Offseason Training, Don't Waste Your Base (1 of 2)

By: John Hobbs, MEd. Senior Consultant            

The off-season doesn't exist to many racers on structured training plans.  It’s a period to race cyclo-cross and/or recover for a short bit before prepping for the next season’s races.  This period can also be tremendously beneficial in gaining fitness.  However, the elements are against most racers with cold weather, snow and ice, and jobs and families to get back to.  Couple this with flawed anecdotal training, and valuable saddle time is wasted.

Staying fit in the off-season with CX is becoming more popular

            As stated in previous articles, and likely your coach, a primary goal of this period is to ensure athletes are recovered.  This means from injuries, training, as well as psychologically.  In the same way this early training can help build an athlete, it can also contribute to failure if these recovery demands are not met.

            The term “base training” is usually applied to this early season work.  Professional cyclists usually throw this around as the emphasis of early saddle time. The concept often encompasses long rides of low intensity.  But, there are several faults with this thought process, especially when applied to amateur athletes with regular jobs and life demands.

            Principals of training include intensity, frequency, and duration of training.  This combination must  involve some form of overload  in order to see adaptations leading to improvement.  In the stereotypical base training, the athlete achieves this overload through a high amount of volume with low intensity.  This can be effective if the athlete is able to train sufficiently.  But the reality is that most athletes are not able to make the commitment to this quantity of saddle time and end up riding slow and short rather than the slow and long that is required to provide sufficient volume.  And as an athlete, the maximum must be gained for the time available for training.  So, an overload must be provided by altering some other aspect of training—intensity.

Most athletes make a daily transformation from  suits...

            

At first glance, several legitimate question arise regarding this principal.  These regard specificity of training to the competitive events and the periodization format that drives structured training.   Under the periodization structure, training starts with a higher volume and lower intensity and adjusts with more intensity and lower volume as competition nears.  Additionally, most cycling races involve hours of saddle time come race day.  So, it would seem natural that a block of high volume, low intensity training would fit the bill.  But, the amount of time required to provide an overload is not practical for most individuals.  The value of longer rides and adaptations that can occur with high mileage  can not be negated, especially when you’re looking at a three or four hour race.  As a result, these adaptations need to be sought in a more practical means.

From suits to kits on a daily basis. 

            Its been documented in several studies that many of the adaptations that occur at low-intensity exercises occur more rapidly at higher intensities with less training time.  With this in mind, athletes could justify swinging to the other side of the spectrum and do hard, short workouts.  And, that’s exactly what some do in the winter driving home VO2 max type workouts on the indoor trainer.  But, this approach isn’t necessarily effective either.  While increased intensity can provide an overload in less time, all training adaptations are not the same.  With the present emphasis on HIIT (high intensity interval training), this concept is lost when gross generalizations on performance are made similar to a political candidate saying “Americans will have lower taxes.”     

Sports’ secret weapon: sleep. By: Michael J. Breus, PhD

The search for performance enhancement leads some athletes to turn some pretty dark corners. It’s a shame, and not just because doping is dangerous, unethical, and frequently illegal. It’s also a shame because athletes at all levels of play have access to a powerful tool to improve their performance, one that won’t break any laws or put anyone’s health at risk.   

What’s this wonder drug? Sleep.  

There’s been a welcome up tick in the attention paid by the media and athletic professionals to the benefits of sleep for competitive athletes, and to the research that shows just how sleep can improve physical performance in sport. This season, the NY Jets brought sleep specialists into the locker room, signaling their intention to use sleep as part of their training strategy. At the other end of the spectrum, I was disappointed toread that Manchester United is addressing its players sleep issues by issuing sleeping pills. This strategy—and the coach’s seemingly cavalier attitude toward medicating players for sleep—is not what I recommend when I suggest that athletes and coaches pay more attention to
sleep.  

In recent years, Stanford University’s Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine has been at the leading edge of examining the sleep-sport performance connection. Researchers there have conducted studies with several groups of Stanford student-athletes, examining the effects of extended sleep on athletic performance. Here’s a sampling of their results, which show improvements across a variety of sports:

Swimming: Five members of the Stanford men’s and women’s swimming teams increased their sleep goal to 10 hours per night for a period of 6-7 weeks. This led to improvements in speed, reaction time, turn times and kick strokes. Swimmers shaved an average of .51 seconds off a 15-meter sprint, they left the blocks .15 seconds faster, shaved .10 seconds off their average turn time, and added an average of 5 kicks to their stroke frequency. Out of the water, swimmers reported reductions in their levels of daytime sleepiness, improvements to their mood, more energy and less fatigue.

Tennis: Researchers asked five members of the women’s tennis team to increase their sleep goal to 10 hours per night for 5-6 weeks. Players improved their sprint times, dropping from an average of 19.12 to 17.56 seconds. They also increased their serve accuracy, going from an average of 12.6 valid serves to 15.61.

Football: Seven players on the Stanford football team spent 7-8 weeks attempting to sleep for 10 hours per night. Their extended sleep resulted in improvements to their 20-yard shuttle—average time decreased to 4.61 seconds from 4.71—and to their 40-yard dash, which dropped to an average of 4.89 from 4.99 seconds. (Both the shuttle and the dash are among the drills conducted at the NFL Scouting Combine.) Players also reported improvements to their daytime energy levels and mood, and reduced daytime fatigue.  

Basketball: For 5-7 weeks, 11 members of the university’s basketball team extended their nightly sleep to 10 hours. As a result, shooting accuracy among the players improved significantly: Free throw shooting improved 9%, and three point shooting 9.2%.

Sensing a pattern? Extending sleep times translated into significant improvements to critical game-day skills. Worth noting: not all athletes across these studies actually slept for 10 hours per night, but attempting to sleep for 10 hours per night got them additional sleep compared to their regular routine. According to researchers, many of these athletes came to their sleep-sport studies already sleep deprived.

And that gets to the flipside of the advantages that additional sleep can give to athletes. Sleep deficiency can inhibit performance. Research shows lack of sleep can also affect the longevity of players’ careers. Two recent studies investigated the relationship between sleep and career duration and stability among NFL players and MLB players. The NFL study looked at 55 players from across the league. Those who reported higher levels of daytime sleepiness were less likely to remain with the team that drafted them than those players who reported lower levels of daytime tiredness. And MLB players who reported higher levels of daytime tiredness had attrition rates far higher than league averages.

There’s also evidence that sleep can increase the risk of injury among athletes. In this study of teenage student-athletes, those who slept at least eight hours per night were 68 percent less likely to injure themselves playing sports than those who slept less than eight hours nightly. Researchers examined the sleep patterns and sports-related injuries of 112 male and female athletes from grades 7-12. They discovered that sleep and age were the most significant factors in assessing injury risk. (In addition to being more injury-prone when short on sleep, students were also more likely to injure themselves as they moved to higher grade levels.)

So what’s behind the performance boost from sleep?  

The cognitive benefits of sleep translate onto the field. Memory, learning, reaction time and focus: sleep is critical to the brain’s ability to perform these mental tasks efficiently and well. The brain uses sleep toconsolidate memory into longer-term knowledge, clearing the area of the brain used for short-term memory in preparation to absorb new information. During sleep, the brain also works to prioritize the information it thinks will be important in the future. Sleep deprivation has well-studied negative effects on reaction times—and even a single night of sleep deprivation can slow quick  response times.

Sleep promotes muscle recovery. Sleep is a critical time for cell regeneration and repair in the body. During non-REM stages of sleep, cell division and regeneration actually becomes more active than during waking hours. Insufficient sleep, on the other hand, hinders muscle recovery.

Sleep is a stress reducer. Sleep and stress have a tangled relationship—and both are dangerous to healthy immune function when we don’t get enough (sleep), or have too much (stress). Stress can interfere with sleep—this study ranked worry as the most common cause of sleeplessness among adults 34-79. But lack of sleep can also affect mood, and make us more susceptible to stress and anxiety.

Is sleep the next big thing in sports? I’d say it’s more than earned its shot in the big show. 

Sweet Dreams,

Michael J. Breus, PhD