Relax? Do I Have To?

Why is it so hard to rest? In a society where 90% of the people are overweight and underactive I find it hard to bring myself to actually relax. (90% is not actual data, it's my way of saying "most" with emphasis)... In the last 3 months I've had 17 cyclocross races, in the last 6 weeks I've had a total of 3 days off the bike, I've been trail running and doing strength and conditioning work 2 or 3 times a week never mind the unintentional workouts I get on a daily basis from just running 4-6 sessions a day at my gym. I have literally beat the living shit out of my body, waking up on the Monday mornings after double race weekends feeling like I got hit by a truck, sick to my stomach from the race efforts, nursing injuries that haven't had time to heal. Contusions on both hips, forearms and elbows, a separated shoulder, a sprained thumb, a hypothermic episode in the NBX race that has left me unable to make a fist without pain. So after my last race of the season this past weekend it was officially time to rest. It was even built into my training schedule that my coach gave me. For 8 days in a row my training plan says "Complete Day Off From Training". I was really excited to actually spend some time off the bike. The cross season was intense and brutal and incredibly enjoyable. But I was sooo ready for a break from the bike. Sunday I did nothing. I picked out a Christmas tree with my daughter. No training, no watching what I eat, no guilt about it. Monday came and I felt lost. Kind of depressed. The race season is over. Now what? I'm not even supposed to train this week. I felt like shit. I ran my sessions at the gym from 6a-10 and after the last people left for the day I figured I needed to workout. Nothing major, it was my rest week after all. Figured maybe I'd do some easy jump rope for a little bit just to get the blood going and clear the head. It just kind of escalated from there and 25 minutes later I had done 1500 turns on the jump rope finishing off with 100 double unders, 200 Hindu Squats, a bunch of sets of pullups on ropes and some core work on the power wheel. So much for resting. Tuesday I relaxed, it was rest week after all. Wednesday I was a bit stressed out and needed a release so I joined in a killer workout at the gym with kettlebell front squats and long sets of kettlebell swings. I haven't done squats in many months since I limit my leg work to the bike during race season and I haven't done any kind of kettlebell swings since before I separated my shoulder. So this workout torched me pretty good. Not too smart for rest week. Thursday, I was pretty stiff and sore from Wednesdays session so I went out in the sub-freezing windchill for a 45 minute trail run in the snow to "loosen up". I got home and emailed my coach to let him know that I have failed on resting this week, but I stayed off the bike, and I kept my intensity really low (which was 90% true, well maybe 70% :).... Kurt was on the phone within about 10 minutes tearing me a new butthole for not taking it easy... And I knew it was coming, because I know how important rest is. So I ask again, why is it so hard to rest?

This is me on my trail run in the snow the other day. While it may look effortless, it was the opposite of what I should have been doing which was resting.

Here's why. For those of us who take care of ourselves and get ourselves in truly good shape, we know how hard it is to get there and we know how hard it is to stay there. I spent years abusing my body with poor nutrition marinated in bourbon and beer. I was a fucking mess. I know how hard it was to get where I am today. There's something inside my head that tells me to drive, drive, DRIVE! Relax? Are you kidding me? My head tells me that if I take a week off I'll lose all kinds of fitness. I'll also lose the stress-relieving benefits of a kick ass workout which has become my coping mechanism. So all the work I've done that has gotten me to the point where I'm at today can be undone with a week of inactivity? I know how stupid that sounds. But it's the mentality. If it's good for you to do it, then stopping must be bad, right? Wrong...

Without getting scientific, because I'm not qualified or smart enough to get scientific, I'm going to put this in terms that even I can understand. First, the perception is that the workout makes you stronger. The fact is that the workout destroys your body. Why do you think a tough workout makes you so sore? It's because you've damaged your muscles. Think about it, are you ever stronger at the end of a workout than you were at the beginning? Of course not, you're beat up and tired (but in a good way if you did it right)... The recovery period after the workout is what makes you stronger. When you work your muscles hard, your body perceives this as an attempt to kill it. Due to the magic of self-preservation, the body adapts to the demands you're putting on it by making itself stronger so that next time you do it it doesn't hurt so much. This is also known as the SAID principle, Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands. Look at it this way. Let's say you work in an office 40 hours a week, eat doughnuts and wash them down with chocolate milk, go out for pizza and subs every day for lunch. You're a load. Then one day you get abducted by a group of flannel clad lumberjacks from Maine and they bring you to their logging camp for hard labor. The first day you're swinging an ax until your arms are ready to fall off and your back feels like you just piggybacked a gorilla up Mt Washington. You get up the next morning and you're in so much pain your fat hurts. But the lumberjacks will have none of your incessant whining, man-tears, or begging and they put you right back to work. The first 4 or 5 days are the most miserable days of your existence. But as the days go by, the pain subsides. You start feeling pretty good actually. You're producing 3x as much work in 1/3 the time compared to when you first got there. Damn, you're getting lean, you're getting strong. You're a beast! The lumberjacks present you with your own flannel. How did this happen? Your body adapted to the demands you put on it. It made itself stronger so that every time you go out to chop down trees all day it's not a near death experience.

Belonging

Works the same with exercise. You crush your body with hard, intense workout sessions, whether they are at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, on your bike, skis, on foot running hill sprints, it doesn't matter. You damage your body. Then you rest and your body rebuilds. It gets stronger. Then you do it again. If you take the rest out of the equation, then your body can't rebuild. It can take the abuse for a certain amount of time and you can continue to make gains for a while, but eventually if you don't give your body the proper amount of rest it requires to adapt to the demands you're putting on it then you will stop making gains. You plateau. Then if you keep doing it you start taking steps backwards. Your workouts start to suck. You feel like shit. You get sick. Your tired all the time. This is your body saying "Hey asshole! Enough already. If you're not going to shut it down I'm going to do it for you.". This is overtraining. Most of us never get to this point because most people don't actually work hard enough, long enough to get to that point. But there are many that definitely get into the "over-reaching" stage which is where you hit plateaus and feel an overall sense of fatigue and inability get effective workouts. You have to listen to your body. If it's telling you it needs a rest then give it a rest.

This guy has it right, with the glaring exception of the 80's porn-star moustache.

Ok, let's recap, it's not the workout that makes you stronger, it's the post-workout recovery period. I'm just getting off an intense racing season and my body needs some time to recover, so that I can get stronger. That means I need to do nothing. No running, no biking, no kettlebell workouts. In fact, if somebody drops a heavy kettlebell on their face doing turkish getups at the gym I'm not even going to help them get it off because, well, I'm selfish and my recovery is more important than their looks. Sorry. If you don't like it, don't drop a kettlebell on your face.