Overtraining Effects Around A Quarter Of All Athletes

Most adults nowadays probably don’t get the recommended amount of daily exercise of 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity. When you’re just getting started on your fitness journey, it’s all too easy to overtrain. In fact, overtraining is one of the biggest reasons why so many people stop going to the gym just a month or so after they start.

Overtraining effects around a quarter of all athletes, and these are people who have trainers and coaches looking out for them. When you’re on your own, it’s up to you to notice the signs. Otherwise, you could easily burn out and potentially even injure yourself.

What To Look For

You’ve probably heard people say no pain, no gain, but that’s not always a great way to look at workouts. Sure, you should push yourself when running or at the gym, but for people who are inexperienced, it’s all too easy to push yourself too hard. This is especially true when you’re first starting a program. It might be tempting to try to do as much as possible, but you should take a more slow and steady approach for a more sustainable workout plan.

So what counts as overtraining? According to the European College of Sport Science and the American College of Sports Medicine, it is defined as an accumulation of training and/or non-training stress resulting in long-term decrement in performance in which restoration of performance capacity may take several weeks or months. In layman’s terms, overtraining is the result of heavy training over a long period of time combined with additional stressors such as dieting, stress, or illness.

Of course, just because you pushed yourself hard one week doesn’t mean you’re overtraining.  Instead, you might be overreaching. You’ve probably experienced sore muscles and a bit of a performance drop after your first few workouts. If you rest for a day or so, you’ll be as good as new when you get back to the gym and maybe even see a boost in performance. However, if you continue to push through the fatigue and soreness for weeks on end, you’ll end up overtraining. If you’re worried about overtraining, there are a few things you should look out for as outlined below.

Elevated Resting Heart Rate

A healthy resting heart rate ranges between 60-100 beats per minute (bpm). If you’ve never measured your heart rate before and you don’t own a fitness tracker or smartwatch, you can measure it the old-fashioned way. Place two fingers gently against your wrist (don’t use your thumb). If that’s too hard to find, place your fingers against the artery on your neck. Set a timer on your phone for 15 seconds and then start counting the beats. After the time is up, multiply the number by 4. This will give you your heart rate.

If you’ve been overtraining you might notice that your heart rate has increased between 10-15 bpm. Of course, if you’ve only just started tracking your heart rate because you think you might be overtraining you won’t have a reference point. A higher than normal heart rate might also mean that you’re fighting off an infection. In either case, you should move on to the other symptoms below.

Muscle Soreness

Muscle soreness is a common experience for everyone who works out. This is especially true if you haven’t gone to the gym in quite some time. When you work your muscles harder or in a different way than they are used to, you cause microscopic damage to your muscle fibers. This results in the muscle soreness you feel after a workout. As you continue going to the gym, the soreness should eventually be less painful. 

While muscle soreness is common, if it lasts longer than 72 hours, you should take a rest day as this could be a sign that you are overtraining. Recovery days are just as important as your workout days. After all, it’s during your rest days that your muscles actually heal and start to build up. So if you’re looking to make some gains, make sure to take some days to rest.

Sleep Quality

Usually, a good workout can help improve your sleep quality. In general moderate-to-vigorous exercise can help reduce the amount of time it takes for you to fall asleep. Interestingly enough, it also helps reduce daytime sleepiness. With that said, if you exercise too late at night then it can actually make it harder for you to fall asleep. In general, you want to avoid doing any active exercise at least two hours before your bedtime.

However, if you are hitting the gym hard and feel exhausted but can’t go to sleep, it’s a sign you might be overtraining. When you exercise, your body releases a flood of hormones that help relax your body. When you overtrain you overstimulate your body, which makes it difficult to fall asleep. Insomnia can further reduce your performance as sleep is when your body recovers and heals from the day. On top of that, you’ll also deal with the after effects of sleep deprivation including fatigue, lack of focus, and more.

Feeling Under The Weather

Usually, the people who have a good workout regiment seem to be healthier than the average person. That’s because exercise helps improve blood flow, which in turn helps improve your overall immune system. You should be feeling healthier and stronger when you exercise.

So, what happens if you’re feeling under the weather more often than you’re feeling healthy? It’s a good sign that you’re probably overtraining. Without proper rest,  your body doesn’t have a chance to heal and recover properly. When your workouts start impacting your immune system, it’s time to rest.

Emotional Changes

Exercise can be a great mood lifter. Studies also find that working out can help ward off anxiety and feelings of depression, reduce stress, and even boost self-esteem. This is thanks to the natural cocktail of hormones that your body releases such as dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin. When you have a good workout you usually feel both relaxed but energized.

 However, when you overtrain your body it will throw your hormones out of whack. Men will have decreased levels of testosterone while women will have lower levels of progesterone and estrogen. All of which can lead to negative emotional changes such as depression, poor motivation, and even lack of concentration. If you’ve noticed this shift, step away from the weights and take some time off.

Injuries

As stated above, rest is imperative if you want your body to recover from the stress you put on it when exercising. All the small micro-tears made on your muscle fibers when working out won’t heal if you don’t actually take a rest day. It might seem counterintuitive, but working out too much can actually make you weaker. After all, the muscle fibers don’t have time to repair themselves, which is what improves their overall strength.

More importantly, you’ll become more prone to injury. Any small strain or tear will get exacerbated if you keep training. This, in turn, can lead to major injuries that can take months to heal. Not to mention, you can aggravate old injuries. If you notice that your small injuries just aren’t going away, stop and rest. Otherwise, you won’t give your body time to properly regain its strength.

Poor Results and Performance

One of the easiest ways to recognize overtraining is through your workouts. Hopefully, you’re keeping a workout journal so you can actually track your progress. Even if you’re not, you should be able to notice differences in your results and performance. While it’s normal to have occasional off days or even hit a plateau, if it’s an issue after multiple sessions, chances are you might be overdoing it.

Of course, there could be other factors at play. Your diet can play a huge role in your workout whether that means you changed up your diet recently or you haven’t changed it to keep up with your workouts. Even emotional changes can impact your performance. Other things like sleep and stress can also negatively affect  your workouts.

If you notice a decrease in performance and plateaued results, don’t keep working out. It will have the opposite effect. Instead, you should spend a little time away from the gym. Depending on how long you have been overworking this might be as little as a couple days to a week. If you’ve already reached the level of overtraining, it might take your body months to recover. Make sure you don’t get to that point and rest.

How to Avoid and Recover from Overtraining

Overtraining doesn’t happen overnight. It requires you to ignore your body’s cues to rest. The longer you push yourself, the longer it will take you to recover. Once you’ve reached the point of overtraining you may need to rest for six to eight weeks depending on the severity. If you feel like you’ve overtrained, it’s important to speak to your doctor to make sure that is the correct diagnosis as there may be other serious issues. Unfortunately, once you have been diagnosed with overtraining once, chances are you’ll be diagnosed again.

The best medicine in this case is prevention. While you likely won’t have access to high-tech lab equipment to measure your body exactly, there are a few things you can do to limit the threat of overtraining:

• Use a color-coded training log to measure your workout intensity between normal, hard, and very hard. If you’re noticing a lot of very hard or hard workouts, back off for a few days.

• If you’re feeling sick or sore, take time off to rest. It’s your body’s way of telling you to apply the brakes.

• Change up your workout program every couple of weeks. Not only does it break up the monotony, you’ll also avoid plateauing in your workouts as your body won’t have time to adjust to the new regiments.

• If you’re dealing with outside stressors, ease up on the workouts. It might sound counterintuitive, but stress can make you more prone to burnout.

• In your training log, always make sure to pencil in some days for rest so that your body has time to recover and gather strength.

• Take note of every cold and short-term illness. If you’re noticing a sharp incline, it might mean you are pushing yourself too much.

• Avoid heavy calorie-restrictions especially if you’re training for something like a marathon. Your body will need the extra calories to fuel itself.

It’s Important To Listen To Your Body To Avoid Overtraining

Even if you’re not going through the same intense workout schedule as a professional athlete, you can actually overtrain if your usual activity level suddenly jumps from inactive to very active. It’s important to listen to your body. If you’re noticing that you are getting sick a lot or not able to lift as much as a week ago, you should take some time off instead of pushing through.

Remember, recovery time is your friend and an important part of any workout plan. You should respect your rest days as much as you do your gym days. Of course, for best results you should also make sure to get enough sleep and eat a well balanced diet of whole grains, vegetables, lean protein, and healthy fats. If you’re just getting started with working out, you should see get a personal trainer to keep you on track.

Jessica Lauren is Founder, contributing Author and Owner of Citrus Sleep. Citrus Sleep is an online publication that highlights brands, sleep products, women’s fashion, subscription services and ideas creating positive social change and promoting a healthy lifestyle. After spending nearly a decade working in PR and marketing for several brands and startups, Jessica knows what truly drives conversions, sold-out launches and guest posts.

Follow Jessica at @jessicalaurencs | Jessica Lauren

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