Re: Tying Up Loose Ends
I join Realistic in lying
I said "This will be my last post on this thead" two posts ago:lol: But I did want to thank Skatingfan5 and Berthes Ghost for correcting my math in terms of Michelle's titles and her age when she won her first World title. Once again, my brain was saying, "Seven <strong>National</strong> titles" while my fingers typed "Seven <strong>World</strong> titles." My apologies for yet another math goof and thanks to you all for correcting me. I should leave the exact math to the people who are good at it and just say, "I don't know how many National and World titles Michelle has won but I know it's a very impressive lots and lots." Now I can't get this song out of my head, <em>I'm forever blowing math facts! Pretty math facts in this thread!</em>
Also, I really dug Berthes Ghosts's list of World champions starting with the youngest. Very interesting stuff. (Here I thought I was doing good remembering that Michelle was born in 1980, but once again, Rgirl's basic math attempts are tripped up by a birthday, which I even <strong>know</strong>! Curses!:lol: )
Hey Realistic, you read my posts in 5 minutes?! That's some kind of record! I know what they say and I can't do that:lol: BTW for those who don't know, Realistic and I were put on this earth to be in perpetual disagreement. We were introduced as babies and immediately disagreed on everything from which rattle to use to whether Huggy Bunny or Squeeze-Me Bow Wow was the best stuffed animal to sleep with.
(Realistic, you crack me up.)
Also just so it's clear which Adrian Chew forum people are talking about, he administrates two--at least only two that I know of (don't want to make my math record worse, though I probably will:lol: ). One is SashaFans.com and the other is SkatingForums.com.
Realistic was talking about posting on SashaFans on a thread entitled "Article: Kwan, Hughes, absent from Grand Prix roster." Realistic, you're MKSCFan over there, right? All I can say is, Sheesh! That thread sure became a mess! When I first posted on it, the thread had just gotten to a few posts into the fourth page. For the first three and a half pages, there was a "spirited" debate on the importance or not of competing in the GP series, but then it got off into strange accusatory comments. Realistic sit down because I agree with everything you said both in your posts there and what you said about the thread here. But not to be the pot calling the kettle black, I don't want to get too off-topic in this thread by talking about another forum so I'll stop
Mathman, I like the Grand Prix too and for a lot of the reasons you mentioned. Of course I didn't get to see Skate America live
But I think it's a great way for skaters on the way up and in the initial years of trying to maintain their top status to have fall competitions and a mid-season championship--IF the ISU does the right thing and holds the GPF in the second or third week in December. The Grand Prix series, IIRC, started in the mid-90s so it's still evolving. Michelle and Irina are the first skaters who have been at or near the top of the pack for many years, so by doing what's best for themselves they are setting options for other skaters in the future. I think it's great that Michelle is demonstrating that there is no "rulebook" for how to handle one's career once you've been skating at the top of the elite level for so many years. Besides, like Mathman, I enjoy seeing the mix of skaters, seeing how a skater who has just started her Sr. level really holds up against the more experienced Sr. skaters. At least for me, sometimes a skater will look phenomenal in her Jr. events and even a few Sr. events. But put her in the GP series where she may skate three events against some of the best in the world and often you see that she has a long way to go. OTOH, sometimes you see a "newbie" skate in a surprisingly impressive way against the others. I also think it's a great series in which to see skaters improve (hopefully) or to see bad habits the skater needs to fix.
Glad you liked the info about burnout, heart rates and oxygen intake, Mathman. I hoped it wouldn't be too technical, but I wanted to get across that athletes like Michelle who are conscious about trying to avoid burn-out are doing more than just trying to avoid getting "bored" with skating, that it's a very important choice that affects everything from risk of injury to total body/mind health.
Tharrtell, Great question about the differences in burn-out between endurance athletes such as long-distance runners, swimmers, or cyclists, like the one I used as an example, and "anaerobic" athletes such as figure skaters, gymnasts, short distance track and field athletes, boxers, etc.<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'm familiar with endurance athletes who get to the point where their bodies are so exhausted that, even when they are exerting themselves at a high level, they can't get their heart rate up. This is my understanding of burn out. Does this happen to skaters? I'd think that skaters would suffer more of a mental burn out where motivation drops. Any physiological effects would be of the repetitive use type - wear and tear on the joints for example.[/quote] The reason it's difficult to discuss the physiologic effects of burnout is because a lot of it involves endocrinology (hormones). Most people think of hormones as estrogen and testosterone, but the true scope and interaction between the hormones released from various glands can be truly overwhelming. I could copy the chapters on endocrinology from my Guyton's <em>Physiology</em> and big Gray's <em>Anatomy</em> but nobody's here to try to get college credits
Also, even sports physiologists are constantly researching and arguing over the different ways different kinds of athletes experience burn-out.
Sorry this is such a long round about way of addressing your questions, but here is what I'd have to say with the caveat that I'm not up on the latest research in this area--although your questions might just prompt me to get on MedLine and look
: With figure skaters, the effects of severe burn-out are just as physiological as they are for endurance athletes, just in different ways. To try to put it simply (and succinctly
), for any athlete, the effects of <strong>mild</strong> burn-out usually show up as emotional/psychological problems, ie, being tempermental or sometimes the opposite, being indifferent; sleep disorders; unexplained weight fluctuations; changes in appetite; bloating in the abdominal area; and propensity for minor injuries. As burn-out progresses to severe, problems resulting from electrolyte imbalances and chronic functional adrenal insufficiency (CFAI) can lead to more severe problems.
Obviously there are people who study this stuff regularly who know far more than I, but from my experience and knowledge, the physiologic changes that occur as a result of burn-out are the same for every kind of athlete, whether they be endurance (aerobic) or short duration (anaerobic) athletes. Where the differences happen is in the kinds of problems the athletes have, but that could be just as much a function of their sport. Like you said, endurance athletes can't get the HR up. Figure skaters won't be able to get their HR up either, which they do have to do in building up speed with their stroking, but it might not be as evident or as disadvantageous to their skating, at least not at first.
Where figure skaters tend to show problems is with weight fluctuation, sleep disorders, and especially injuries to the ligaments (sprains). A lot of athletic burn-out, according to many researchers, is due to chronic functional adrenal insufficiency, which is not like Addison's Disease, which is a whole different thing, and not like acute adrenal insufficiency, which is a medical emergency where the adrenals aren't producing enough cortisol to sustain life. Chronic functional adrenal insufficiency (CFAI), some researchers feel, sets off a whole domino effect or chain reaction of problems. The adrenal glands release about 30 different hormones and each of these hormones interact with other hormones, set off enzymatic and cellular reactions, and basically play a role in every reaction in the body. Plus, if there are problems with the adrenals, other glands like the hypothalumus, the pituitary, the thyroid, and the ovaries and testes are affected. I wish I could draw a chart, but if you think of overtraining and stress at the top of a pyramid, burn-out as the next section below it with causal arrows going both ways because these things tend to work like a vicious cycle, the one below it as CFAI, then hormonal dysfunction, then mitochondrial dysfunction (mitochondria are like the engines of the cell), liver detoxifying problems, bowel dysfunction, hypothlamic dysfunction, immune dysfunction, low neurotransmitters, poor sleep, metabolic disturbances, susceptibility to injury, and susceptibility to infections. It's actually less like a pyramid and more like a square with each of these things in boxes with arrows going both ways connecting them.
Some clinicians feel that CFAI causes ligament laxity and feel this is why athletes with burn-out are prone to back injuries (the spine, as I'm sure you know, is chuggy jam with ligaments; some anatomists even describe the vertebral discs as ligaments) and sprains of the ligaments of the knee, ankle, and shoulder. The bottom line is that it's easy for the chain reaction of athletic burn-out to get started, but once it starts, it's much harder to get things back to homeostasis. Also, not everyone agrees on how athletic burn-out works. Some researchers feel it starts in the adrenal glands while others feel it starts in the brain. Still others feel it starts in the hypothalamus and others feel it's primarily clinical depression. I think it starts in the adrenal glands and that the changes in the release of cortisol is what makes burn-out so confusing and difficult to treat. The adrenals can be releasing too much cortisol and because of the compensation by the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland (what's called the hypothalamic-pituitaryaxis), the athlete feels exhausted all the time. OTOH, the adrenals can be releasing too LITTLE cortisol and because of the compensation by the hypothalamic-pituitar axis, again the athlete feels exhausted all the time. So you have opposite responses in terms of release of cortisol, but the "symptom" is the same--exhaustion. From this one example I hope you can see why it's difficult to say aerobic athletes will have these kinds of problems vs. anaerobic athletes who will have these kinds of problems. A lot of it depends on the individual and a lot of it depends on what stage of burn-out the athlete is in.
Just to make things more complicated, there is a genetic component to all this. Some people you can whack around like a rag doll and make them do hard labor 18 hours a day their whole lives and they never experience anything like burnout. Some people are just born with the genes for super resilient systems. Other people are the opposite. If an athlete lacks resilience, there's not much s/he can do about it since it's genetic except be aware of it and try to do things like eat right, get enough sleep and rest, use stress management techniques, and don't overtrain. Unfortunately people usually don't find out these things until they start having problems and part of the competitive/athletic psyche is "I can do anything!" That's one of the reasons why I think Michelle is very wise to cut back on her competitive schedule at this point in her career. Let people critisize her all they want. In my book, she's smart to listen to her instincts and her body and ignore the naysayers.
Anyway, I'm kind of burned out myself, lol--just tired--so I'm afraid this is a very messy attempt at answering your questions. But as I said, the causes of burn-out are the same no matter what kind of athlete you are, even if the researchers disagree on the causes; the problems just manifest themselves differently depending on what stage of burn-out you're in and individual differences. But it's not a matter of anaerobic athletes like figure skaters having certain kinds of problems and aerobic athletes having a different set of problems. You may see psychological/emotional problems more often in elite skaters or gymnasts because it's more acceptable in their environments to be "temperamental" whereas in other sports the expected attitude may be "shut up and do your job." The latter athletes may express the psychological changes due to burn-out in different ways. Also, by psychological I don't mean it doesn't have a physiologic basis. Hormonal changes, changes in neurotransmitters, bloodflow to the brain--all these things affect a person's psychological and emotional well-being. How these changes are expressed can be a function of a lot of things.
So before I set myself up for poster burn-out, I will end this post and maybe even take a nap
Rgirl
PS I wrote this on another WP program and didn't see the added posts. Athletic burn-out is not the same as a slump. Although a slump may have elements of mild burn-out as part of it, an athlete can be feeling great and in great shape and go through a slump, ie, a period where a baseball player just can't hit, pitch, or field like s/he's used to. For a skater, a slump might be where a normally consistent jumper has a season with a lot of inexplicable falls. Burn-out is a physiologic cascade of problems, so yes, a skater can feel symptoms of burn-out in terms of "lead legs." Remember, some skaters are training for six to eight hours a day, including off-ice training and repeated run-throughs of their programs. It's not the kind of training an endurance athlete does, but if their body gets out of whack as I described above, muscle pain can be a symptom for any kind of athlete.
The problem you described of doing a long bike ride and your legs continuing to feel like "lead" even weeks after sounds to me like a recovery problem. Whenever you exert yourself "to the max" there are small microtears in the muscles; in fact that's what delayed muscle soreness is from, the inflammation due to those small microtears. It also sounds like it could be a hormonal problem. When you push yourself that hard, and I'm assuming you were training hard before this particular ride, the adrenal glands release a lot of cortisol. Sometimes after a marathon, for example, runners experience a feeling of exhileration for almost a week after the event, then on day 7 they crash and literally can't get up. This is because the body gets on this cycle from both training and the race of releasing lots of cortisol, along with adrenaline and other "go go" hormones. Because of the excitement of the race, the body keeps releasing these "go go" hormones for days after the race until it goes through its reserve supply and the person "crashes."
Of course, I'm going on the assumption that you are otherwise healthy. If you continue for another week or so to feel exhausted in general and with the heaviness in your legs without improvement, it would be my advice that you see a good sports medicine physician. In the meantime, rest, don't push yourself. Take a B-complex supplement, calcium, magnesium, and vitamin C. If you already take these in a general supplement or separately, increase them. You also might try drinking a full bottle of Pedialyte, which is available in most drugstores, for electrolyte replacement. I think grape is the least offensive flavor, lol, and it's best very cold though don't put ice in it, drink it right from the bottle. Don't waste money on sports drinks. Eat well. Sleep and rest as much as possible. Keep the lights low at night and the shades down during the day. I'm just trying to thing of stuff off the top of my head. It sounds to me like an acute experience of overexertion and exhaustion, and if it is you want to make sure you recover thoroughly. The toughest problem with athletes is that they are so highly self-motivated, they want to get back to training ASAP. But take your time. And like I said, if you feel no improvement over the next week or two, see a good sports medicine physician.
Good luck and if you want to PM me, feel free. I don't know if I can help, but I'd be happy to try. Rgirl
