Originally Posted by jbaskin
Hey all,
This past month has been a bad one. My performance has been decresing week by week after coming back from a crash and it is now at an all time low. I'm convinced that its overtraining, I have most of the symptoms that are characteristic of it. My question is, if I have been feeling some of the nuances of the overtraining for around a month, what should I do to recover? I took it real easy this week, doing about 1 hour a day for 3 days keeping my heart rate down below 100 bpm. I have a race this Saturday that I'm obligated to do, but the upside is that its quite short relative to a lot of the training rides I've been doing (34 miles vs rides of upwards of 80 on the weekends, likely the same intensity). After Saturday, what should I do to go about making a quick and solid recovery? Should I back off the bike completely or continue with these hour or so rides? This has never happened to me before so I'm not quite sure what I should be doing.
Rjmh19, that's a really great post on overtraining. Thank you.
Just in case, what happened with that crash? Was it a bad crash? Were you hurt?
Many times, people come back from an accident still injured. You may want to see your doctor and get the medical clearance, and if you're still hurt, see a physical therapist for some exercises you can do to heal yourself. You can't come back 100% from an accident. You have to come back slowly and build yourself into what you were before the accident. So if it was an accident that involved an injury, you may want to step back and assess your fitness, then slowly build from where your true fitness level is with an injury back to where you were pre-accident.
If it was a crash where you are completely injured, have you considered that it may be a mental thing and not a physical thing? Seriously, the implications of the crash could be what's holding you back from performing at your previous level, and if that's the case, you'll need to find a coach who is a sports psychologist, or just a sports psychologist. They will need to help you to mentally overcome the stress of the accident so that you can get through your mental block and increase your performance to your satisfaction.
Koffee