Overtraining on 5 hours a week

portuguese mike
portuguese mike Posts: 695
Is it possible?

i'm recovering from a shoulder injury and thus restricted to riding my turbo trainer for at least another month. Even with a Real DVD trainer i just can't face more than an hour on it at a time and i do 5 sesions a week. I'm alternating between a hard session (say a 2 x 20m interval session) and an 'easier' session. however on my 'easier' days, due to boredom, i still go reasonalbly hard (80% MHR) is this ok?

i'm concernd that i'm going too hard to recover from the interval sssions but without going hard enough to achieve any training gain and thus not training effectively. Given that it's only 5 hours a week should i not worry and just go as hard as i feel like?
pm

Comments

  • My thoughts would be on 5 hours a week it would be pretty hard to overtrain
  • Infamous
    Infamous Posts: 1,130
    If you did lots of sprint training each day, then yes it's possible, but it'd be a different type of overtraining. It wouldn't be low glycogen (which is what overtraining tends to be in cycling), but simply not giving your muscles enough time to recover and rebuild.

    similar to how bodybuilders/weightlifters can overtrain.
  • Can you not put a TV in front of your turbo and just watch TV all evening from the comfort of your bike rather than the sofa?
    My idea of bliss would be having a bike attached to a trainer with my xbox 360 on a screen in front of it.....I could get fit whilst playing Call of duty, forza, fifa etc... I could spend all day doing a low/mid tempo ride this way
    17 Stone down to 12.5 now raring to get back on the bike!
  • fuzzynavel wrote:
    Can you not put a TV in front of your turbo and just watch TV all evening from the comfort of your bike rather than the sofa?
    My idea of bliss would be having a bike attached to a trainer with my xbox 360 on a screen in front of it.....I could get fit whilst playing Call of duty, forza, fifa etc... I could spend all day doing a low/mid tempo ride this way

    i'd love to plonk the tv on but i'm set up in the bike shed and to be honest its too hot in their - never mind the house. i suppose i could watch something on iplayer on the laptop wil i'm pedalling. the another reason, other than boredom, that linits the time i can stay on it is comfort because i can only use one arm to support myslef more weight than normal is caried by my backside and it gets quite uncomfy after a while.
    pm
  • I have just got back on the road after a 5 week period after a broken collar bone accident. I did the same as you and bought myself a turbo trainer a carmichael training DVD and set my self up in the shed.. I used to take my laptop out with me and do the carmichael dvd twice which totalled 2 hours. It was hard at first riding with one arm but I found that if you gradually take it out of the sling and stretch a little more each time you get the movement back and can grab like the seat, then top tube, stem, bars then onto the hood and drops. I was riding properly again on the turbo within 2 weeks and generally rode 7 days a week doing 2 hours in the mornings during the week than at weekends an extra hour and a half on saturdays with a 3-4hour ride on sunday.

    I tried to keep some similarity between what I would be doing on the road in terms of time and I think the change in training regime - I never do intervals - really helped focus my attention on other things.

    I agree about tha pain in the Ar$e though - worse saddle sores I've ever had!

    Gats
  • Gats, that's hard core. there's no way i could face spending that much time on the turbo. i may get another, hopefully longer real dvd for the weekends but i don't think i could go for more than 2 hours before a combination ofcrushing tedium and severe discomfort made me want to hack my head of with a blunt instrument.
    pm
  • inseine
    inseine Posts: 5,786
    That's one hell of a set up, but you've still got to have the will power to sit there and you've obviously got that in spades especially all you've been through.
    After half a dozen sessions on my i-magic I really like it though obviously you don't get the same proffessional data it's still very motivational.