Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 100, November 2017 | Page 34

COACHING
TRAINING
Avoiding
Overtraining
• Log your RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion)
for each training session on a scale of 1-10, so
that you can compare how you feel today against
last week. For example, last week you did a 20km
run in two hours and your RPE was 5 (medium to
hard effort), but this week when you do the same
route your RPE is a 7 (the run felt hard). Clearly
you have not recovered properly from training
during this week, so a rest day might be needed.
Solving the Problem
Overtraining often leads to illness (mostly colds
and flu) and injury, and when this happens, you
are forced to rest. However, overtraining can also
simply affect performance, so an athlete can still
perform reasonably well, but your performance
should have been better had you taken notice of
the signs of overtraining. So what do you do in this
case?
Firstly, you need to acknowledge and understand
that you are overtraine