To continue training or not?

WARNING: If you're a 'CrossFitter', this article may go against your philosophy.

Whilst not particularly gifted in the realms of sprinting, I possess a large amount of determination and I can be stubborn. That sounds reasonably admirable I think, but please read on. For the majority of my time as an athlete I have been self-coached. I have written my own programmes, which were based upon the assumption that I was fully healthy, and my mentality was, if something was written on a piece of paper I was going to follow it to the letter, no matter what. I refer to this, quite arrogantly, as having too good of a work ethic.

I have worked under the misguided premise that if I outworked the naturally more talented sprinters than myself, I would close the performance gap. I have seen these better athletes skip reps, sets and sessions, and so surely, if I were to simply complete the set session for a given day, I would be one step closer. I may feel a slight pain behind the knee, or in my Achilles, but I was going to finish the session, or run to the point where I was forced to stop. Meanwhile, the more talented athletes were either not training enough to develop any pain or discomfort in the first place, or if they were, they stopped before it developed into a serious issue. Therefore, whilst I felt sorry for myself for three to six weeks, waiting for my hamstring to recover fully, they were stringing sessions (or parts of sessions) together with some consistency. Consistency of training, I’m sure many will agree, is an important factor when performance improvement is concerned. To make things worse, I may not have been able to resist the temptation after two weeks to head to the track to ‘test’ my hamstring, at which point the inevitable happened. I got re-injured and missed a further couple of weeks of sprinting. I explain to my athletes it is better to miss a rep or two at the end of a training session as opposed to several weeks of training. It’s a similar idea to that of delayed gratification.

Staying injury free can contribute significantly to performance increases.

Now whilst I may have just come across as a bitter blogger (I have now written two articles), spending my time writing because my composition of slow twitch fibres allows me to do a better job of that than sprinting, I do have a point. I should also point out here, that I am aware, whilst these athletes are more talented than me, that they do work incredibly hard, and reach intensities in training that I am unable to attain. Returning to my point though, when is the right time to call it a session? American coach, John Smith reportedly pulls his athletes out of sessions once technique begins breaking down. Not only does this mean that all training runs are done in a way that reinforces sound mechanics, it could also prevent any issues from developing that could result from poor mechanics. British sprinter, James Dasaolu explained, in an interview after the Zurich Diamond League meeting, that he does not run if he has any issues whatsoever. One of the things that has reportedly attributed to his improved performances, since he began being coached by Steve Fudge, is that he is injured less frequently. In the gym in which I lift, I was speaking with an Olympic weightlifter who was telling me about Khadzhimurat Akkaev, a successful Russian weightlifter, who at the first sign of any discomfort, would apparently end his session. More anecdotal evidence to support my argument cans from an extremely successful 400 metre runner, who once told me that he believed forced rest led to the best season of his career. He saw it as a blessing in disguise. However, would resting by choice not be more ideal?

As with most things, I think there is a balance. If any time you were to feel any type of untoward sensation whilst training, you may never get any training done! However, when I read Henk Kraijenhoff explain that keeping an athlete healthy is fifty per cent of the battle, then it makes sense to listen to your body and rest if you need to. If you were to look at this concept as a spectrum, at the one end, you would have athletes who try and train ‘no matter what’, and at the other end, you may have athletes that look for excuses not to train. I have started to learn whereabouts I am on this spectrum, and subsequently, this year I have reduced my training load by possibly twenty per cent, allowing me to train more consistently. However, I can still do a better job of applying this knowledge, so that on more occasions, I am willing to stop training before I am forced to stop. I have began to make the appropriate shift towards the middle of the spectrum, the region in which most athletes should be. The question is, from which point on the spectrum do you need to move? Do you need to be more aware that pain or discomfort are signals to rest? Or are you minimising your adaptations by not getting enough work done?