You may not be a geezer if you respond to this thread. But if you're not a geezer then you just may not understand.
Thanks to all those who helped me cope with the dreaded black-belt malaise. I no longer feel guilty about skipping the occasional taekwondo class and I've paid more attention to my muscle conditioning. My knees are more stable than they've ever been and I've put off ACL reconstruction indefinitely. It also turns out that the orthopedic braces had started hurting more than they were helping, and I've built up my knee muscles & reflexes enough to spar without them. I've been ibuprofen-free for over a month. My competition sparring days are over but I'll continue with forms and I'm looking forward to the 2nd dan test.
However I've noticed another issue: recovery time. I'm a fan of Chris Crowley's "Younger Next Year" approach, and I try to exercise six days a week-- even if it's "just" surfing. When I exercise I go as hard as I can to push my anaerobic capacity. I'm almost never sore afterward-- not even in my knees-- but I've noticed that recovery is more difficult. After a particularly hard sparring class I'll sleep an extra two hours that night, nap an extra hour next day, and still go to bed an hour earlier next evening. Not much gets done in between sleeping, either.
It's as if the "recovery account" is overdrawn. 20 years ago it was bigger than I needed. Now it seems that I can use it all up (and then some) with just one good hard workout. My 48-year-old body shuts me down until it's recovered, no matter what my 28-year-old brain thinks it can handle. This "overdrawn" effect is causing a chilling effect on my planning and even on the intensity of my workouts. It's not as bad as the "life-energy conservation" of a "slow medicine" book but I'm definitely running into a limit. Yet I've always thought that exercise improved a body's reserve and reduced its recovery time. I'm not beating myself up for an Ironman; I think I'm just exercising recreationally. I can't possibly be overtraining?!?
I do TKD 2-3x/week, ~1 hour each, and I'm about to add a 4th session in sparring tactics (quality father-daughter time). I'm the oldest guy in the dojang by nearly a decade, and the next-oldest guy is the master. He's getting a little hint of aging but he has no idea. A friend from another dojang is in his high 50s but has never noticed a recovery problem. (He's a national champion so maybe he'll never notice.) Part of my recovery issue may be the type of workout. I do a lot of anaerobic exercise and some weight training, but the most aerobic thing I'll encounter during my week is the paddling out between waves. Our TKD classes have stretching, warm-ups, and cooldowns, but most of it is cycles of 2-3 minutes of huge effort between brief breaks. The forms, of course, are low-intensity aerobic effort but rarely more than 10-15 minutes. A heart-rate monitor would show a bunch of spikes instead of a gradual buildup.
I had a clinical checkup a month ago (respiratory virus with a persistent cough) and was told that I'm healthy. (BP was 105/60-- an all-time low.) The fatigue isn't chronic-- it just takes me two nights to get over an evening of hard sparring. I thought it was diet but I think I've squeezed just about everything I can out of my nutrition. Higher in protein, very low in fats, almost no sugar and little bread. High-fiber cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, fish 4-5x/week at lunch, ground turkey or ground pork another couple dinners, whole-grain pasta, lots of fruits & veggies. Multivitamin supplement. Maybe a frozen yogurt once a week.
I could add more aerobic conditioning or weight training, but this scheduling challenge reminds me of Paul Terhorst's "Bodywork" essay. There's just not much time left [-]for being lazy[/-] during the day, and there aren't any particular aerobic activities that I care to add to my routine. Bicycles, ellipticals, and treadmills are boring. Swimming laps in a pool is torture when I could be surfing. Walking is fine if it's spouse quality time. Yardwork pruning involves both aerobic effort and weight-lifting but it's not worth risking heat stress.
Don't get me wrong-- I'm grateful for what I can do and I'm not sniveling about what I can't do. I'm just worried that I'm overlooking a symptom of a more serious problem. If this "recovery time" issue is "normal for a man of my age" and "there's not much that can be done about it", well, then, [-]sh!t[/-] I guess I can learn to live with that.
Am I missing something in diet or conditioning? Is there another way to improve recovery time?
Thanks to all those who helped me cope with the dreaded black-belt malaise. I no longer feel guilty about skipping the occasional taekwondo class and I've paid more attention to my muscle conditioning. My knees are more stable than they've ever been and I've put off ACL reconstruction indefinitely. It also turns out that the orthopedic braces had started hurting more than they were helping, and I've built up my knee muscles & reflexes enough to spar without them. I've been ibuprofen-free for over a month. My competition sparring days are over but I'll continue with forms and I'm looking forward to the 2nd dan test.
However I've noticed another issue: recovery time. I'm a fan of Chris Crowley's "Younger Next Year" approach, and I try to exercise six days a week-- even if it's "just" surfing. When I exercise I go as hard as I can to push my anaerobic capacity. I'm almost never sore afterward-- not even in my knees-- but I've noticed that recovery is more difficult. After a particularly hard sparring class I'll sleep an extra two hours that night, nap an extra hour next day, and still go to bed an hour earlier next evening. Not much gets done in between sleeping, either.
It's as if the "recovery account" is overdrawn. 20 years ago it was bigger than I needed. Now it seems that I can use it all up (and then some) with just one good hard workout. My 48-year-old body shuts me down until it's recovered, no matter what my 28-year-old brain thinks it can handle. This "overdrawn" effect is causing a chilling effect on my planning and even on the intensity of my workouts. It's not as bad as the "life-energy conservation" of a "slow medicine" book but I'm definitely running into a limit. Yet I've always thought that exercise improved a body's reserve and reduced its recovery time. I'm not beating myself up for an Ironman; I think I'm just exercising recreationally. I can't possibly be overtraining?!?
I do TKD 2-3x/week, ~1 hour each, and I'm about to add a 4th session in sparring tactics (quality father-daughter time). I'm the oldest guy in the dojang by nearly a decade, and the next-oldest guy is the master. He's getting a little hint of aging but he has no idea. A friend from another dojang is in his high 50s but has never noticed a recovery problem. (He's a national champion so maybe he'll never notice.) Part of my recovery issue may be the type of workout. I do a lot of anaerobic exercise and some weight training, but the most aerobic thing I'll encounter during my week is the paddling out between waves. Our TKD classes have stretching, warm-ups, and cooldowns, but most of it is cycles of 2-3 minutes of huge effort between brief breaks. The forms, of course, are low-intensity aerobic effort but rarely more than 10-15 minutes. A heart-rate monitor would show a bunch of spikes instead of a gradual buildup.
I had a clinical checkup a month ago (respiratory virus with a persistent cough) and was told that I'm healthy. (BP was 105/60-- an all-time low.) The fatigue isn't chronic-- it just takes me two nights to get over an evening of hard sparring. I thought it was diet but I think I've squeezed just about everything I can out of my nutrition. Higher in protein, very low in fats, almost no sugar and little bread. High-fiber cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, fish 4-5x/week at lunch, ground turkey or ground pork another couple dinners, whole-grain pasta, lots of fruits & veggies. Multivitamin supplement. Maybe a frozen yogurt once a week.
I could add more aerobic conditioning or weight training, but this scheduling challenge reminds me of Paul Terhorst's "Bodywork" essay. There's just not much time left [-]for being lazy[/-] during the day, and there aren't any particular aerobic activities that I care to add to my routine. Bicycles, ellipticals, and treadmills are boring. Swimming laps in a pool is torture when I could be surfing. Walking is fine if it's spouse quality time. Yardwork pruning involves both aerobic effort and weight-lifting but it's not worth risking heat stress.
Don't get me wrong-- I'm grateful for what I can do and I'm not sniveling about what I can't do. I'm just worried that I'm overlooking a symptom of a more serious problem. If this "recovery time" issue is "normal for a man of my age" and "there's not much that can be done about it", well, then, [-]sh!t[/-] I guess I can learn to live with that.
Am I missing something in diet or conditioning? Is there another way to improve recovery time?
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