Here is an interesting article that seems to show that it is better to train twice on one day and then rest the next day instead of training once/day:
http://jap.physiology.org/content/98/1/93.full#F2
They had one leg exercise twice with a 2 hour rest between sessions and then rest on the next day, alternating days. The other leg trained daily, but just once per day.
In the end, the leg that had 2 sessions on one day and then a rest day was able to perform longer before exhaustion than the leg that trained every day. They believe this is because it trains the muscles to work on low glycogen if you do 2 workouts in a day and then give it a day of rest. If you do daily workouts, you are always working on high glycogen so the body doesn't have to adapt as much to the low glycogen environment.
Both legs did improve significantly and the maximum force between the 2 legs was not significantly different, but the time to exhaustion was very different. Like almost all studies, it is not directly on point in terms of applicability to whitewater slalom racing. It is a long endurance exercise, not a short power sport. It does not involve technique at all. It is cyclical, with the same movement repeated over and over, unlike our sport. There are many differences, yet it may have some validity to our sport.
We have a very interesting disconnect, not just in our sport, but in many sports between the science and what elite athletes are actually doing in terms of frequency of training. The science says that recovery is very important, and varies widely depending on the individual. Some people need more recovery, some less. But in general, the science is saying that for most people, 2-4 sessions per week is optimum. Most elite athletes train a lot more than this. Many train every day and many train twice per day.
So, it is difficult to make comparisons between elite athletes and what science says they should be doing because almost no one is training like science says they should. Almost every elite athlete is way overtrained, according to the sports science research. Yet, shouldn't the collective wisdom of the world's top athletes have substantial validity, even if it isn't backed by research? Maybe science is behind and just hasn't figured this out yet.
Most of the research is not done on elite athletes. Much of it is not done with the aim of discovery what is the optimum way for elite athletes to train. Research is often done to measure what is happening to levels of certain chemicals in the blood or other physiological factors, not so much to measure differences in performance. And much of the research is done for short periods of time, not for a year or years.
Or maybe the athletes just enjoy their sport or are addicted to it, or are worried that if they skip a day, they will not win, so they keep overtraining, even though it doesn't lead to optimum performance. Or, perhaps the few athletes who rise to the top are the ones whose bodies can withstand the high volume of training and those without the genetic ability to recover quickly overtrain in order to emulate the top athletes when they would actually perform better with more rest? In other words, average athletes do not individualize their training, but just take the training methods of the top athletes and misapply them to themselves, resulting in overtraining because their bodies require more rest.
In any case, this is an interesting study and this could be a very worthwhile training plan. Train twice a day on one day and take the next day off completely. Repeat. There is some research basis to believe this is a good method, better than simply training once every day. Take a look at this article and let me know what you think:
http://jap.physiology.org/content/98/1/93.full#F2
Thanks for commenting Jamie. Appreciate your input. Brings up the issue of what is a solid basis to make decisions on- scientific research, years of experience and observation, tradition, examples of winning athletes, or other basis? What if there is a big difference between what the research seems to be saying versus what the top athletes are doing?
We end up doing our own "research" with our own careers as athletes or with other people's lives as coaches. We see lots of other athletes and how they train and try to draw our own conclusions based upon what we have seen and experienced.
Anyway, thanks for the comment.
Posted by: Ron Lugbill | 03/04/2013 at 08:15 AM
As I recall, two of the athletes who did the largest volume of training in the 1980's were Richard Fox and Jon Lugbill. Is it happenstance that these two had the best results?
This possibility strikes me as very likely: "Or, perhaps the few athletes who rise to the top are the ones whose bodies can withstand the high volume of training and those without the genetic ability to recover quickly overtrain in order to emulate the top athletes when they would actually perform better with more rest?"
There was a time when I decided to flirt with overtraining for months on end in order to groove the correct technique, which I felt required a great volume of water time. Then I was very careful not to overtrain for the last months before the year's big competition. I'm still not positive this was the right approach ... but it seemed to work.
Posted by: Jamie | 03/01/2013 at 06:44 PM