Why am I so Tired?
Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 10:13AM 
Many successful endurance athletes are type-A personalities. They are driven to succeed. While this is necessary to some extent, too much drive and motivation can lead to disastrous training and poor performance. This is evident in the following question that I recently received. The athlete, a cyclist, understands a lot about the intricacies of training. His question uses several terms common to power-savvy cyclists and triathletes who use power meters (or GPS devices for runners). Here’s a quick reference so you can understand what he is asking in case you don’t train with power (or a GPS for running):
- CTL - Chronic Training Load: A rolling, daily average of how much training stress an athlete is managing. The more stress he/she can handle the greater their fitness. So CTL is a good proxy for “fitness.” If CTL is increasing then fitness is generally increasing also.
- FTP - Functional Threshold Power (“Pace” in running): This is how much power (pace) a rider (or runner) can maintain for an hour. It’s similar to lactate or anaerobic threshold power (pace). Increases in FTP indicate an improvement in aerobic fitness.
- 1 minute max: The highest max power (or pace) one can maintain for a minute. This is another indicator of fitness.
- Sh-t: You can probably figure this technical term out for yourself.
- WKO+: Software designed for logging and analyzing power and pace data.
Question: I’m a big fan of your blog. I’m having trouble understanding fatigue and recovery. By definition I need to experience fatigue to gain fitness, but how much fatigue should I “feel” day to day? I’ve been increasing my CTL in 3-5 week cycles resting a little more for 1 week allowing a little loss of CTL then I hit it again and increase my CTL…. The problem is that my perceived fitness and actual fitness are not getting better. I just feel tired. Heavy legs, not making gains in my FTP, I’m stagnating! My FTP is not in decline, but the numbers I’m putting out seam to require more perceived effort. My 1 minute max has been in decline, at one point I was able to maintain 550 watts for a minute, now I'm at 440 watts. The question I have is, how should I feel during training, because quite frankly I feel like "sh-t".... and I don't think I'm suppose to. The other option is that I'm just not cut out for endurance sports because I can't take the suffering. I just feel weak!
Answer: First of all, everyone is cut out to be an endurance athlete to some extent. That’s our inheritance as homo sapiens. We’re hunter-gatherers by design—slow sprinters compared with the rest of animal world, but better than the others at endurance. Some of us just got more endurance genes and opportunities than others.
What you’re experiencing is not unusual at all for highly motivated athletes. It’s common for us to always seek our limits. Since you seem to be using WKO+ (and the Performance Management Chart) I’ll give you a suggestion for that software which may help you regulate your training to avoid extreme overreaching (TrainingPeaks.com also has this functionality).
But first, some overreaching is necessary to produce improvements in fitness. You seem to understand that given your reference to fatigue being required to improve fitness. But overreaching and fatigue can be accumulated too quickly for the body to adjust and adapt to it. It functions best when the rate of overreaching is gradual. I suspect yours is overly aggressive.
The rate of overreaching (and therefore “hard training”) is probably too high when your CTL is increasing at a rate greater than 5 to 8 TSS per week.
- If your absolute CTL numbers are relatively low (let’s say, around 50 or less) then an increase of 7 or 8 in a week is probably a bit too much. Keep it lower than that.
- If your absolute CTL is higher (around 80+ we’ll say) then a weekly increase of 5 or 6 is pushing the limits. You may be able to manage such a rate of CTL increase for one week and get away with it (some can’t), but the longer you keep that going the deeper the fatigue hole you dig.
After 2 to 4 weeks of increasing your CTL by such excessive amounts you are likely to be toast. You’ll be in the early stages of the overtraining syndrome. That will be marked by symptoms like:
- relentless fatigue
- poor training performance
- lethargy
- low motivation
- bad attitude about life in general
If you keep pushing it beyond this fatigue you’re likely to experience full-blown overtraining which is similar to having a disease such as mononucleosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, or Lyme disease. It isn’t pretty. And it may take you weeks if not months to shed the overtraining symptoms.
By keeping the rate of your CTL increase below the numbers suggested above you should be able to train steadily while making fitness gains and avoiding the downsides.
It may also be that a 5-week period of training in which CTL steadily climbs is too much for you. I train most of my athletes with 2- or 3-week periods before they rest. And regardless of your usual period length, if you are overly fatigued then you should recover immediately regardless of the plan. Training plans must be flexible to be effective. Doing workouts just to satisfy the plan is doing it backwards.
Of course, there are other stressors in our lives besides training. Supporting your family, working a lot of hours, having a physically or emotionally stressful job, having lifestyle stresses such as relationship or financial difficulties, and experiencing other pressing responsibilities of life can also lead to what may be interpreted as overreaching. If this is the case then training must be reduced regardless of what your weekly rate of CTL increase may be.
Joe Friel is the author of ten books on training for endurance athletes, including the popular and best-selling Training Bible book series. He holds a masters degree in exercise science, is a USA Triathlon and USA Cycling certified Elite-level coach, and is a founder and past Chairman of the USA Triathlon National Coaching Commission. You can view training plans from Joe here. Joe is also one of the co-founders of TrainingPeaks and operates a training company called TrainingBible Coaching.
Reader Comments (6)
Joe,
you should also point out that besides training stress and other forms of stress, one should also be aware that there are some kinds of illness that are not as obvious as a flu or a cold.
I have for 6 months experienced that my fitness has slowly decreased. No obvious symptoms. Just being a bit more tired in the evenings. I finally went to the doctor and it turned out that I have a borrelia infection, probably caused by a tick-bite in the spring. After one week on medication, jogging is easier than it has been for 6 months.
If someone isn not improving their fitness even though they are exercising well, the first things to check are total stress and recovery (sleep and diet). If everything is ok and a bit of extra rest doesn't help, a medical check-up might be a good idea.
My 2c,
Borje Lindh
I find the response very interesting. I do not have the WKO+ and work mainly from with a power meter on my trainer and a Polar 720i on the road. I utilize your training philosophy and plans from the "Training bible" and have therefore a problem in understanding the numbers CTL and TSS you refer to. Can you maybe explain this in normal language ?
many thanks
I don't understand why we continue to agonize over the whole over training issue. Of course we don't want to get there, but HRV tells us if we are. Ithlete uses HRV to tell us at the start of the day what shape we're in and whether we need to take it easy or can go for it.
Overtraining, illness, even lack of sleep can affect how much training our bodies can cope with on a given day. All of these affect HRV and Ithlete measures this in 60 seconds to tell you where you stand. Problem solved.
The book "Racining and Training with a Power meter" explains it all, as does the information on TrainingPeaks.com
The concept is better explained in here than some fitness books I've read before. Thanks Joe.
Graham,
though HRV works for some people, it does not work for all. I have tried iThlete a lot, and multiple reading may differe a lot, even if they are just a minute apart. In my case, iThlete essential measures a combination of:
a) morning stress
b) blood coffeine level.
The best tool I've found so far for emasuring training stress / load is Firstbeat Athlete, which is a software that uses R-R data from a high-end Suunto or Polar watch.
There is a nother software called Firstbeat Sports that can make a recovery analysis based on 3 days of continuous R-R data (usually measured by a Suunto memory belt), but it's aprofessional SW and thus expensive.
From my point of view, the perfect mix would be a combination of Training Peaks ATP and coach for the planning with the R-R analysis of what was actually achieved using the Firstbeat technology.
The most annoying with TP, is getting my HR data into the tool, as it can not read Firstbeat Athlete data files, I need to also use the EOL'ed Suunto Training Manager and then export the data files for upload and import to TP.
But TP is an outstanding exercise planning tool as it also covers multiple types of exercise.
My 2c,
/B.