Training had been going well for you, but recently your numbers in the weight room haven’t been going up or they are even going down. You’re feeling sluggish when trying to work on your speed and generally you don’t want to spend your time training today.
You’ve hit a plateau.
In fact you are actually overtrained. Overtraining syndrome is a real thing that faces many top athletes at the highest levels of athletics. Overtraining syndrome has many symptoms or signs, among them:
Tired, lack of energy
Mild leg soreness.
Pain in muscles and joints
Sudden drop in performance
Lack of performance gains
Inability to sleep
Decreased immunity (increased number of colds, and sore throats)
Decrease in training capacity / intensity
Loss of enthusiasm for the sport
Increased incidence of injuries.
These symptoms of overtraining syndrome are often called a training plateau and can seriously affect your performance in a negative way. For athletes overtraining can seriously take your performance down, or in many cases be the beginning of an injury.
So how do you avoid these drastic drops in training performance?
Plan Ahead
Any good training plan should include periods of rest. Athletes want to train the entire year, it is in your DNA to try to do what others won’t or can’t, but it will negatively affect your performance.
Get this guy out and start planning!
If you don’t plan ahead, you are likely to let your emotions get the best of you and hit the gym right away for your first training session after the season. Likely you are doing this before your body is ready to do so and risking hindering your training for the entire upcoming year.
So plan ahead and include at least a couple weeks of recovery right after the season. This time is especially important to let your body heal and get ready for the next season. This is the beginning of what is called a transition period and allows you to recharge. The second part of a transition period may have other activities called active rest, that can include different training styles, or exercises (just make sure you aren’t doing some activity that you are completely unaccustomed to, you could get hurt)
Plan to include a transition period after the season and you can plan for great results the entire year.
Regress your training
Regression during training means to back a movement down a level, or make it slightly easier for a short period of time to let your body recover without an interruption in training. For my athletes I regress the training every 3-4 weeks during their training cycle for 1 week. There are many ways to regress.
Both in the exercises you are doing and in the set up of a current training cycle you can have regression that will lead to PROGRESSION in the future.
For exercise selection you can do several things to regress training. Among them:
-Go from Dynamic exercise to Static exercise i.e if your core training is normally about movement, change it up to isometric holds, like planks or bridge holds.
-Weighted exercise to Bodyweight exercise i.e. change your bench presses to push ups for a week to recharge.
-Smaller base of support on the exercise to larger base of support for an exercise i.e. Go from normal squats to a split squat, making the exercise target different areas and challenge you to stabilize rather than purely on strength.
To regress an overall plan consider the following
-Decrease the volume of training during a week. That is the total pounds lifted in a week.
-Decrease intensity of training during a week. In this case don’t go up to high weights for low reps or near maximal loads.
-Decrease the number of training sessions. Instead of training 3-4 days a week, train 2 days a week.
Change your Training Focus
This goes along with the previous way to avoid overtraining but is important and needs to be said. Change up the focus of your training at different times of the year. If you focus solely on strength, or focus only on gaining more muscle mass, your body will become accustomed to the training and adapt. This will not allow you to keep making gains, getting faster, and stronger and will instead stall your training.
Focus on conditioning for 3-4 weeks, then on muscle endurance, strength, power etc. Make sure to add pieces of all these training focuses to each period of your training so that you can retain these qualities as you go forward. You don’t want to be super strong but not be able to make it through a whole game!
By changing the focus of training every 4-6 weeks you will find yourself refreshed and looking forward to the next phase of your development.
This guy might have focused a little too much on his biceps.
Foam Rolling: Cheap massage.
When trying to get stronger and faster, the body must needs to be taken care of. To make sure that athletes recover and remain healthy I have all my athletes do foam rolling and stretching in each session.
Foam rolling is essentially a form of self myofascial release or self massage where you can help to break down scar tissue and adhesions that are developed through training and being an athlete. Scar tissue and adhesions inhibit the muscle from performing at their highest levels.
Major muscle groups like the quadriceps, hamstrings, pectoralis major can be rolled but make sure to include areas like the thoracic spine, and iliotibial band where connective tissue can develop adhesions and scar tissue that needs to be broken up.
Keep in mind that this will not help overnight, but foam rolling before every training session should keep you from becoming overtrained in the future.
Get more Sleep!
This is the most important of all the tips to keep you from being overtrained. GET MORE SLEEP. It really can be that simple. During sleep your body does the majority of its recovery work. Your muscles are able to repair and get prepared for the next day’s training.
If you are getting less than 8 hours of sleep a night then you are going to hit a plateau sooner rather than later.
Plan some time off, regress your training, change your training focus and get more sleep. Follow those simple steps and you will have no problem avoiding the dreaded plateaus that can come with training to be a great athlete.
Outside of making you get more sleep, the right training program, from the right coaches will help to make sure that you do not hit plateaus or be overtrained. In Indiana, the right training program is at Force Fitness and Performance. Give us a call 812 822 0636 or email me directly at wil@beforcefit.com
The question below was posed to me on our facebook page recently (if you don’t “like” the page already, please do so here and I thought it might be valuable to talk about the answer here on the blog. So lets get down to business.
Question for all of you Olympic lifters. I have heard many times when performing a power clean that the upward jump movement should begin when the bar crosses the “Hit” zone. Where exactly is this on the thigh? I am not sure if it is where the bar lays across your quad at full arm extension or not. I want to make sure I am performing this move correctly, and also prevent injury in the future. Thanks.
-JD, Indianpolis, IN
Is this guy in the “Hit” zone?
JD asks a really great question that I think leads to more answers than he bargained for. His direct question was, where is the “Hit” zone on the thigh, but leads to an even bigger question of what is the “Hit” zone.
Lets first start with what the hit zone is. Although I have never called it the hit zone, I believe JD is referring to the 2nd pull of the clean or snatch. The 1st pull is, of course, when an athlete initiates the movement off the floor and is usually fairly slow. The 2nd pull on the other hand is much more active and should be aimed at making the bar move at a maximum velocity upwards. Weightlifters choosing to catch in a low position also have a 3rd pull where they “pull” themselves under the bar to catch in the bottom of a front squat position. Today though we are talking about power cleans and the 3rd pull is minimized when performing the power variety of cleans.
So moving on to his first question: should the 2nd pull initiate when the bar is at a point at the top of the thighs when the athlete’s arms are at full extension? And to a further extent what does this look like?
At the point JD is talking about there should be triple extension of the ankles, knees and hips propelling the athlete upwards and even leaving the ground. This is the point at which the bar is moving with its maximum velocity, but an athlete cannot wait until this point to aggressively move the bar upwards, this should actually happen much earlier.
The “Hit” zone in this case should start just above the knees, and from that point forward the athlete should be attempting to accelerate the bar to a maximum velocity until that point in which their arms are fully extended and the bar is laying across the top of their thigh. This completes the 2nd Pull. This aggressive thinking starts in the 1st pull, off the floor, but moving the bar from a stop makes bar velocity less of a factor at the very start of the lift.
Pyrros Dimas, in the video above does a tremendous job of creating constant acceleration of the bar and hitting the best triple extension positon I know of.
Many athletes make the mistake of waiting until the very top of their thigh to start aggressively pulling the bar, by this time it is too late. The bar is moving too slowly and will be too difficult to accelerate to the velocity needed.
I find though that this wait and pray approach to the Olympic lifts is often the norm for athletes that have had prior experience with the Olympic lifts. To re-teach them an aggressive pull that starts just above the knee, I have athletes start in the dead hang position just above the knee. From this stopped position they must start accelerating immediately and be aggressive from the start of this pull, there is no chance of a made lift if they wait too long.
So in summary, although I have never called it the Hit zone, I believe that it is an accurate portrayal of the aggressive and violent nature of the 2nd pull in Olympic lifting. The Hit zone though is much larger than JD suspected and should really start just above the knee and continue to full triple extension. If you or JD apply this type of thinking, I know that you will see dramatic increases in your power clean and power snatch.
I think it’s time to re-examine the way athletes train.
Athletes train all off-season long in programs designed to get them better: Jumping higher, moving faster, being stronger, but the moment their season rolls around (or pre-season, even), their focus is shifted to winning games, and performing at a higher level than the previous year.
What was this guy's training like?
If their off-season program was worth its salt then they no doubt will have no problem performing at a higher level than the previous season early in their season, but what really allows athletes to perform at a higher level than the previous season?
In general terms the following attributes should make an athlete perform at higher levels:
Greater agility: Off- Season Training programs with specific agility training in them should make this a reality
Greater speed: Again an off-season program that works on speed, and explosive strength should accomplish this
Greater strength: Overall strength as well as specific strength will improve performance.
Better conditioning: Off-season activities should also make athletes better conditioned.
Better technical skill: The athletes’ pre-season work, and early season practices will improve skill.
Resistance to injury: This is often the weak link to programs, but improved strength, flexibility and mobility generally handles this.
Could the proper training have prevented this?
Athletes, whether they know it or not, are working on all of these aspects for their entire off-season, and this carries over to the early portion of their season. What happens though when an athlete gets in-season? Typically they are required to practice everyday (increasing their workload), and train minimally and usually on some combination of bench press, squats, and possibly a power clean. This combination of lifts might represent the cream of the crop of in-season training, I recently had an athlete tell me that his in-season lifting from his coach was Bench, incline bench, tricep extension, leg press and curls.
So getting back to what makes an athlete’s performance increase, how does this new in-season training program do when it comes to the tasks at hand?
Greater agility: Practice alone does not accomplish this. In fact studies have shown that game type activities hinders agility performance (1). So Agility is going down.
Greater speed: Practice alone does not increase speed (1). Speed is going down.
Better Conditioned: Athletes in-season should remain well conditioned.
Greater strength: Strength in the lifts performed in-season may improve, but not by much
Better technical skill: Practice should handle this.
Resistance to injury: Here is the big issue. Increased workload from daily practice leads to greater numbers of injuries than anything else. The highest frequency of injuries occurs while athletes are practicing, and if an in-season injury prevention/recovery program is not in-place athletes are at a greater risk of injury (2).
All abilities gained in the off-season will decrease as the season progresses if not properly trained in-season.
The proper strength training, along with mobility and tissue quality work will go a long way to maintaining the qualities gained in the off-season.
So what does a proper in-season program look like?
Day 1.
5 Min General Warm-up
15 min of tissue quality: Foam Rolling or other myofascial release to treat dysfunction.
15 min specific mobility work or injury prevention: Hip Mobility, glute activation, ankle mobility, or proprioceptive training.
10 minutes of flexibility training or generalized stretching.
Day 2.
10 min General Warm-up
5 min tissue quality
10 min plyometric or Agility training
10 min speed training
20 min Strength training
10 min Specific Strength training
With a dedicated day to recovery and continually emphasizing abilities gained in off-season training the athlete will remain healthier and will not lose agility, speed and strength throughout the season.
References:
1. Bangsbo J. Fitness Training in Football: A Scientific Approach. Bagsvaerd, Denmark: HO Storm; 1994.
Connor with his 3 on 3 championship trophy at the 2010 Final 4.
Our athlete programs are about one thing: The Athletes! Each month we will be honoring 1 exceptional athlete as our athlete of the month and for the first award we have chosen a young athlete that is on his way to great things.
For the month of April, Connor Basye has been awarded as Force Fitness and Performance Athlete of the Month. Connor started with Force Fitness and Performance in August of 2009 and has worked diligently for the past 8 months to improve as an athlete. Working on Connor’s strength, quickness and agility all has helped Connor to take his game to the next level.
Connor understands what it takes to succeed and works hard in every session. He has developed great strength for his age in a very short amount of time. Not one to just worry about how strong he is Connor works hard on developing the best technique possible to get the most out of every training opportunity. He has unofficially been awarded Squat of the Day on too many occasions to count!
Connor never let up on his training and understands a concept that many athletes ignore: Preparation to be the best never stops! He continued to train during his basketball season this past winter and in so doing led his 7th grade Tri-North Trojan team in Points, Rebounds, Steals and Assists! He capped off his season being awarded the Trojan Award as MVP.
Connor has chosen to BE BETTER and is the Force Fitness and Performance ATHLETE OF THE MONTH for April 2010. Congratulations Connor.
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