Last night I was reading up on overtraining, fatigue and heavy legs, and I came across the following interesting article on runningtimes.com Cure Quad Pain, Calf Pain, and Heavy Legs. Rather than suggest to take a prolonged rest from running to cure "heavy legs", the author even goes so far as to suggest that you run more.
The key however is the intensity. He suggests that you do long, easy paced aerobic runs until you feel better. This remedy was originally devised by Arthur Lydiard, the legendary New Zealand coach.
One of New Zealand's distance running stars to embrace the "Lydiard way" was Rod Dixon. Whenever he woke up feeling as fatigued in the morning as he had when he went to bed, he would go for a run. "A long, slow aerobic run would always correct me", Dixon said. "And this was in the middle of my European track season!"
The article suggests that if one long run doesn't fix your dead legs, then you should do two, and if not two then you should do three. Sooner or later it says your legs will feel refreshed, and you won't have sacrificed months of training by taking a prolonged break.
It is an interesting deviation from the standard advice that coaches give, which is to take a complete break from running when overtraining is suspected.
What do you think - can running more actually help you to recover, or are you just making the situation worse than it already is?
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