Jim Stray-Gunderson MD, team physician for the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team, has noted that, left to themselves, elite cross country skiers will over-train and injure themselves.
Since there is no body of literature concerning paddling and overtraining, insight into the relation between overtraining and injury must be gleaned from the literature of other sports such as track and field, swimming and cross country' skiing. Dr. Stan James. a noted orthopedist from Eugene, Oregon has stated that too many elite athletes injure themselves overtraining. Unfortunately, a few days reprieve from the daily rigors of training are seen in a negative light by these athletes. Yet Dr. Daw Costill has just recently published a study showing that swimmers at Ball State University who took an enforced period of 14 days tapered rest prior to a major competition gained power output in both the bio-kinetic swim bench and power swim test. Performance times also improved an average of 3.1%. Clearly, rest can't hurt. It often helps.
Paddlers seem to injure themselves not only while peaking, most often during speed work, but also during winter weight training. Constant training during any season wears the athlete down. Looking over the training pattern of our top paddlers and of many nationally ranked middle distance runners, one notes that a day of rest can be found every- so often. There is marked variation in how this rest is taken, but it must be granted. The principle of rest sounds quite obvious. Yet, training through or training oneself into injury is the usual manner in which athletes develop chronic overuse problems. The trick lies in walking that razor's edge between the useful and satisfying pain of a hard workout and the different twinge which should warn the athlete to slow down. The more common choice is to train through the twinge rather than take the rest. The December WS5 Track and Field News puts this problem into perspective:"According to Dr. James, world class runners still have a lot to learn about training. One of his studies blames training errors (high mileage and intense training being the biggest culprits) for 60% of running injuries." Dr. James also lends an anecdotal confirmation of Dr. Costills finding with swimmers where he states "athletes will casually mention that they always seem to run PR’s or set records after injuries have kept them from training."
Let us explore this concept of creative and judicious rest by a small example.Consider the injury of wrist extensor tenosynovitis. or inflammation of the top of the wrist. A single workout of many 30 to 40 second pieces into a crosswind may cause some pain on top of the wrist as
well as a deep discomfort in the body of the "lats" and Trapezius muscles. The burn in the "lats" and "Traps" is usually not much of a problem since they are large muscle groups which regenerate quickly. This soreness will dictate that the next day may be easy or entail longer distance. Yet pain on top of the wrist refers to a group of small muscles and tendons which do not regenerate so efficiently as the large muscle and therefore time must be taken off.
How does one then take time off?
- First, the athlete should treat the area as outlined in the section on inflammation.
- Second, the paddler should use some other form of training to maintain tone and "aerobic capacity”, the latter a yuppie buzz term for fitness. There is no reason why one should not begin interval training with a hike on a hill, or swimming long, non traumatic intervals.
- Finally, one can concentrate on technique while waiting for the wrist to heal. In these three ways, treatment, surrogate training and technique work, the paddler can maintain conditioning while breaking the monotony of training to boot.
One wonders how Eamonn Coghlan, the first man under 3 minutes and 50 seconds for one mile indoors and world 5000 meter champion in 1984 came back year after year from injury The reason is that he never lost conditioning. Once his stress fractures were diagnosed he hopped onto his stationary bicycle and put himself through grueling workouts Once healed, getting back into good shape was a snap.
Our own sport has seen top paddlers maintain fitness while injured by swimming. The northern paddlers note that they prefer cross country skiing because it breaks the monotony of the boat and water year round. Hence, there is seasonal precedence for alternative or surrogate training when injured. Training with mind as well as body requires a maturity which, unfortunately, most acquire after their best athletic years have passed. Don't shy away from productive pain of hard work yet learn to be a connoisseur of pain and manipulate the training program to suit your injury.
Mark Walsh MD
Flatwater Team Physician
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