to you PT ladies

[mimitabby]

A couple of our biking buddies just came back from a 3 week trip to Spain where they spent two weeks at a bike training camp and logged over 1000 miles for the 3 weeks!

My friend was telling me they got a massage every day and the masseusse
told him at one point by massaging his legs, that he was shot and needed
to take a day off so stuff in his muscles could rebuild or regroup or something.
Way cool! I wish i knew what THAT felt like. (Not to have my leg muscles shot, but to be able to feel that with my hands)

[mimitabby]

I was wondering if you could talk about the threshold of how much exercise is good vs too much exercise that breaks down your muscles...
I hang out with a lot of people who spend a lot A LOT of time on their bikes...
and i wonder...

[Eden]

From what I understand the amount of training you do before you overtrain is personal and changable. It's easier for someone who is relatively untrained and jumps right into hard workouts to overtrain even if they are working out at levels that would seem low to someone who is already very fit.
Fatigue, irritability, muscle pain, injuries, suceptibility to illness and elevated resting hr are some of the signs you may have over trained.

[mimitabby]

and what about that ride coming up, 19 days to cross the country?
isn't THAT going to wear most human beings DOWN?

[Eden]

RAAM? That's in a whole class of its own - the traditional riders barely even sleep, sometimes they start to hallucinate. It's definitely not what I would call physically good for you.... Really if you are just looking for health benefits being super fit may actually be less healthy.

[Wahine]

Hey Mimi,

What Eden said is true. Overtraining is very individual. Some people need more recovery time between hard workouts and some can just take a little more beating.

As for how much is too much, as a rule of thumb I recommend increasing training by 15 % per week and no more. If you do more than this in one week, you can probably get away with it. If you do it chronically things will start to breakdown. That 15 % refers to intensity as well as volume. So if I'm increasing my intensity by 15 % then I should keep my volume the same.

Being able to feel with your hands how a muscle is doing isn't that hard with practice. The way I describe it to people is that a muscle that is healthy and relaxed should feel like raw meat. As the muscle experiences more of the results from stress, it begins to feel more and more cooked. If it feels like an overdone porkchop, you're in trouble.

Here's a little cut and paste from:

http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~pe/exs490web...scleRepair.htm

It explains a bit about what happens when a muscle is damaged. The part I copied is related specifically to exercise induced cellular damage. You shold note that some cellular damage is necessary during training to improve performance. If you aren't pushing beyond you current level, you will not improve. The key is to walk the line between not enough and too much.

Exercise-Induced Injury
• Exercise-induced injury comes from heavy forces, eccentric exercise, and unusual activity.
• Early studies showed elevated CK levels, indicating muscle damage
– But, plasma CK and degree of ex-induced muscle injury not well correlated
• Numerous studies to evaluate exercise-induced soreness, usually use eccentric activity
– Eccentric cycling
– Downhill walking or running
– “let-downs”
What Happens with E-I Injury?
• Actual damage to fibers – z-line streaming (see Fig. 6-19 in Lieber)
• Seen mostly in FG (Type II-x) fibers.
– Leads to supposition of fatigue properties of muscle
• Lower ability to generate ATP
• State of rigor develops (no ATP to dissociate cross bridges)
• Stiff fibers, more easily disrupted
• Inflammation process starts – leads to soreness

This might create more questions than answers. Let 'em fly. I'm on a rest week and have more time on my hands than usual.