Overtraining

How do you know if you are overtraining?  How do you know if you need to lay off your workouts for a while?  Here are some simple tips that I borrowed from Mark Sisson's website, Mark's Daily Apple.  Mark Sisson has 8 simple tips that you can use as a guide. 

1. You  fail to complete normal workouts.

He is not talking about normal failure.  He's talking about failure to lift the weights you usually lift, or run the way you usually run. It's about REGRESSION. If you’re actively getting weaker, slower, and your stamina is getting worse despite regular exercise, you’re probably training too much.  Pushing yourself to higher weights and failing at those is a normal part of progression, but if you’re unable to lift weights that you could before without any problems then you may be overtrained.

2. You lose leaness while exercising more.

 It’s all about the hormones. Sometimes, working out too much can actually cause muscle wasting and make you fat.  Your hormonal balance has been tipped. Your testosterone:cortisol ratio is off. Generally speaking, a positive T:C ratio means more muscle and less fat.  But a negative ratio means you’re either training too much, sleeping too little, or both. Too much cortisol will increase insulin resistance and fat storage especially around the abdomen. If you have been training super hard and your definition is disappearing then you may be overtraining.

3. You’re working out hard EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Odds are you are not a genetic freak that can lift heavy, sprint fast, and perform metabolic conditioning  every day of the week and recover like Wolverine.  Most people who maintain such a hectic physical schedule will not recover (this is where most of us are). Performance suffers, health deteriorates, and everything that you have worked to achieve will be compromised.  What he is saying is that if you are not Wolverine or a professional athlete, then training to this intensity will most likely lead to overtraining.

4. You feel restless, excitable, and unable to sleep in your down time.

When you overtrain, your sympathetic nervous system (your fight or flight system) dominates. Symptoms include hyperexcitability, restlessness, and an inability to focus even while at rest or on your off day. Your sleep is generally disturbed , recovery slows, and your resting heart rate stays elevated. In simple words, your body is reacting to a chronically stressful situation by incresasing your sympathetic stress system’s activity levels.

5. You’re primarily an endurance athlete, and you feel overly fatigued, sluggish, and useless.

Too much resistance training can cause sympathetic (fight or flight) overtraining.  Too much endurance work can cause parasympathetic overtraining. Parasympathetic (the oposite of fight or flight) overtraining causes decreased testosterone levels, increased cortisol levels, debilitating fatigue (both mental and physical), and a failure to lose body fat. Mark explains this by stating "being fit enough to run ten miles doesn’t mean that you now have to do it every day."  Take the time to rest, take some off days.  Be smart about your training and you can avoid overtraining.

6. Your joints, bones, or limbs hurt.

If you are sore beyond normal, if your joints are painful to the point that you cannot walk or move them without wincing then you may have overtrained.  if it takes you a week to reocover from one WOD then you may have trained too hard.  Listen to your body. Respect it.  It will be good back to you.

7. You’re suddenly getting sick more often.

What if you’re eating right, getting plenty of sun, and getting eight hours of solid sleep each night, but you find yourself still getting sick?  Your immune system may be suffering from the added stress of your overtraining. It is the natural progression for many athletes looking to improve their performance by working harder and longer. If you’ve recently increased your exercise output, and find yourself feeling sick or run down keep in mind that it may be a sign of overtraining.

8. You feel like crap hours and days after a big workout.

One of the benefits of exercise is the post-workout feeling of wellness the rush of endorphins that leave you feeling awesome. We all love it. Post-workout DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) is completely normal, but feeling like death (mentally and physically) is not especially if it leaves you feeling like never working out again.  Exercise is supposed to elevate your mood and leave you feeling good.  If it’s having a negative effect on your mood, it’s probably too much.

 There is a difference between training hard and overtraining.  Keep training hard but keep track of how you feel during and after your workouts.  Using your journal is a good way to keep track.  When writing down your times and weights add a note about how you felt coming into the workout and how you feel afterwards. 

For the people in my 5:30 class, I have looked through some of your journals and have noticed that only Zim is doing this.  I would like to see everyone doing this.  Trust me it will help you see changes in your workouts.  It will help you to see where improvements can be made.  If you need a reminder read my blog about journaling.