at the weekend.Still finding it hard to judge the right weight for leg press.Struggled to find right weight for leg press. Still finding the correct weight for all exercises.Had to change weight with overhead because misjudged it.


"TUL" = Time Under Load
Red = got worse
Blue = improved
Black = weight changed or improvement did not exceed a previous best

Post Workout Nutrition: 6 scrambled organic, fre-range eggs + chopped pear & cinnamon, 40 minutes later.

So 9 days of rest (instead of 7) did not appear to make a difference. I did not feel well rested during this sesson and although I more or less maintained strength on Chest Press and Pull Down, Overhead Press and Seated Row regressed a little.

Leg Press was okay - I managed over 90 seconds, having upped the weight by 10lbs. I reckon I could have squeezed out another 15 seconds had I not failed on the final rep. I attribute this failure to demoralisation, since there was definately a tiny bit more under the bonnet at that point.

However, during that increased rest time I spent 2.5 hours running in the mountains (5 days before) and went for an intense swimming interval session (3 days before.) And I have been sleeping badly.

Aside from these factors, there is the underlying possibility that my currently being in calorific deficit is making it harder to make gains. If this is the case, then I must be satisfied with maintaining strength until I have reached my body fat goal, which I expect to be November.

In the meantime, I will do no exercise except walking until Friday, when I will do another full BBS workout. It will have been only 7 days rest, but holiday plans give me no option. This will still be a good test, to see whether staying away from other exercise (and hopefully getting more sleep!) makes a difference. ... Read more
Posted by Methuselah at 12:21 2 comments
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Thursday, 15 October 2009

Thank Goodness for Swimming!

Location: Woodcock Sports Centre Swimming Pool, Aston University
Date: 13th October

5 x Front crawl length, 95% effort.

15-30 seconds rest between each length; each length took 20-25 seconds.

Total time: 5 minutes

Post Workout Nutrition: Six scrambled eggs - with a plum and cinnamon, 50 minutes later

When I need to do some intense exercise but my legs need rest (after this failed fell run at the weekend) and my upper body needs rest between BBS sessions, swimming always comes to rescue.

I tried a slightly different technique today, which I have updated in the web page about front crawl. It felt faster, more natural and less hard on my triceps. ... Read more
Posted by Methuselah at 15:30 0 comments
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, 14 October 2009

The Langdale Horseshoe Fell Race - Tired Legs Cause Retirement

Location: The Lake District, UK
Date: 10th October 2009

Distance: 14 miles
Elevation: 4000 feet

Time: 1 hour hard running before withdrawal then 1:30 of jogging and swimming

Pre-race breakfast@ 8 am: Chicken and coconut
Race start: 11 am
Race abandonment: 12 pm (at this point had my race drink of egg, coconut cream and water)
Finished Running: 1.30am
Post-race meal @ 2 pm: Sardines, mixed nuts

I knew something was wrong on the first ascent of this race. In 2006 I ran it in a time of 3:14:39. This year I managed an hour before giving up.

My camera stopped working at the start, perhaps a sign that things were not destined to go to plan that day. Fortunately my running partner took some good shots along the way.

On that first ascent, the field of competitors stretched like ants up the gully leading to Stickle tarn. This is pretty steep stuff for the most part and whereas last time I recall itching to get past other competitors, this time I was struggling to keep up. My legs felt tired. This is me on the right hand side with the orange waist-pack.

Once at the top there was brief respite as we skirted the lake on flat terrain, before splashing through the river and soon restarting the upward grind to the Langdale Pikes at about 2300 feet.
Giving Up
Halfway up this, I knew the game was up. My running partner, for whom uphill is normally the hard part, was pausing to take photos and still catching up and pulling ahead. The few people still behind me were chatting breezily. Knowing the full extent of what was ahead, I decided I didn't want to finish the race. I didn't want to ask my legs to endure another 2-3 hours.

Once I had made the decision to stop, I was as relieved as I was disappointed. Fell running is an exhilarating experience when you are in good shape, but no fun when you are not.

I was obliged to continue to the first checkpoint at the top (to prevent a missing person alert), but once free from the race I slow jogged back the way I had come, taking the opportunity to stop and appreciate where I was. The scenery was truly stunning and the weather perfectly suited to showcase the majesty of the Langdale valley .
Spontaneous Wild Swim
At the lake, I decided to take a swim . There were tourists around, but I found a spot at least 50 yards from any people and stripped to my shorts. The swim lasted exactly as long as it takes to dive into some water then swim to shore in a state of cold shock.

You may recall that last month I swam across nearby Buttermere lake which is 300 feet above sea level. What a difference one month and 1000 feet make. Let's put it this way: as I quickly changed out of my shorts and into the waterproofs I was carrying, only the most powerful binoculars would have seen anything of interest.
Insufficient Recovery
My conclusion has to be that I had not fully recovered from the race the previous Sunday. Six days of rest seems like a reasonable amount in the context, say, of gym sessions, but between races, it is not a lot.

From my half marathon days I recall hearing that you should take as many post-race rest days as there were miles in the race. In the case of fell running, where altitude is a factor, a more realistic equivalent would be a day for every 7 or 8 minutes of racing.

Of course I never followed that advice - but in those days I was running many miles each week. I may have been operating in a permanent state of over-training, but at least my body had learned to recover quicker.

My current strategy is not to train routinely, but simply stay fit through regular high intensity interval training and occasional long, easy cardio. Every now and again, I do a race at full effort. This program is not well suited to promoting quick recovery, so it was probably a mistake to attempt another race a mere six days after the previous, 120-minute race.

For my training pattern, you can probably double the required rest between races, which would suggest around 30 days.
My Friend did a Half Marathon the Next Day!
It's interesting to contrast with my friend's recovery. He and I have done the same three races in recent weeks - including the one I have just dropped out of. In fact, he then went on to run the Birmingham Half Marathon the very next day. Having double booked, he decided he liked the idea of seeing if it could be done; and in any case, he likes t-shirts and medals too much to drop out of the road race ;-)

This highlights the point that you should not base your beliefs about the best way to train on the way others do. As Doug McGuff and John Little point out in Body by Science, the abilities and achievements of the best performers may reflect their ability to sustain and recover from intense training rather than necessarily their willingness to perform it.

To put it another way, world class athletes train every day... but that does not mean that if you train every day you will become a world class athlete. How many burned out amateurs lie in the wake of each success story?

Aside from his more frequent running program, I suspect my friend has excellent recovery abilities, so I must beware of trying to keep up with what he does.
Race Nutrition Mistake
I think I over-coconutted. Breakfast included half a coconut, which is a lot of coconut flesh to eat if, like with me, it can affect the bowels a little. I then included a fair bit of coconut cream in the race drink.

When you consider that the whole nutrition deal was aimed at a 3-4 hour race, it's not surprising that when I got back to the car and mechanically consumed all the sardines and nuts well beyond my hunger, an uncomfortable stomach was the result.
Wine, Pizza and Cake Frenzy
One thing my running partner consistently includes in his 'training' cycle is the consumption of vast amounts of booze and dodgy food on the day he completes a big race.

Perhaps on some subconscious level I decided this must be the one aspect of his routine I should copy because in the evening, once my stomach had recovered from the coconut and nuts, one too many wines spiralled into a pizza and cake frenzy. This was a failure I found much harder to take than the race withdrawal! ... Read more
Posted by Methuselah at 06:45 6 comments
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Friday, 9 October 2009

Body by Science Session Session 16: Unlucky 13 Days Rest

Location: Woodcock Sports Centre, Aston University
Date: 7th October

Sixteenth BBS Big 5 session:


Session 17*Session 16*Session 15Session 14Session 13Session 12Session 11Session 10Session 9

Session 8Session 7Session 6Session 5Session 4Session 3Session 2Session 1

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL

LbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTULLbsTUL
Pull Down155
1551:451551:48155-1551:551551:511551:491502:131501:51
Seated Row1201:441201:421152:021151:561151:311102:021002:15803:08
Overhead Press60
601:43601:5060-601:36601:44601:48601:38601:36
Chest Press951:37951:52951:39902:01901:391001:111001:17901:28
Seated Row105
1051:421051:48105-1051:481051:391051:381101:291201:04
Pull Down1451:561451:461402:091352:111302:151301:561252:151102:26
Chest Press85
851:19851:2085-851:32 *851:1485(1:10)901:13951:03
Overhead Press601:33601:28601:37601:49601:37601:38601:4480, 700:35, 0:25
Leg Press340
330-3302:193301:42330-330-3301:333202:14320-
Leg Press3102:303002:012903:242802:12260-2503:02230, 2704.312002:57
Total Time
9 mins11 mins3 mins8 mins8 mins11 mins14 mins10 mins

25 mins14 mins25 mins25 mins22 mins28 mins27 mins
Rest period
13 days14 days (8 for legs)20 days (for legs)7 days7 days7 days7 days8 days

9 days11 days6 days8 days7 days7 days8 days
Notes
 No leg due to recent fell face and another on saturday. snagnation across the board. Fatigue from race? Rest period too long? Calorie deficit? In spite of alcoholic weekend, some good progress. Could legs have benefited from the weekend laziness? Chest is blue because it's the best time on the correct machine. Leg press only this week due to recently skipping it - but no upper body because seeking longer rest period overall. Full session next week. No leg press because recovering from race. *Chest press not on ususal machine so may have affected time. Still feel like stagnation rules. No leg press because race on Sat. Stagnation on all exercises suggests 7 days rest no enough. Or not enough calories?Finally got that 4th rep with OH press. Because the chest press was in use, did leg press before chest and chest press on a different machine. Lack of progress in pressing is mitigated by pulldown and leg success. Overhead felt better even tho TUL staticLess rest and a change in exercise order threw timings into disarray. Surprised by Overhead Press not being better

Baffling underperformance on chest and surprising improvement on legs, which may partly reflect increased intensity.Finally finding the sweet spot for leg press. Much less rest, so not surprised by overhead press suffering. Previous week's overhead press gains may have been due to slower reps. First real signs of progress now that I have stability on the weights.No leg press, hence shorter workout time. Was saving myself for fell race at the weekend.Still finding it hard to judge the right weight for leg press.Struggled to find right weight for leg press. Still finding the correct weight for all exercises.Had to change weight with overhead because misjudged it.

"TUL" = Time Under Load
Red = got worse
Blue = improved
Black = weight changed or improvement did not exceed a previous best

Post Workout Nutrition: Primal/Paleo Breakfast of Champion - with mandarin and cinnamon (recipe here), 25 minutes later.

Thirteen days after Session 15 I scored a full set of reds on upper body. I didn't do legs because of the demanding fell run on Sunday and an even more demanding one planned for 3 days after this session.

The red looks pretty bad - but in each case, the regression was by less than 10 seconds, so this amounts to standing still.

I have two working hypotheses.

First, 13 days may be too much rest. I said I would try 9-10 days rest for a while, but this time circumstances dictated I had to wait 13 days.

Second, it may have been the impact of the 90-minute race three days earlier. Those mountain races really knock you sideways. Clearly my upper body muscles would not have been significantly used during the race, but as discussed in my post about a previous race, some lean muscle mass gets used up during endurance events, which I presume could be from any part of the body.

Should I just be grateful I am retaining strength under these circumstances?

Session 17 is planned for 9 days after this one and 5 days after my next fell race. So we'll get a chance to evaluate the reduced rest time under similar circumstances.

As ever, there is the posibility that operating in calorific deficit may be a factor; but for now I will remain in deficit until I reach my goal of 11% fat, during which time I will try to make the rest period the only variable that changes. ... Read more
Posted by Methuselah at 06:40 2 comments
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