How Increased Training Volume Affects Endurance Athletes

How Increasing Training Volume Affects Endurance Athletes

For endurance athletes, increasing time spent training each week is a common strategy to boost performance. But significantly ramping up training volume can have unintended effects on the body. Here we explore how increases in running, cycling, swimming or triathlon training hours tend to impact endurance athletes physically and mentally.

Improved Fitness

Within reason, increasing weekly training time generally improves an endurance athlete's cardiovascular fitness and endurance capacity. Longer sessions training at target race paces enables the body to physiologically adapt to sustain higher paces and workloads for longer durations.

More time training also allows incorporating additional focus areas like speedwork, hill repeats, tempo runs, or technique drills to build strength and efficiency. Just a few additional hours per week of quality training can lead to noticeable fitness gains over a season.

Increased Fatigue

Ramping up training volume tends to increase residual fatigue. The body needs to work harder during sessions and requires more rest and recovery between workouts. Too much chronic fatigue can negatively impact performance.

Endurance athletes walking a fine line between optimal training stress and overtraining may find increased hours push them over the edge into fatigue-based burnout, illness or injury if they overdo volume.

Higher Injury Risk

Significantly increasing training time means the body must handle greater training stresses and workloads week after week. This ups injury risk in several ways:

• More total stress on muscles, joints, bones
• Increased risk of overuse injuries
• Training through small overuse injuries
• Insufficient rest and recovery between sessions
• Poor fueling and hydration
• Trying to increase intensity along with volume

Even veteran athletes must progress training volume gradually over months or seasons to stay healthy.

Appetite and Weight Changes

Increasing exercise volume burns more calories and often makes endurance athletes hungrier. But digesting food and absorbing nutrients from longer, harder workouts becomes inefficient. Some experience GI distress or appetite loss from extreme fatigue.

More training may spur muscle growth and fat loss. But unintended weight loss or low energy availability from under fueling and recovery can hamper performance. Gaining lean muscle may require increased caloric intake.

Impacts on Life Demands

Spending more hours training each week leaves less time and energy for work, family, relationships and other life demands. Endurance athletes must balance training goals with their overall well-being.

Trying to maintain performance, social connections, and self-care with limited time can be challenging. Signs like moodiness, isolation, run-down feelings, and lack of focus signal a volume-life imbalance.

Mental Stress and Burnout

Increased training, fatigue, injuries, nutrition and life balance challenges tend to raise mental stress for endurance athletes. Hard training sessions feel harder when tired. Motivation may suffer from overwork, boredom, or lack of progress.

Prolonged high stress combined with insufficient rest, recovery and life balance contribute to burnout. Warning signs include moodiness, lack of joy for training, mental fog, irritability, and lack of focus or progress.

Considerations for Increasing Volume

Here are some factors endurance athletes should consider when looking to increase weekly training volume:

• Build volume gradually over weeks/months to adapt
• Add no more than 10% volume week-to-week
• Monitor fatigue/recovery and cut back if needed
• Allow ample rest and easy days between hard sessions
• Fuel and hydrate sufficiently before, during, after
• Address minor overuse injuries quickly
• Have realistic performance expectations
• Reduce life stresses and demands where possible
• Watch out for burnout warning signs

Endurance Athlete Body Responses to Increased Training

In addition to overall effects on fitness, fatigue, injury risk, nutrition, life balance and mental health, increasing training volume tends to impact endurance athletes' bodies in various ways.

"Runner's Face"

Some endurance athletes develop a lean, chiseled facial appearance from ramping up training. The combination of fat loss, fluid loss, and oxidative stress makes faces appear more angular and wrinkled - often called "runner's face."

Gastrointestinal Changes

Blood flow shifts away from digestion during intense exercise. Long runs or rides can decrease gut bacteria diversity and lead to GI issues like cramps, diarrhea, bloating, and nausea. These symptoms may worsen with increased training loads.

Suppressed Immune Function

Heavy training volume combined with inadequate rest, recovery, and fueling tends to suppress the immune system. This contributes to increased illness risk such as colds, infections, and acute respiratory illness among endurance athletes - especially in periods of increased volume or intensity.

Impacts on Hormones

Endurance training causes hormonal changes related to energy regulation, muscle building, and more. Increasing training volume substantially can lead to reduced testosterone, thyroid dysfunction, altered cortisol rhythms, low iron levels, imbalanced blood sugars, and disrupted menstrual cycles in females.

"Dead Butt Syndrome"

Ramping up bike miles can result in underused and weak gluteal muscles, known as "dead butt syndrome" or "cyclist's amnesia." This contributes to knee pain and overuse injuries. Targeted strength training should accompany volume increases.

Lower Heart Rate

Increased training progressively lowers an endurance athlete's resting and submax heart rates as the heart muscle increases efficiency and stroke volume. A lower heart rate at the same running, cycling or swimming paces reflects improved cardiovascular fitness.

Gastroesophageal Reflux (GERD)

The mechanical jostling of running combined with blood flow shifts from training can worsen GERD symptoms like heartburn, regurgitation, coughing, and nausea in some athletes. These may intensify with increases in training mileage.

Dehydration and Electrolyte Loss

Heavy sweating from long training sessions leads to dehydration and electrolyte imbalances. Increased training time and intensity, especially in heat, exacerbates these effects. Monitoring hydration levels and electrolyte balance becomes more important.

Optimizing Health and Performance

While increased training volume often improves endurance fitness, athletes must balance its benefits with potential downsides like fatigue, illness, injury, burnout, and impaired health or nutrition.

Strategies like gradual volume increases, close fatigue and recovery monitoring, injury prevention, sufficient nutrition and hydration, stress reduction, and rest days are key to staying healthy.

Rather than blindly pushing to "more is better," athletes should focus on optimized training quality emphasizing recovery, avoiding burnout, and integrating lifestyle balance for sustained performance gains.

Maximizing Training Volume

• Increase volume gradually over time
• Take regular rest and recovery days
• Listen carefully to body fatigue signals
• Address minor injuries early
• Focus on proper technique
• Fuel and hydrate sufficiently
• Reduce non-training life stresses
• Emphasize sleep quality and quantity

Warning Signs to Cut Back

• Increasing soreness or nagging pains
• Worsening exhaustion, fatigue, sluggishness
• Poor workout quality and performance
• Insomnia or restless sleep
• Decreased motivation and mental focus
• Moodiness, irritability, depression
• Weakened immune function, sickness
• Unexplained weight loss

Carefully monitoring how your mind and body respond provides valuable feedback. Be ready to reduce volume or intensity and prioritize recovery if needed.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a healthcare professional before starting any new treatment regimen.