Is it counterproductive to work out the night before practice?
April 4, 2011 9:23 AM   Subscribe

I want to build endurance for early morning practices. Is it counterproductive to work out the night before?

I've recently started dragonboating, which is awesome. My endurance, however, is not nearly as awesome, and I'd like to be spending an hour on my non-practice days working to build endurance. Practice is usually at 6 in the morning (T and Th, and at 9 am on Sundays) and I wake up for that, but every time I try to get up for solo off-day endurance training I inevitably sleep in. Is it counterproductive for me to work out at night, hence tiring myself out for the next morning's practice, or is this a case where timing is less important than getting the workout in?

Part of my concern is that I notice my form slipping as I get tired during practice, which means I a) build bad habits and b) open myself up to injury and don't work the muscles I need to strengthen. Any specific suggestions for endurance exercises that would not exhaust the muscles I need on the boat would also be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
posted by verbyournouns to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I think it would be counterproductive to try and do endurance training the night before, and you would be opening yourself up to greater risk of injury. Your muscles won’t have time to recover.

Your question almost seems analogous to someone on a ski vacation whose legs are fatiguing on runs, and wants to know what he might do the night before to build endurance for the next day. That person and you needed to be training before the season.

You may be kind of in over your head at the practices if you’re forced to keep up with people of a much higher fitness level than you’re currently at. You’re already seeing how your form breaks down as you tire. As your muscles fatigue they are no longer supporting your joints and the tendons and ligaments are forced to do that. It’s the bane of the weekend warrior, and your setting yourself up for an injury that will stop you from doing this altogether. Ask around what it’s like recovering from tendon injury.

So, what to do. If you’re not that out of shape your body will adapt just by doing the dragonboating and you’ll gain the endurance you need. I think you need to be very aware of signals your body is sending, muscle soreness as opposed to tendon strain. If you are straining tendons I’d stop until you can get yourself fit enough to do this.

The day for you to do specific strength training targeting the muscles for this activity would be Friday. You can go pretty heavy and have time to recover. And that would be resistance training, weights or machines. Monday and Tuesday might be days when you do whole body exercises like squats, deadlifts and lunges. And I would not go heavy with these whole body exercises now.

Of course stretching would be equally important and something you could and probably should do the night before. Find out from people you’re doing this with what sport specific stretches they do.

Lastly, if I were you I would do yoga. In your situation it’s the perfect way to strengthen certain muscles without overly fatiguing them. Good luck.
posted by PaulBGoode at 12:09 PM on April 4, 2011 [1 favorite]


If you're not getting up in time for your workouts, working out at night won't solve that -- it'll only increase your fatigue the next day, which is worse because that's when you're supposed to be dragonboating. Your body is telling you you're overdoing it: doing yet more the night before practice is not the right answer!

Slow down. You might incorporate some strength and endurance training along the lines of PaulBGoode's suggestions, but be sure to take it slow and steady, and get plenty (and I mean plenty!) of sleep and protein. I would also recommend setting aside at least one full day (looks like Wednesday would be best) for rest and recovery: light stretching, walking, etc. would be OK, but nothing more strenuous. Going from "I'm having trouble with endurance" to exercising 7 days a week is a recipe for injury, especially if you're already sacrificing form due to fatigue.

Slow, steady, and careful will get you where you want to be within months, but if you try to do everything at once there's a good chance you'll be nursing an injury instead.
posted by vorfeed at 1:33 PM on April 4, 2011


I'm going to take a difference stance here and tell you to go ahead and work out. You're new to the sport so your body is going to make a lot of adaptations very quickly. You'll be tired at first but will get used to it. Adding in one or two workouts is not going to kill you, but do make sure that you're not trying to ramp up too fast (i.e. go from never running to trying to do five miles in a go).
posted by Anonymous at 3:58 PM on April 4, 2011


Hi, late answer here. I row, which is also incredibly early in the morning practices, and we do two-a-days. So, we work out at 5:30 am and then in the evenings we do a different workout. Sometimes you're sore the next day, as might happen if you are attempting to get into shape, but if you pay attention to your body, you should be fine. In this case, getting the workouts in is probably more important.
posted by hepta at 6:43 PM on April 12, 2011


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