what's wrong? over-training ?

[deepRelax]

Me too.

I need a small cup at supper to feel right. Do you have any caffeine near that time?

No, if I drink coffee after 4 pm I have trouble falling asleep.
I raise my caffeine level in the morning (2-3 big mugs) and usually 1-2 in the afternoon, after lunchtime typically. That's enough to stay focus all day in my case. No coffee in the morning and I'm useless ... :blackeye
I'll try to limit myself to 1 on working days in the near future ...

 

[deepRelax]

Caffein raises also the hypoxic threashold, meaning it protects you a bit from an early BO.

@trux: do you have any reference on this effect? sounds interesting :friday

 

[trux]

Yes, there are a few:
http://www.google.fr/search?q=hypoxia+caffein

 

[DancingBandit]

I just have to spit this out and its bothering me like hell. I`ve got a monkey size of a train in my back when doing DNF. I`ve already hit 100m once and now I am not able to get there at all. Worst was yesterday when I only managed 50m and it felt bad, really bad. I know that you cannot always push to the max but still I need somehow to manage this psychology of failure.
Usually my training with DNF consist 50m warm-up and then couple longer ones 75-85m or max attempt. After that some 50 meter dives with emphasis on technic. Need to find somekind of solution to this one. I know people will say that your PB will come in time but it feels like I´m stuck.

 

[pingshui]

I am trying to recover from a similar problem right now, but not as severe as in your case. For me changing the warm-up breath-up pattern helped a lot. And about a month of almost doing nothing

 

[laminar]

I just have to spit this out and its bothering me like hell. I`ve got a monkey size of a train in my back when doing DNF. I`ve already hit 100m once and now I am not able to get there at all. Worst was yesterday when I only managed 50m and it felt bad, really bad. I know that you cannot always push to the max but still I need somehow to manage this psychology of failure.
Usually my training with DNF consist 50m warm-up and then couple longer ones 75-85m or max attempt. After that some 50 meter dives with emphasis on technic. Need to find somekind of solution to this one. I know people will say that your PB will come in time but it feels like I´m stuck.

This may work for you if you have a mental block...stick with repetitions of 25m only for about 2 weeks to a month with very easy recoveries (maybe 10-15 seconds). No pushing, no hypoxia, no contractions, just work on make each swim easier and easier. Try it without a wetsuit or weights (unless you can't regulate your buoyancy with lung volume safely enough).

I did exactly this for a month (2 training sessions a week), probably doing about 20-30 minutes of 25m repeats with efficiency on my mind only.

When the competition came around, I set a personal best of 30m more than my previous best.

The reason I chose this approach is that I was (at the time) very daunted by the idea of pushing myself further and I was really stressed at the time. And I found that optimizing technique was most of the answer (for the level I was at, anyway) and was a lot of fun and helped me recover from my days.

 

[DancingBandit]

This may work for you if you have a mental block...stick with repetitions of 25m only for about 2 weeks to a month with very easy recoveries (maybe 10-15 seconds). No pushing, no hypoxia, no contractions, just work on make each swim easier and easier.

You mean like intervals and 15 seconds between 25m dives? How many per training. I mean even with those recoveries it will get hard at some point

 

[Simos]

You mean like intervals and 15 seconds between 25m dives? How many per training. I mean even with those recoveries it will get hard at some point

Laminar was saying to do 20-30 mins of these repeats. I sometimes do exactly the same thing (25m repeats with 10-15s recover) - we do 10 lengths and we time the whole thing (including recoveries) and the next time we try to bring the total time down.

It does get harder, you are right. But if you make the recovery long enough, you can probably do it for a long time before it gets hard. It depends what you are doing it for, if it's to work on your technique then long recoveries are good so that you can do more lengths but if you are trying to challenge yourself and build a CO2 debt you'll need shorter recoveries and best to aim for a specific number of lengths (not a huge amount).

You'd still need a buddy if you are doing repeats, I find that they can get pretty tough after a few lengths if the recovery is not long and you are swimming fast... (it's probably mainly CO2 buildup but still...)

 

[Simos]

Can't edit my post above to add this, just wanted to say that there have been times I felt a bit odd from these repeats towards the last few lengths, especially when I went for short recoveries so do have someone look after you

 

[DancingBandit]

Hmm..That sounds like worth trying. I`ll keep you posted. Thanks!