Mar 20 2019
About Stress and Training Load
Monday and Tuesday were long and stressful days at work. They happen, right? I work with people and I lead a group that executes complex technology development projects in the Aerospace industry. Stressful days are part of the job description.
But I am still learning (or perhaps refusing to learn my lesson) about the relationship between work related stress and training stress.
In terms of improving fitness, training “stress” is good stress. You won’t get any fitter, stronger or faster by being a couch potato. You have to get off the couch and exercise. Actually, exercising helps a lot to relax from work related stress.
Work and life related stress can be “good” stress also, in the sense that you need the stress to perform well. However, it adds nothing to improving fitness or strength.
And then there is “bad” stress. Non constructive stuff. Painful stuff. Sad stuff.
But while exercising can relieve some of the other forms of stress, in another way all the forms of stress add up. On a busy day with good work related stress, the training has to be lighter. On a bad stress day, I might as well take a day off.
Monday and Tuesday were busy days of work, mostly busy in a good way, but there were also a few projects that had issues. I cannot go into details, but “We have accidentally killed the Austrian Arch-Duke and now Austria has declared war on us” is a good way to describe one of the issues. It’s my job to solve. So that’s what I do. We are not at war any more.
And I was wise on Monday, taking a rest day (training wise).
On Tuesday, I was forcing myself to get back to training. Easy. Steady State. On the erg. After 30 minutes I bailed. Erg is boring, tedious, and you need a certain amount of concentration and motivation to do it, especially when you do it alone, in your basement.
On Tuesday, I had time for a longer lunch break weights session. Nice. Go to the gym. See some other people. Pull and push some weights. Think through some work related things during the pauses between sets. This is much more tolerable than erg training when your mind is occupied with work related stuff.
Make Note to Self.
May 18 2019
The working week (Monday to Friday)
Monday
A busy day at work and no training. I decided that recovery from an intensive weekend of racing was a good idea.
Tuesday
Weights! My personal trainer decided that I am ready for the “big exercises”. So we did only three of them:
The protocol is to start with light weights (or only the bar) as a warming up, then gradually increase the weights until I can do about 10 repeats, with stretching between each series of 10. Then weights are increased one more time to get to failure somewhere between 5 and 10 repeats. After that weights are reduced again to do a few series at 15 repeats.
For the deadlift and squat the protocol was a bit more gentle. We didn’t push to failure but stopped at the point where I was starting to fail on technique, i.e. I was starting to use the wrong muscles to just get the weights lifted.
After that we did some 10 minutes of exercising the core.
Boy, I did feel this training the next three days.
Wednesday
I have started calling our Masters eights crew together, and this time it was a success. We had 11 candidates show up, so we hit the lake with a double, a single, and an eight. The water was slightly rough and the coxswain slightly inexperienced, as the map clearly shows:
I had some data challenges. Forgot to charge my heart rate belt.
Well, it was just steady state. A pretty short workout as well, as some of our crew members were time pressed.
Thursday
More data issues. I still haven’t managed to sort my regatta bag and move some essential equipment from the regatta bag to the training bag. I have a pretty good system. A separate “rowing electronics” bag that goes into my small training bag or my big regatta bag. The problem with regattas is that they are so hectic that I become messy with where I put my gear. So rowing electronics ends up in the wrong part of my regatta bag, and then I show up on a training day to discover I have left the SpeedCoach holder at home. Sigh.
At least the OH1 heart rate arm band was charged. However, it didn’t seem to respond very well in the first 20 minutes of the workout.
The session was 4 series of 6×45″/75″ at race pace. These series are tuned to our lake length, and after doing one, I wondered if I would be able to complete the workout. In the end I manned up and just did it. It was so beautiful rowing weather that it would have been a sin to shorten the time on the water:
I gave myself some technique targets, focusing on finishing the stroke strong. I am not sure if I am fooling myself, but it looked like I was faster when I focused on that. Here are the data to prove it:
I am charting “Wash” vs “Boat Speed” for each “on” stroke. The line is my totally unscientific interpretation of the data. So a 5% pace improvement? That would be encouraging!
Friday
Another weights session. Bench press. Squats. Deadlift. And cable rows. Seventy five minutes of heavy work. I am due for a light steady state session today.
By sanderroosendaal • OTW • 0 • Tags: eight, lake, OTW, rowing, single, sprintervals, training, water, weights