第23页 | The Big Book of Endurance Training and Racing | 阅读 ‧ 电子书库

Training

The definition of training may be obvious, but I like to describe it in the form of an equation. Training is the balance of your workouts and your recovery in the form of rest. Simply put:

Regular physical training helps build muscles, improve neuromuscular activity (all those important connections between brain and muscles), increase oxygen uptake, improve fat burning, and other important benefits. Training involves stimulating the body with sufficient stress, but not too much, to provoke these benefits. In physiology this process is called overload. In the case of a muscle, for example, you must work it slightly harder than it is normally used to in order to rebuild and improve its function. Training involves programming your body in certain ways, especially through the work of physical activity, to perform better during competition.

Training also requires recovery, which comes in the form of rest. Sleep is the most important way for people to rest. Those who don’t rest enough risk overtraining, even if the workouts are ideal.

But work is not limited to just the sum total of your training. It also includes virtually all the physical activities you do in the course of the day, such as yard work and office chores. Throw in taking care of the kids, shopping, cleaning out the garage, and other physical activities, and you have a better idea of all the work you do in the course of a week, month, and year. These activities also require energy and muscle activity, burn fat and sugar, stimulate the nervous system, and other things just like training (although in most cases not as intense). However, these events, while not necessarily helping your training, still require recovery. In fact, they may even take away from your training. That’s because they increase the need for recovery.