Illness, Recovery and Overtraining issues
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Hi Evoke,
Hope you all are well, sorry for the potentially long following question but I Have been struggling with this for quite a while now with limit results, I’m hoping for some advice from people who have worked with this for a long while.
I have been struggling with regular illnesses interrupting my training, and period’s of time where it feels like my body cannot handle even small amounts of load without reacting negatively. I then have periods where it feels like I am responding well to training for say 2-4 weeks, then I suddenly get sick or the wheels fall off a bit again. I will give some background below to what it going on.
History:
- In May 2023 I broke my neck in a trampoline accident.
- I have made a full recovery in regards to the actual injury now, but I had significant surgery to put a plate in my neck so a lot of recovery (around 6 months to 95% and 1yr ish to 100%)
- Prior to this I had been regularly exercising, running, climbing and some hiking/mountaineering but no structured training.
- Following this I had to recover with minimal exercise for around 2-3 months, then got back into running.
- I wanted something to train for, so I trained for a road marathon to run in November.
- I ran this race and was very happy with results and performance and training mostly went well
- I continued running and mountaineering with relatively high volume from December to the start of February. I had some structure but a lot less than during my running training.
- I had made 95% recovery approximately by January 2024.
- Around start of February 2024, I had a break from structured training and just climbed and did some things for fun, however I started to get sick a bit from here.
- From then until now, I have been struggling with regular illnesses and difficulty applying periods of training load in a training plan.
Issues
- Trying to increase training load, even by small amounts each week (10% or less, often 5%) works for a few weeks and then fails, I get sick or start feeling very fatigued.
- Frequent sicknesses, colds, sore throats, flu like etc.
- I have gone to the doctors a few times, they have not found anything abnormal.
- I have had a few blood tests, all normal. However, i have not had complete panels for everything, so I am not sure what I should test for if it is less common.
I am starting training for a large Mountaineering trip in start of November, I would like to be as prepared as possible for that. I think trying to be consistent with training and load over the time I have, rather than pushing and then having to take time off is the best bet, but I am struggling with finding this.
Any advice around recovery practices, tools I can use, things I can look into to test or try would be very greatly appreciated. I am at a bit of a loss for what to try from here, this is definitely my biggest issue with training and just enjoying the outdoors for that matter at the moment.
As I said, I am relatively new to structured training, and monitoring how I feel, my recovery state. I am also the personality type to push through training and very type 2 (as we all seem to be here 🙂 ) I am slightly worried I have pushed a bit into overtraining, however, my HR seems OK and HRV relatively normal, but I haven’t had a habit of checking that every day to build a baseline, I am a bit on and off with that.
Thanks very much if you read this far, appreciate any advice.
Regards,
Adam.
Adam:
Thanks for writing in and wow! A broken neck! You’re one lucky guy. Understandably, you are struggling to figure out the best path forward. What follows is my best guess. It is not medical advice.
You do not sound like an OverTraining victim however I can’t say this for sure. Continue to track your morning RHR. That is as good as, maybe better than HRV for monitoring recovery state and OTS.
Is your lifestyle contributing to the frequent illnesses? Getting enough sleep, eating well, taking Vitamins D and K2 and cutting all alcohol will all help give your immune system support. I don’t normally see folks with OTS getting sick more often.
Given your self-confessed personality type, it is quite possible that during your illnesses you get rested and well-recovered. This might cause you to come out of the gates too hard when you feel well enough to train. This might in turn cause you to overdo things and drive your immune system into the tank. Your brain remembers what it ‘should’ feel like to train at a normal load, but your body has lost that work capacity during this on-again, off-again thing you’ve had going on. Doing that a few times will keep lowering your base fitness and work capacity.
Whatever the cause, what you are doing is too much for your body right now. You need to be very gentle with yourself and very gradually add training load. Even if this means missing the mountaineering trip in November. You can’t bludgeon yourself into fitness.
I hope this helps a bit and good luck.
ScottJust another thing to consider – are you planning reduced volume weeks, and how often? Last winter I had a similar experience to yours – feeling great for a few weeks then crashing, over and over. I was using an Uphill Athlete marathon plan that had a 50% reduced week every 4th week, but by the middle of the 3rd week in each cycle I was really struggling and started skipping workouts or getting sick/run down. My takeaway was I needed to shorten the cycles, do 2 weeks where I increased the volume then 1 week of reduced/recovery. For whatever reason, the 3-1 didn’t work for me and 2-1 was what my body responded to.
Mike
“You can’t bludgeon yourself into fitness.”
I love it! 😀 Admittedly, because I catch myself trying to do so from time to time. But it has become rare and I know better now. They say you cannot grow the gras by pulling at its leaves – but .. it is tempting. 😉
@Adam: I’ll share my experience and maybe you can draw something from it. If not, that’s perfectly ok.
Each person is different but some time ago I intensively pondered how I could flee a similar cycle of overstressing and exhaustion. There is a slogan “what gets measured gets managed”. So I thought, if I put all my focus on recovery, maybe I could shift my mindset to beat yesterday in terms of recovery instead of performance.
Consequently, I did an orthostatic test every day, tracked my sleep each night, wrote a journal of my body sensations, my emotional feelings and made that the benchmark to strive for – sleep better than yesterday, feel better than yesterday, become ill less frequently, etc. Instead of climbing mountains I watched documentaries about the mountains to at least imagine how it would be to be there. I have a wildflower meadow nearby and after rainfall it smells slightly similar to that fresh air we breathe in the alpine, but it’s only a short walk away. I also found it motivating to become better and better at noticing even more subtle sensations of lingering exhaustion, because I think training that is not turned into gains via enough recovery is more or less wasted time and effort.
Over time I noticed a psychological mind shift: Instead of being proud of how hard I can push myself, I now have a much more caring relationship with my body. I wasn’t sure whether one can point a type A personality at a different target. For me it proved to be possible over the course of about a year – with several relapses, of course. However, every mistake made me a bit more competent in reading my body. In the process I figured out that currently a 1-1 cycle with a recovery week of 50% is what feels best for me. And miraculously the aerobic threshold in my drift tests started rising. 🙂
I hope it is only a matter of time until you figure out the best way to train for your body. And I hope it is a valuable journey!
All the best
Christian
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