OVERTRAINING AND CYCLING OF WORKOUTS

Report #6452 3/3/95

If your training program causes you to be injured frequently, do what competitive athletes do. They prevent injuries by following a few weeks of hard training with a few weeks of easy workouts.

Training for competitive sports is done by stressing your body with a hard workout which makes your muscles feel sore afterward. If you try to take a hard workout when your muscles still feel sore from a previous workout, you can expect to be injured. So, for a day or two after a hard workout, competitive athletes take easy workouts until the soreness goes away. Then they take another hard workout. Runners run very fast interval workouts, for example, a quarter mile at near maximum speed,/ rest /and repeat these very fast runs 12 to 16 times. On their next workouts, they run slowly until the soreness is gone. So a competitive runner runs fast only 2 or 3 times a week. However, after a few weeks of running very fast, their muscles start to feel tight and heavy/ for more than 2 days after a hard workout. That's a signal that their muscles are frayed and running out of their stored sugar supply and that they have to run slowly for the next week or two. Most intelligent runners cycle their workouts. They run very fast twice a week for two or three consecutive weeks and when their legs start to feel heavy, they run more slowly for a week or two. You should do the same.

Try to exercise more intensely once or twice a week, never on consecutive days and then when you legs start to feel heavy, stop running fast until they feel fresh again.

By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News