People tend to look at load as the problem, but more often than not, it's the lack of space between your peaks that ends up catching up with you.
For anyone in Singapore’s functional fitness scene, it’s becoming very easy to move from one competition straight into preparation for the next. As both a physiotherapist at Activex Physio and someone who trains in this space, I know how quickly the thought process shifts from “I just raced” to “okay, what’s next?”
A few days after the competition, you might actually feel pretty good. Your strength numbers are still there and the soreness settles, so training starts ramping up again. But are you just recovered enough to train again, or have you actually given your body enough space to tolerate another peak? Here’s what this article covers: why back-to-back competitions catch up with you, the early signs your body isn’t keeping up, what to focus on between competition blocks, and the questions to ask before your next build.
Why do back-to-back competitions catch up with you?
When back-to-back competitions catch up with you, the cause is more often a mismatch between what your tissues can currently tolerate and recover from, and what you’re repeatedly asking them to do. Running, lifting, sleds, lunges and jumps aren’t inherently bad for you, and appropriate loading is how we build stronger, more capable tissues.
Competition often sits at the peak of a training block, where you’re working closer to your limit and accumulating repeated efforts under fatigue. The issue comes when the next build starts before you’ve had enough time to address what the last one exposed.
That doesn’t automatically mean injury. But if the same area was already becoming the limiting factor, rolling straight into another peak gives you less room to rebuild its capacity before asking it to tolerate more.
How do you know your body isn’t keeping up?
It's often the pattern over time that tells you more than how you feel after one hard session. Maybe your Achilles settles once you warm up, so training still feels manageable, but the first few steps the next morning are getting stiffer, more painful, or taking longer to ease.
Maybe your knee pain settles when training drops, then returns as soon as running and lunges increase again. Some signs you might start noticing are:
- symptoms showing up earlier in training
- stiffness taking longer to settle
- the same niggle returning every time load increases
These may suggest that your current loading is starting to outpace what that tissue can tolerate and recover from. And even as the events change, whether it’s Turf Games, Engine, Hyrox or something else on the calendar, there can still be plenty of overlap in the tissues and movement patterns being repeatedly loaded.
What should you focus on between competition blocks?
The space between competition blocks is for rebuilding what the last block exposed.
1. Take some of the peak load out. You don’t need to stop training completely. For a short period, reduce the exposures that placed the greatest demand on you during the previous block.
2. Use your last block as information. What became the limiting factor once fatigue and volume increased? If the same area repeatedly struggled, that gives you something specific to address before starting the next build.
3. Build capacity instead of repeatedly testing it. If something flares, the answer isn’t necessarily to stop loading it. Instead of repeatedly testing the same high-demand movement, use the gap between events to progressively strengthen and reload that area so it’s better prepared for the demands of the next block.
Training is where you build capacity. Competition is the stage where you test what you’ve built.
Questions to ask before your next build
Before you start building toward your next competition, it may be worth asking yourself:
- Are any symptoms from the last block still lingering?
- Has that area actually improved, or did it simply settle when load dropped?
- Will my next event place similar demands on that same area?
- Am I giving myself enough time to rebuild between peaks, or mostly moving from one to the next?
There’s no perfect number of weeks that everyone needs between competitions. A more useful question is whether your body is keeping up with the calendar you’ve chosen.
The Bottom Line
Back-to-back competitions aren’t automatically a problem, and load itself isn’t something we need to be afraid of. But the closer together your peaks become, the more intentional the space between them needs to be, especially if something from the last block is still trying to catch up.
Use that space to rebuild what the last block exposed, then take that extra capacity into the next competition.
If you want help building the space between competitions around your specific training block, you can book in with me from our pricing page here.
Written by Isabelle Chow | Physiotherapist, Functional Fitness & Running Specialist, Activex Physio Singapore
