Easing into exercise best bet for endurance

  • Published
  • By Capt. Justin Martin
  • 60th Surgical Operations Squadron
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  Do you feel like you have to go to the gym every day? Do you feel like you gain weight after missing one workout? Do you get sick or injured a lot? Sometimes the feeling of having to work out is more harmful than not working out. 

In addition to the confusion about the exact specifications of how to train for a given event, an additional problem is athletes often worry they might actually lose fitness during a period of reduced training. 

There is considerable debate about whether one should reduce training volume [mileage or time] while preserving training intensity during a tapering period, trim intensity while maintaining volume or simply cut back on both. 

Fortunately, scientific research can answer many of these perplexing questions. The University of Illinois at Chicago has done numerous studies on the effectiveness of tapering leading up to an important event. Their research consisted of maintaining exercise intensity, but manipulating the frequency [the number of workouts per week] and volume [the total amount of work]. As the tapering periods proceeded, the scientists discovered an amazing fact: fitness was perfectly preserved in both groups of tapering athletes for up to 15 weeks — even though frequency and total training volume were reduced by as much as 67 percent. 

A similar approach can be considered in a one-day event for an individual’s personal best 1.5 mile run. 

Fast starts for endurance events will likely never produce your best results. While this has never been proved, a logical theory is that very intense running at the beginning of a race or workout, carried out before the cardiovascular system has a chance to flood the muscles with oxygen, enhances anaerobic muscle activity enough to heighten fatigue and harm performance. 

This early fatigue has a lingering effect that persists into the later stages of an event even if the athlete slows down significantly during the race. In contrast to the fast start, a slower beginning will allow muscle cells to warm up and take huge volumes of oxygen on board before the hard work begins, this will decrease anaerobic metabolism and help to spike fatigue resisting aerobic energy production. 

Travis members are encouraged to taper appropriately leading up to an important event, cut their mileage or time and maintain intensity. This will allow their body to recover and replenish itself for a maximal effort. For best results, they should know their pace going into the event, start slightly slower and run negative splits. 

There is a time for hard workouts and the “no pain, no gain” mentality, but taking that approach too often can lead a plateau and people will never reach their true potential. 

The important thing to remember here is that easy days, recovery days or days off are just as important part of training for any event as hard training days. Just don’t do it all the time!