Swimming Blogs - Chris Brunson

Coming out of retirement has taught me many things. It has taught me swimming is antiquated in the way it trains its athletes compared to other sports. It has also taught me that the last four years of my previous swimming career I suffered from over-training. While I don’t want to get into all the details of why I was over-trained and what led to that state, I do want to share a few of the tactics that I am currently using to prevent over-training.

Before getting to those tactics, I need to define two terms: overreaching and over-training. Overreaching occurs when you push your body hard for a number of days or weeks and you begin to feel run down, losing motivation to train. Over-training occurs when you push your body beyond overreaching to the point where the body cannot recover and athletic performance declines. I should note that there is no hard line defining when an athlete is over-trained, but indicators include weight-loss, increased resting heart rate, suppressed maximal heart rate, and most importantly decreased athletic performance. Overreaching and over-training is also highly individualized, meaning every athlete responds differently to training stimulus, and every athlete cannot be trained same.

In light the over-training in my past, when I came out of retirement, I wanted to find ways to prevent over-training from happening again. I want to preface everything I will say next by saying I am not a doctor nor do I have medical training. These tactics are what I currently use and feel have been successful. Without further ado, here are some suggestions to avoid over-training:

1. Remember the number one rule: you don’t get faster at practice; you get faster by recovering properly from training stimulus. The best analogy I have heard is training is like turning on a light switch, if there is no electricity the light does not go on. Correspondingly, if you train in the best program, but don’t recover properly—you won’t perform athletically. Thus, if you begin to feel like you are overreaching, maybe it is time to back off for a day or two.

2. Educate yourself about proper nutrition—how you fuel your body before, during, and after you train makes a huge difference. The best three books I have read are as follows: (a) Advanced Sports Nutrition by Dan Benardot, (b) Nutrient Timing by Ivy and Portman, (c) Sports Nutrition Guidebook by Nancy Clark.

3. Massage—if you cannot afford a professional, learn to do it yourself. Check out www.tpmassageball.com and www.thestick.net.

4. Get your sleep!! Get at least eight hours of sleep a night. Your body needs at least this many hours to fully recover from all your training.

5. Watch your Heart Rate. While heart rate monitoring is not a perfect measure of your effort, it is the best tool that can be utilized in training to gauge effort. Think of your heart rate as a speedometer. You can only drive so fast for so long. If you are trying to work on aerobic capacity, and your heart rate is 200 beats per minute—you are wasting your time. Likewise, if you are training at race pace but your heart rate is 120 beats per minute—you are wasting your time.

Well, enough of my rant. Training has been going well, I have got doubles in every day for the past three weeks. Take care, I am off to get my eight hours before two brutal sessions of training.

Peace, B