Heather: Welcome to another Triathlon Training Explained. Today, I'm going to be investigating
the truth behind the phrase 'Use it or Lose it.' Just how quickly does our body lose fitness
when we stop training? Well, I'm going to be delving into the physiology behind detraining
and also look at what happens to our bodies when we return to training. I'll let you know
now, I've actually got some encouraging news. [music]
When you are forced to reduce or stop your training, it can be a slightly nerve-wracking
waiting game. A, to find out how long you're going to be off, and B, to find out just what
that damage is to your performance when you come out the other end. Obviously, the shorter
the time off, then the quicker you'll be able to get back. There's still so many other factors
that come into the equation of just how much fitness and how quickly you will lose it.
For example, we've got age, yes, I'm afraid the younger you are, the quicker you'll be
able to return and the less fitness that you will lose. Then we've got things such as training
history. If you've been doing that sport for years, you're going to lose it quickly and
you'll be able to get back quicker compared to someone who, say, has only been doing sport
for a few months. Then we've got current activity. It depends what you're able to do during that
period of being off. Whether you can do anything that's specific to your sport, as that will
obviously help.We've got your fitness before you have that time off. Obviously, the fitter
you are, then you've got a much longer window before you're going to be back to pretty much
ground zero. Finally, there's genetics. Yes, I'm afraid some people will lose fitness quicker
than others. [music]
We might not be able to determine the exact rate of fitness loss but we do know what's
happening at a physiological level. Now, to get the science lowdown I spoke to exercise
physiologist Dan Plews and asked him to explain exactly what's happening to our bodies when
we have some time off training. Dan Plews: I guess there's a few things that
happen and I'll go through them in the order. One of the first things that happens is we
do get a dramatic reduction in our blood volume. That's why typically if you have a rest day,
you'll always find that the heart rate's a little bit higher because the heart rate's
counterbalancing that drop in cardiac output and that drop in stroke volume, so you're
having a higher heart rate. At submaximal levels, the heart rate's that little bit higher.
Also, what really happens is one of the major things is substrate utilization. You actually
start burning more carbohydrates than you would fat normally. That's another major one
to start to happen. I find that it's quite interesting. If you have a long time off,
you'll find that you could, for the dreaded bonk, or you might hit the wall during those
long rides much more easily. Then you're looking at more of those structural
changes. That might be decreased capillarization of the muscle, for example, and then really,
really long term if you're talking more than four weeks, so months and months, you're looking
at actual decreases in the size of the heart, which is obviously much more difficult to
get back. That's why, in the offseason, we try to keep
athletes only having an offseason of three to four weeks. We don't really want to go
any more than that, because some of those structural changes can happen.
Female Speaker: It's not all doom and gloom, however, you can actually reduce that fitness
loss quite dramatically. Now, I found some research that showed by doing 20% of your
normal training volume, you can actually reduce your fitness loss by as much as half compared
to if you did nothing. Obviously, this does depend on the specificity of that training
that you're doing, and just what your fitness goals are, but I found it quite encouraging.
I went back to Dan to ask him to expand a little bit more and just tell us how exactly
we can limit that fitness loss. Dan: If you've got a period of time where
you actually, for example, right now, you might not be able to do any training as you
should. The best way to do it and to minimize those reductions because those reductions
will happen is to do shorter bouts of high intensity. The reason being, a really good
session would be something like 8 by 30 seconds full-out maximal reps with about 1-minute
recovery. The reason these seem to be the best is because you're pulling and drawing
on many aspects of your physiology. Even though they're highly glycolytic, so anaerobic dependent
if you're doing 30 seconds exercise, you're actually getting a really massive aerobic
benefit as well, because of the recovery aspect of that is still giving you that part of it.
If you look at some of the research in interval training, where people have done interval
training that would be presumed to be purely glycolytic, they're having mostly aerobic
adaptations. That's the reason why you're getting a mirage of every single little bit
of requirement of your physiology into one session. If you did 8 by 30 seconds on, 1
minute off 3 times a week, you can be sure that that would really minimize that reduction.
How much? Who knows. That's the guidelines is that you really want to go for the short
and high-intensity stuff rather than the long duration.
Female Speaker: What about any strength work, is that really important stuff to try and
get in to reduce the loss of muscle or the loss of strength?
Dan: Yes, loss of muscle is an interesting one, if you mean muscle wastes really, really
quick for sure, but not really if you're generally using it. You'll see someone in a cast when
they're not using the arm or the leg at all, they'll take the cast off, and the muscle
is massively reduced but if you're using it in some kind of day-to-day, it doesn't really
happen that much. Because the rate of decline is a lot slower in the strength, you generally
don't lose as much. It means that it doesn't take that much to pop it back up.
A lot of the first adaptations that you see in strength are not so much the loss of actual
cross-section or fiber size, which is really important for strength, a lot of it is just
the loss of neuromuscular and the motor recruitment, which is one of the first things to come back.
It's not so much to worry about. Especially, in triathlon, if you're talking about long-distance
triathlon, we're doing a sport that doesn't require us to be really, really strong. Usually,
we're strong enough for the requirements of the sport that we do. It's not really something
that I would be massively, massively concerned about for sure.
[music] Female Speaker: Hopefully, you were as pleasantly
surprised as I was, and I told you, it's not as bad as you might have first thought. Anyway,
I think we've covered fitness loss in enough detail now. It's time to start looking ahead
and seeing what happens when we actually start to return to our normal training. I went back
to Dan, to ask him to explain which elements of our fitness will return first and what
our trajectory is likely to look like. Dan: What generally comes back first is you'll
generally find the strength comes back quite easily because triathletes, especially in
endurance sport, we're not actually massively physically strong anyway, so our requirements
aren't that big. Also, the rate of loss isn't as high, so we're losing less and we don't
have as far as we go. On the endurance side, that does take a little bit longer. This isn't
from any scientific literature but just talking to a lot of coaches. Generally, the rule is
if you have three weeks off, it takes, six weeks to get back. If you have four weeks
off, it's eight weeks to get back. You're kind of doubling it to where you're back to
where you were before. Just to use a bit of a coaching analogy that
a coach once told me is, it's not that hard to get back, it's a bit like a snowplow is
that if you imagine that you're pushing snow and the snow is building up on the other side
of the snowplow and it gets harder and harder to push it back, but when you take your foot
off the gas and you stop training, some snow will fall, and you can shoot back up to the
line pretty quick. As soon as you get there again, obviously, it's much much harder to
push. I quite like that analogy because it isn't as hard to think as you would believe
to get back to where you were. Yes, the first thing to come back is some
of those [unintelligible 00:07:47] volume changes, and obviously it's the reverse. The
things that take the longest to go, take the longest to get back. If you're thinking about
changes in blood plasma volume and blood volume in general, that will come back quite quick.
Some of those structural changes, bringing back your capitalization, if you've lost any
structural changes of the heart, obviously, they're going to take a long time to get back
as well. The way it falls away, is also how it comes back. What goes the fastest comes
back the fastest and what goes the longest, takes the longest to go away.
Another thing that I think on the return is what people make a big mistake of is they
forget that they've changed. I think reassessing yourself, getting-- if you're measuring your
FTP, or whatever your training zones are, get a new marker of what that might be because
what we know about injury risk and things like this is that injury risk is at its highest
when you have a break from exercise. That point of time, when you've just started exercise,
you're at your highest level of injury risk, and you have to make sure that it's a progressive
and you're not going back and trying to run speeds, powers, or whatever it might be that
you did before. I think that's a really important thing to remember.
Female Speaker: I'm sure it came as no surprise that doing some exercise or training is always
going to be better than nothing. However, whatever you do over the next few weeks, you're
not going to lose all your fitness and return to zero, so don't worry, all that previous
hard work has not gone to waste. It's just a matter of trying to limit that damage, and
then being able to be ready to speed up your return when you are back to training.
Prioritize the type of fitness that you do want to maintain and then any exercise or
training you do, make it specific towards that goal. Ultimately, just make sure that
you are able to stay healthy, so when you can return to training, you'll be in the best
shape to do so. Stay safe. Give this video a Like if you've enjoyed it, and check out
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