Today marks the half-way stage of camp; so far I'm relatively pleased with how training is going. In the first few days my back was hurting and this interfered with training; but in the past few days I've been working a lot with Sally (physio), and we seem to have made a break through with it.
This morning I had a heavy weights session and a 20km ergo (this takes roughly 75mins). This afternoon we have had weights again and a swim. I seem to be coping better with the training than my previous visit here. Yesterday we had 16km on the ergo and then a 30min test (I did this on the bike). Afterwards most people spent time in the ice baths and jacuzzi to flush lactate out of the legs. I also went for a walk to the top of the cable car with Foady, Moe and Cam (picture above). Over the next few posts I thought I would run through standard things we do while on camp; today I will talk about morning monitoring, so if your sitting comfortably, I shall begin...
My alarms goes at 7:10, I hit the snooze button and give it another 5 mins until I get up. Before I get moving I take my waking heart rate, currently this is about 40-44 beats per min. I then fill a vial with a urine sample, living the dream. I then put some clothes on and make my way down the corridor to Homer's room. Homer (first name - Mark) is one of GB Rowing's physiologists, he takes the lead on the men's squad. Outside of Homer's room will be some weighing scales, I strip back down and weigh myself (currently I'm about 91kg, which is roughly 14st 5lb in old money or 201 lbs if your from America). I then put my clothes back on and place my urine sample on a table covered with 20 other similar bottles of nectar. There are a choice of two laptops to then fill out our weight, waking HR, sleep quality %, perceived shape %. Homer will then take a blood sample from our earlobes. This will then be analysed by a machine, looking at our blood urea levels, but sometimes measuring other variable too; our urine will be analysed too. Homer will fill out the rest of the spreadsheet with a value for our hydration (urine test) and urea levels. The urea is a measurement of broken down proteins in the blood. If you have a high urea content this could show poor recovery and that the body is stuggling. Often on camp our urea levels will fluctuate as we have harder and easier training days (I mean "easier" relative to other days!). At 7:30am I go to breakfast and make my way to the gym to start training at 8am.
All of the data will be processed and printed by the start of the first session (Homer is very efficient). This gives the coaches a snap shot of your physical state at the start of the day. They can use this data to then alter the training if you're struggling or on the verge of becoming ill. This routine happens every day on camp and sometimes when training at Caversham.
p.s. I have had over 500 page views so far (the blog is two months old), please feel free to comment.
Do your coaches actually use this data to change your training very often or is it only used in the event of significant problems, it would otherwise be easy to explain away bad training sessions and not be overly concerned by them due to this data.
ReplyDeleteI would have imagined that your own feedback of how you are doing would be more than adaquate for how hard you should train, especially as you have previous experience of these training camps but is that actually the case? or do you find this data mostly confirms to you what you are already feeling.
Keep going noddy, sounds like it's going well. I'm on training camp in the middle of an australian summer, and it's poured with rain so far. Great.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the two comments, Squats you're becoming an avid reader. Its not the rain you want to be worrying about, its those deadly spiders lurking in your launch that should keep your heart pumping.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, thanks for the question - The data is viewed daily but only acted on when anomalies present themselves, this is because our numbers are reasonable consistent. What it means is that you have a back log of data so that when you are ill/under-recovering you can tell what is physiologically happening not just how you "feel". Jurgen pushes us hard, sometimes the head is stronger than the body, sometimes the body is stronger than the head. The data allows some science to play a role; it also allows the coaches to spot trends accross the team, if we are all struggling then slight alterations may help improve the quality of the training - it is probably very rare that we are finding it a breeze and the programme then increased!
I hope that answers your question, feel free to ask more.
N
weve been doing some real training in durham, squirrel trapping and field drain digging, what tests would you recommend for us?
ReplyDeleteDad, I told Mum she isn't allowed to post on here - the same rule applies to you. N
ReplyDelete