To Train, Or Not To Train?

- That is the question! An experience I recently had (along with talking about it all at length at the seminar I recently did) got me back to thinking about optimal rest between sessions, stress/recovery and indicators. The basic question is, how do you know whether you have recovered from the last session sufficiently to go and do another similar session? Here is my story from last week:


I had backed off for a few days in order to test my maxes in the squat and bench press. This session was planned for Thursday, and I did a light lower body training session on Monday and just easy aerobic capacity work Tuesday and Wednesday. However, when Thursday came around I wasn’t feeling great. My indicators were down and I was just generally tired. I decided to go and warm-up and see what happened.


During the warm-up I didn’t get the sudden surge of energy that I have experienced in the past as a result of pushing through a tired feeling (a sort of ‘blowing away the cobwebs’ approach I guess). When doing some warm-up sets in the squat even the empty bar felt too heavy and as I worked up I could tell I was way off form. I decided to shut it down and come back another day.
That night I got very little sleep and was expecting to feel even worse, however I woke up feeling great! All indicators were up too. I thought it may be too good to be true, but went to try and do my max day again. This time I was feeling good, and as I was working up the weights were not slowing down. I got to 100% of my old max, which I was expecting before the start of the session would be too heavy, and it went up easily! I then went to 105% and got that. The same happened in the bench press, in fact I only just missed a 10% improvement here.


The lesson here is that sometimes not training can be the best course of action to take in a given situation. As the Kenny Rogers song says, ‘You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run’! This is a major reason why I urge everyone to track indicators, so you have something quantifiable to judge your progress on. However, sometimes a ‘gut feeling’ can be as useful as all the indicators in the world. If everything just feels ‘off’, it’s probably not the best idea to push for a PR. You can be the best judge of your readiness, if you listen to your body. Sometimes you will try and push through, and at these times it’s helpful to have a coach to judge when you need to be pushed or held back. Charlie Francis, the great sprint coach, says he can tell when to push his athletes by listening to them warm-up. He has such an expert ear that he can hear from their footsteps what their body needs, and that message often differs from what comes out of his athletes’ mouths!


In a sport that values ‘toughness’ and ‘heart’, it is often hard to take the ‘easy’ way out and do little or nothing when it comes to training time. However, sometimes that is exactly what you need to do, and you will benefit from greater results in less time and a much lower incidence of injuries. All you have to do is listen to your body!


For more information on indicators, see ‘Why Keep A Training Diary?’