I was teaching BODYPUMP the other day and mentioned , before class, about being tired from subbing so much lately. I don’t know the context of it but I apparently mentioned how I had to adjust myself in order to avoid overtraining. Someone came up to me and asked about it .. as this was something she was not familiar with.
Yes, while it’s more common for people to not train it can also be the opposite. Let’s discuss.
Sometimes it happens like this .. people start seeing results or people ‘get in the zone’ and refuse to back down. Then, they decide to go go go, thinking they’ll hit their goal faster. Instead of that your body starts throwing up warning signs that you are simply pushing too hard.
The definition, according to Wikipedia, is as follows:
Overtraining is a physical, behavioral, and emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of an individual’s exercise exceeds their recovery capacity. They cease making progress, and can even begin to lose strength and fitness. Overtraining is a common problem in weight training, but it can also be experienced by runners and other athletes.
What does that mean? In a nutshell we need to balance our workouts with rest and recovery.
Do you think that you could be overtraining? You may ask … What are the signs of overtraining? There can be a few…
- Your sleep patterns are off. Typically associated with insomnia, overtraining will disrupt your sleep patterns significantly.
- Illness. Are you working out a bunch and find your sleep sick more often? That is your bodies way of breaking down, not being strong enough to fight off health issues. It’s trying to tell you something!
- More prone to injuries. If you find yourself getting injured more often, that is because you have not given your muscles time to repair and rebuild. The muscles are continuing to be challenged in a more and more weakened state, and in this state injury can occur more often.
- Lack of progress. There was a guy that became so obsessed with getting to his goals that he started eating less and less, working out more and more often. Guess what happened? He stopped progressing. When you are overtraining your muscles are constantly being challenged without any chance to recover. Now you are re-tearing torn muscles, again and again, and you start burning off muscle instead of fat. Rest, stay the course. Trust the process.
Well talk about tips to avoid overtraining in a future blog post.
Thanks for reading!
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