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Athletes still face pressure Changing appearance at the expense of performanceAnd they push themselves to exhaustion (partly because their livelihoods depend on sports). As we work to move beyond the idea that being fit means looking a certain way or that excellence is just about enduring pain, mainstream society has adopted these unhealthy practices.
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Psychologists Dr Emma Steele and Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said cultural attitudes were also at play, by “glamorising extreme morals and a ‘no pain, no gain’ mentality”.
These effects can be exacerbated by our own insecurities, and that we will be seen by others as failures or weak if we don’t keep trying even when our bodies are telling us to stop.
We can’t learn a lot from fake experts on social media, unlike the real experts imparting knowledge on the same platforms, but we can learn a lot from the best athletes. How do we take the best and discard the dross?
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger: The Core of Truth
Overloading involves applying higher loads and stresses so that the athlete produces “supercompensation,” explains Associate Professor Milena Simic, director of the Sydney Performance Laboratory at the University of Sydney.
Alexa Towersey eventually burned out and got injured due to overtraining. Credit: Reed Wyman
This is an important part of improving performance, but it is only one element. When we forget this, it can lead to Overtraining syndrome (Excessive exercise without adequate recovery leads to persistent fatigue, depression, and poor performance, which affects Up to 30% of elite athletes) Burnout (Impact About 15% athletes) or most commonly, injuries.
In 2009, Alexa Towersey was driven by a “go hard or go home” mentality and after 18 months of training, she eventually became exhausted and injured.
The Sydney-based personal trainer, 30, discovered triathlon and set her sights on qualifying for the Half Ironman World Championships. She works all week and trains three to six hours a day. Weekends usually involve a 60km bike ride followed by a 10km run. There’s no time to recover, and because she fuels herself with caffeine and pre-workout powders, she’s so excited she can’t sleep.
She was growing increasingly tired and irritable, but she was determined to let her body do what she wanted and continued to train despite the hiccups. Three weeks before qualifying for the world championships, she broke her foot in training.
It took two years for her body to recover. Chronic fatigue and frequent injuries prevented her from training normally.
“I think we have to listen to our bodies more,” the 45-year-old said. “There’s a difference between giving up and taking a smart step back.”
Coach Dave Ridley.
Indeed, like anything in life, to get better we need to challenge ourselves and do more, says Dave Ridley, Nike Australia’s head running coach.
“But the asterisk here is more about the right ingredients,” he said: “How do you do more of the things that are beneficial and less of the things that are risky?”
Learning to tolerate pain is, to a certain extent, necessary for peak performance. Rayleigh said, But there’s a risk if we keep pushing our limits without learning when to back off or focusing on other pillars of health and fitness like nutrition, sleep, and mental health.
“I’m really interested in contrast training,” Ridley says, explaining that contrast training involves increasing intensity and load, often focusing on effort or threshold rather than set pace, and contrasting it with easy work and recovery.
“On your easy days, make it easy, fun, and social,” he said. “Challenge yourself in your own way…but the next day, and maybe the day after that, make sure you take it easy.”
Relaxing doesn’t have to mean doing nothing, Simic said.
This means focusing on different activities or strengthening exercises to support the body as the load increases and give it time to adapt.
“Sufficient recovery time between training sessions is just as important as the training itself,” she said.
Just like paying attention to how your body feels.
Professor Shona Halson, deputy director of the SPRINT Research Centre at Australian Catholic University, says the best indicator of overtraining (or undertraining) is how the subject feels:
“In elite sport we tend to try to measure subjective feelings of sleep, mood, fatigue, soreness and motivation, and look for deviations from normal responses.”
In addition to balancing challenge and recovery, the best athletes’ training also involves training their mental health.
“They have a personalized toolkit of strategies they can turn to for support when mental and physical challenges arise,” Steele and Carr-Gregg said.
“They tend to display tenacity (i.e. they are persistent and determined to achieve their goals, but are rational and realistic about how to get there); they are also experienced and learn from their mistakes, acknowledging that mistakes are part of the path to success.”
Since the injury, Lowe has cut his training volume by nearly half (a typical week consists of two high-intensity track sessions, one tempo session and two conditioning sessions), and is focusing on eating more throughout the day and getting enough sleep. He’s also focused on stretching, rolling painful areas with a ball and listening to his body more.
He was named to the Australian Olympic team earlier this year and will compete in the men’s 200m on August 6 and the men’s 4 x 100m relay on August 8 in Paris.
“Overtraining is not the only way to go,” said Law of the Waka Waka Nation. “I’m probably in the best shape I’ve ever been in my life.”
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