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.

2 comments:

Jeff said...

Hey M,

I am no expert but my guess would be the 90 minute race is killing your recovery. I have heard stories about HIT trainers catching their trainees jogging and commanding them to stop immediately and WALK home.

This was discussed some in BBS where they found that the muscle mass of athletes went down during the season and there was little they could do about it. I am not sure what the best thing to do in your case. Perhaps you could post on bodybyscience.net and see if Doug McGuff has some ideas.

I think the fact that the TUL didn't drop by much is something to possibly be thankful for.

jeff

Methuselah said...

Thanks Jeff, that's a great idea. I will see what Doug has to say. This will be my last proper race for a few months now because the weather gets bad and in any case I have knee surgery coming up - so there will be a natural opportunity to take that out of the equation...