Yes, I feel like for me becoming broken is rather easy… so now I am extra careful to avoid this. So this idea of broken/not broken I studied a bunch and am of the belief it has some ability to training it. I have a few reference points on this but only from younger athletes/coaches so not sure as we age how much we can affect that but I still like to think it is possible. Alan Thrall is a top youtube strong man/coach and he uses the term “Work capacity.” He even suggests training work capacity with low heart rate work. A few other guys that have gone into this is a guy that wrote a book “squat everyday.” And a final one is a top elite military trainer guy (that is the most knowledgable guy I have ever read and I even talked to to him).
I realize how significant training stress is. Hope you are unbroken soon. I hope you can get back to “full” fun training.
This is a topic that I think might even warrant it’s own thread as I’d like to dive into this with people and hear from others.
I think “work capacity” as you put it is trainable. That’s the whole idea behind periodized training and the 2 or 3 week progressive build before a recovery week. I think just about everyone has gone too far in a plan. Your plan calls for X amount of work per week, but you are feeling good or on vacation, so you do a little extra, whether it be another hour onto that endurance ride or throwing in another interval or two. I still find myself falling victim to this from time to time even though I know better.
As we age it’s the recovery bit that becomes more and more important. Is that soley related to age? Or is it that for most of us, in our 20’s we didn’t have a lot of commitments (stress). Most of us in our early 20’s didn’t have families with kids, terribly important corporate jobs etc.
I was listening to the Nov 3 “Roadman Podcast” where Dr David Lipman was talking about the total load, not just the load from our training that we need to really consider, especially as amateurs. He had a really good example where he compared Pro Triathletes to top amateur triathletes and considered the possibility of what separates them is that the top amateurs had a full time job and thus more total stress load.
It seems so obvious when you say it out loud, but when your living your own life day to day and enjoy going out on the bike and doing your best to stick to the training plan, but one day you get a call from the school that she’s missing or your spouse is broken down on the side of the road somewhere remote… it all tends to add a layer of stress to that total load. Making that extra hour or two of riding or those extra intervals on top a potential recipe for over doing it.
You and I are have very similar views and yes another name for work capacity could be ctl and I believe and no different than the old running story of 10% per week… some how for me the idea of work capacity resonates a bit more meaning how much can I handle, and tons of yard work i.e. say controlled intensity digging can increase that capacity rather quickly… so huge volumes of zone 1/2 can give you capacity and the question is how much does it keep you from breaking down with increased amounts of high intensity… meaning work capacity is probably like a mean max power curve and duration and different aspects can be raised independently but also raising the base raises the whole thing…
I am on a far tangent here but as we age unless you have the perfect life or perfect genetics you are severely limited by your work capacity… Obviously high consistency likely affects that the most especially as you age. And 100% as you suggest other stressors screw up your ability to recover as quickly.
I guess the thing about work capacity is it is very hard to understand individual details, its many years of trial and error and over those years things change. Not to mention what are the cascading effects.
We know athletes that work very hard and don’t improve and that can be and frequently is because of not enough recovery, which is closely related to work capacity and too much intensity in many cases.
If you can handle X per week based on how well you sleep, eat and stress this week… and you do x+1 well you may not run into any issues but you have not giving yourself the recovery needed to allow you to grow to handling x+1 not to mention any performance benefits.
This is what likely has happened to me over the past year. I did make small improvements, but not to the levels I would expect. I have traditionally be a very fast responder to training input and would typically regain fitness rather fast. This did not happen this time around, given my sleep issues this is fairly obvious to people on the outside, but I kept trying different supplements, strategies etc and 3 doctors have failed to make any impact. Number 4 is up next week.
The one thing I didn’t do was just back the %$#! off, instead I tried to stick to the plan because I had 2 events I was really motivated by, somehow managing the fatigue just enough not to blow myself up. Following those 2 events I’m now I’m so broken that I don’t have a choice. I did back off and just did Zone 2 strict Maffetone rides outdoors, but even that was too much.
So to your point about yard work, even that can be too much I think if someone is really broken.
I also think genetic work capacity can be altered (epigenetics) whether it can be done so favorable, I don’t know. But unfavorably it can likely be. I may have had Lyme disease (bit by a tick) and I had a 13 year bout with Chronic Fatigue due to a moldy apartment that I was finally able to mostly resolve thanks to one Dr I was lucky to be introduced to. There are so many variables however, that it’s unlikely to ever know if it was altered.