Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Risk and Reward in Training

First, I want to apologize for the big gap in posts. My last two weeks have been filled with travel and athletes visiting leaving little time for writing or anything else. Things are starting to settle down now so I should be able to get back into a normal routine. (I’ve got three trips coming up in the next month including one to London.) Also, I’d like to take this opportunity to again point out that I post daily to www.twitter.com/jfriel. Here I often mention what the athletes I coach are doing in training (along with my mundane thoughts :). Now back to business…

One of the athletes I coach, Seth B., spent the last four days here training, going through physical and skill assessments, testing, getting a bike fit and just talking training philosophy and direction. He’s an analytical like me and likes to dig into the details of sport training. One of our conversations was about the risks and rewards of workouts. “Risk” refers to the potential for injury, illness, burnout and other breakdowns that may occur because a workout or a closely spaced series of similar workouts is so challenging. “Reward” has to do the benefits that may result from training.

All athletes seek to improve their fitness by increasing the stress they place on their bodies. The stress can vary from very low to very high. The lowest-stress sessions are short, slow and low-effort preceded and followed by extensive rest time. High-stress workouts are just the opposite and include either long duration (relative to what the athlete’s normal duration is), high intensity or high frequency. I gave him an example of this latter from younger and dumber days nearly 30 years ago when I would run a marathon in the morning with a friend and then come home and put in 10 more miles that afternoon. Both were slow and low-effort but long duration and high frequency made them risky. I often paid the price for such “training” back then by dealing with extended down time due to injury. That’s how I first came to understand the risk-reward curve.


Here in this diagram you can see what I’m talking about. Change the words a bit and you might make this a guide for investing in the stock market. There it’s common knowledge that stock which has a high potential for a monetary reward is associated with a high-degree of risk. The blue chip stocks, those that have a long history of consistent growth, are generally considered low risk (things have changed though recently, haven’t they?). So as the reward of investing in stock increases, the risk also increases. The opposite is also true. You could become wealthy in a short period of time, or lose it all when “gambling” with high-risk stocks. It’s essentially the same with training.

Athletes who continually experience breakdowns because they “over-invest” in high-risk training will never achieve their potential. Those who only do low-risk workouts will also never come close to their potential. Some risk is required to succeed at the highest levels. You need to control that risk to be successful.

So what is the riskiest training? First of all, running is among the riskiest sports due primarily to the orthopedic stress (“pounding”) associated with it. Runners without a long injury history are rare. Soft but firm running surfaces (trails, grass, dirt) will moderate some of the risk of running. One of the things that also makes running risky is its eccentric contractions. In such a contraction the muscle lengthens as you attempt to shorten it. Visualize a reverse arm curl in which you slowly lower a heavy weight. The calf and quads experience this with every step while running. That’s why your quads are so sore after a marathon. Essentially, the muscle is being pulled apart. On the other hand, cycling and swimming rely primarily on “concentric” contractions, meaning the muscle gets shorter as it contracts. Visualize arm curling a heavy weight from hip high to shoulder high.

Swimming is one of the lowest-risk sports. While overuse injuries certainly occur among swimmers, mostly to the shoulder, the rate of such setbacks is low compared with runners. Poor technique, paddles and drag or resistance devices increase the risk.

The same goes for cycling where the knee is the body part most commonly injured from doing too much. Risk is increased here by, first and foremost, having a poor bike setup. And probably the most common high-risk bike setups I see have the saddle too low and too far forward. Also raising the risk for cyclists is high-gear pedaling, especially on a hill and in the seated position. Inadequate gearing (meaning not enough low gears) is often associated with knee soreness and loss of training time.

Another risky but potentially rewarding activity is plyometrics, especially the kind that includes a lot of landings at the end of downward jumps. This could be jumping over objects or off of high platforms. Jumping from the floor to land on a knee-high box has a much lower risk but also a lower reward. (Read more about plyometrics
here.)

Heavy-load, low-rep weight training is also risky, but has a high potential for payoff if done correctly. Others are very high-speed sprints done much faster than is usual, hill training of any type and early season racing before fitness is well-established.

Note that I am not saying to never do moderately high-risk workouts. The key to being successful with them is to build into them gradually by starting with the lower-risk variations and gradually, over a significant amount of time, increasing the stress level. For example, with plyometrics start with upward jumps onto a platform, or low-jump-height movements such as rope jumping (which I use a lot with athletes). The key to increasing the reward while keeping risk controlled is patience. You must allow the body to adapt slowly and gradually. The more you try to force the body to adapt the greater the risk becomes.

(For more on this subject see my previous risk-reward posts
here and here.)

14 Comments:

At January 20, 2009 11:22 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Has there been an attempt to associate a training stress score (http://www.cyclingpeakssoftware.com/power411/defined.asp) to the various ranges in your graph?

 
At January 20, 2009 1:17 PM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

Anon--No, not that I'm aware of. But that still wouldn't be indicative. You'd need a relative TSS not an absolute. A pro cyclist is doing 150+ TSS/day. If I did that for an extended period of time I'd be facing a break down of some sort.

 
At January 22, 2009 12:43 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

On a similar but different risk reward, would there be any value associating a TSS to strength (weight) training. i.e. xxxTSS for 60 mins of AA (MS, ME, etc) Strength Training and tracking this in a PMC?
Thanks,
Jeff

 
At January 22, 2009 12:50 PM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

Jeff--Yes, it certainly would be beneficial to track ALL stress. One thing you learn from using WKO software is that as you become adapted to higher levels of stress the risk associated with the type of training you're doing decreases. But then so does the reward.

 
At January 23, 2009 7:05 AM , Anonymous John Post, MD said...

Joe-excellent piece. Unbridled enthusiasm in the multisport althlete results in countless visits to the doctor. I agree, that at this time of year, when athletes are planning their 2009 racing schedule-and by nature the work out plans to carry them there-as both a coach and physician I would recommend they objectively review the risk level of single and cumulative efforts. Am I, as Joe says, "Allowing the body to adjust slowly and gradually," or am I pushing at a rate to put me in sick bay? Why do you think they call them stress fractues?

 
At January 23, 2009 7:25 AM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

I might take this opportunity to point out that Dr. Post has a new sports med-related blog at www.johnpostmdsblog.blogspot.com.

 
At January 24, 2009 8:09 AM , Blogger Duffy said...

Joe --
Interesting post. I'd be interested to hear you experience with over enthusiastic athletes who don't seem to get injured, in the traditional sense, but have a tendency to run themselves into the ground year after year by taking on more than they can chew. I'm afraid to say that I've fallen into this category more often than not and as I am learning to temper my training and watching many newer athletes around me (I'm at the collegiate level) fall into the same trap.

 
At January 24, 2009 4:49 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Joe. Great post and very timely. Just returned from a punishing group ride in 32 degree temps. I'm blown. But I have been very gentle with myself to this point and I was really impressed with how that has paid off. I've sworn not to do what I did today for another couple weeks. A lot of the guys riding today do this same exact thing each weekend, and I was able to stay with them.

Part of this comes from having a lot more time on the weekends. Folks try to cram in so much ... a long ride, hard hills, sprints, etc.

Thanks for the timely reminder. I have been following the Training Bible to a "t" (except for today), and while folks have been ribbing me for going slow for hours and hours each week it seems to be working.

Cheers

John

 
At January 30, 2009 2:05 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Joe,
thanks for a brilliant article. Regarding risk and reward in training for Ironman, what duration would you recommend for long run in base periods? I have not done IM yet, last year I finished two HIM. In previous years I did 10-14 sprints and olympics per year. My run endurance is limiter, but I do not want to stress my body too much. So please how much could be optimal?
Thanks in advance, Tomas

 
At January 30, 2009 7:09 AM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

Tomas--There is a lot of individual variability on something like this that can only be learned from experience. But I've found for most athletes that 2.5-3 hours is the longest needed. I have the athletes I coach run very few, if any, 3 hour workouts.

 
At January 30, 2009 7:42 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi Joe,
thanks for the answer. I am glad to read this :-). 2,5-3hours seems reasonable and hopefully it would be enough to finish the IM.
Have a nice day, Tomas

 
At January 30, 2009 9:19 AM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

Tomas--Of course, if you are going to walk a lot in an IM marathon then you can walk a lot in a training run and go longer than 3 hours. Ultramarathoners do it all the time. Specificity.

 
At March 19, 2009 3:48 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

I just finished reading your book and have a question on "workload". First, what a breakthrough concept for me, and explains a lot of my overtraining issues! Since I don't use a power meter yet, I'm experimenting between the zone x time method vs. using the calorific burn from my H.R. monitor, which should be relative to power, right? Calorific seems more linear, while the zone method is more of a quadratic increase. Can you give me some help on which is better? Thanks, Bruce

 
At March 19, 2009 6:54 AM , Blogger Joe Friel said...

Anon--They will both show you the same trends. I'd use whichever you are most likely to record daily.

 

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