I get your logic, but disagree on a technicality for the exact reasons you identify.
You can ‘train too hard’ for the amount of fatigue & stress your ‘life’ has already accumulated. The two are directly related.
6 Likes
It depends what the definition of ‘too hard’ is? Too many hours per week? Or going too hard/into the red on the hard sessions?
If hours, I disagree. I’ve recently cut back my training hours/sessions, put more specificity in and have seen more gains (both physically and aesthetically) and improvements than I have done previously, when I’ve been doing more. But alot of people find that hard to understand. To be able to train effectively with those kinds of hours is a fine balance IMO. Maybe if its just all endurance work you might get away with it. But blending strength work into that, stressing your CNS to near max etc.
Again going from naff all to 20 hours per week. Maybe all if its all SBR its doable. 4 hours on the bike is relatively low stress on the body. Sure you can build a pretty decent engine doing loads of hours at low ish intensity but it will come to a point where you need to go above this to make further improvements.
I’ve now personally witnessed a few people over the years training too much/too hard and making more improvements from doing less. Proper recovery time is vital even if its not sexy. And all of us fitness nuts hate sitting still so find it hard!
4 Likes
I disagree
My one and only full distance race probably got everything out of me, I wasn’t undertrained or overcooked.
I’d done probably my best race ever ( 70.3) 6 weeks out, it was a crap time, but I was 50, it was a very difficult bike course ( legendary now!) and I lost big time on fast technical descents.
My marathon pb and recent hyrox effort i would 100% agree with you.
1 Like
Alan must read TT, perfectly timed
2 Likes
That’s well remembered, it was Paul Newsome who spotted it and said to stop and recover.
Looking back it was an accumulation of events that bought it about, I only ever did triathlon as a distraction from other issues which was on top of a physical job and trying to renovate a house.
The problems would randomly pop up, some weeks everything would be fine, other weeks I couldn’t run more than a mile before needing to stop and rest. I’d spend ages asleep, be really ratty and a PITA to live and work with. But then I’d recover enough to do a big session so I’d convince myself everything was fine.
For me, I actually needed someone to tell me it’s all too much and to prioritise what’s going on. Then to tell me again triathlon shouldn’t appear on that list for the time being and to stop.
Once I’d stopped there was a highly emotional phase (moreso than usual) but then happiness and feeling loads better. Luckily I’d pulled out of IMNZ but still went on the holiday and a month in NZ gave me time to evaluate life. The lesson I took is you can’t run away from your issues, annoyingly, they catch you up.
11 Likes
From the examples, I took this to mean that you can’t overdo it on any one session.
2 Likes
What is being defined as too hard?
Too hard that you get an overuse injury? Very individual, could be very little actual volume just an unusual stress. I could probably get an overuse injury from doing 50 press-ups a day.
Too hard to get serious over-training fatigue? I would say harder for most to achieve from training alone, but add in other life stress and too much training can tip you over the edge. And takes a long time to fully recover.
Too hard to do the hard sessions properly? This is the easy one. Too much grey, not enough white and the black sessions aren’t black enough. Hurts ultimate performance, but isn’t going to damage you.
6 Likes
See 
Training is generally the straw that breaks the camels back for most 
And over use injuries from 8-15hrs per week?
Give over 
That’s the mind telling the body it’s time for a rest.
The mind then manifests “an issue” in the body to force you to stop.
3 Likes
From a cycling perspective, it gets everything. As I’ve said, swim and run is definitely a work in progress and I’ve not put too much attention in those bits.
They’ve tried to capture this for some time. But it’s basic. You answer a survey question before every structured indoor session about how you’re feeling before each session and motivation. It’s a simple scale. You then answer two questions after you’ve finished. How hard you felt the session was, and if you failed it you get a second question to try and explain why you failed.
They’ve addressed some of the questions about the simplicity of the survey questions on their podcast, but that it apparently gives them “enough” to go off and tailor things slightly. But clearly it’s never going to be as good to daily qualitative interaction between athlete and coach
2 Likes
how do you fail a session?
2 Likes
In the structured workout, not doing the session as prescribed. So dialling back the intensity, skipping an interval, finishing early, etc. You have a range of “answers” that can indicate a negative or otherwise impact.
So you can say it was due to any of poor sleep, or nutrition, or general stress. Maybe just that the intensity was too high and you were never going to complete it. But also give neutral answers like “lack of time” meaning you could have finished, but you just had to end the session early for some reason
3 Likes
I always knew I was running away. The surprise is how good an athlete your inner self is!
4 Likes
it is an interesting choice of word, “fail”…
3 Likes
so it basically changes a schedule based on feedback? That sounds much more reasonable and not too difficult to do programmatically. Its certainly not AI in the true sense just lots of “IF” and “case” statements picking different pre programmed workouts with your own targets attached based on FTP etc. You could actually be more clever and change different segments of a workout to make it look different (ie have different WU protocols and randomly pick)
That is very different to what Joe and you suggested (maybe just my interpretation of what was said )
2 Likes
My language. I imagine theirs is “incomplete” or something like that
2 Likes
They have been very clear it’s based on ML, so I would assume it’s a combination of all of what you’ve said, plus some big data type stuff. But in all honesty, this is not my area of expertise so I might be screwing up the correct terminology.
When they released “adaptive training” they went into some depth on it. So did DCR and his background was IT I think so probably puts it in better words!
ETA - this is the first DCR article about the broader overhaul. It’s evolved a lot since then but I still use TrainNow quite a bit to select ad hoc sessions, given I’m not really in structured training at the moment
2 Likes
I’ve looked into this myself. During LD1 @explorerJC and I had a very brief flirt with putting a new idea together. It was way too much work for one dev though so past some basic stuff it never got off the ground. Like any idea, it can be made good for self use (i have written numerous little tools for myself) but to make it genuinely marketable and eventually profitable it needs to be professional and beyond reproach and not a dev in the world can do that alone with other commitments.
True ML / AI would be very difficult without extensive datasets built up over years with a way to quantify success by results. Subjective measures are good but it also needs absolutes. (remote coaching is all about subjective measures though “how do you feel” “what do you think you could improve on next week” “is there any way you think you could approach this session better”, local I can see what is going on and adapt on the fly. @explorerJC will tell you, you have a good plan, then an athlete shows up, you can see it in their body language and general mannerisms, or in their eyes if they are ready or not; no plan survives first contact 
I’m fascinated by the way this could go eventually (Im even considering doing a masters in AI next year) , it would never replace a decent coach but really could be a great tool to aid coaches and help the hobby athlete also. As I touched on above, most athletes just need to get the 95% correct though and a generic plan with a bit of self awareness would work for the vast majority anyway so is it all a bit much!
2 Likes
Saw a quote once, wish I could remember it, but it was along the lines of there is a vast area between your optimum effective training load for your lifestyle, and chronic fatigue.
Ergo you can survive, manage your life, do pretty well but be neither optimised or chronically overtrained (or under recovered as we should say). But you would be wasting a lot of effort doing extra training for no benefit, when doing bugger all and resting would be of more benefit.
Suspect a lot of the ‘grey area’ stuff is around here, you’re doing Ok in life, performing ok but can’t quite hit those hard sessions. But still motivated you can still push a bit more on the Z2 days….
3 Likes
this is where coaching craft comes in…
it is also worth noting that whilst we focus on the athlete being focussed and “in the zone” to get the most out of a session…we don’y give sufficient consideration to the coach being “in the zone” to deliver a quality session…
correct…
although it has been a constant observation that many athletes focus diligently on a session and then lose a chunk of benefit by poor focus on recovery…
possibly…
1 Like
I suppose I need to define “would work” and “vast majority”
1 Like