Are you experiencing increased soreness, unusual joint&tendon aches, poor moods & performance ? You might be over-trained!
If you are an intermediate or an advanced athlete and have been experiencing poor moods and performance, unusual aches around your joints and tendons or lack of sleep; you might be overtrained.
People who are just getting started, do not need to worry about over-training just yet.
Overtraining is an imbalance between training and recovery, exercise and exercise capacity, stress and stress tolerance. Stress is the sum of training and non-training stress factors. Basically, it is loading up your body with more stress than it can handle. As the stress accumulates without allowing the body to ever recover from it; overtraining may lead to an injury, poor moods&performance, lack of sleep, unusual joint&tendon aches. There is another concept relevant to over-training which is over-reaching.
Overreaching:
Overreaching precedes overtraining and that symptoms of overtraining are more severe than overreaching. Over-reaching leads, after the recovery period, leads to super compensation ending with better performance and a stronger body. Key difference between over-reaching and over-training is allowing the body to recover enough to super-compensate. Over-reaching is our friend and we should strive for it as long as it is followed by a proper recovery period.
Over-training, on the other hand, should be avoided and will not benefit athletes. Over-training occurs as a sum of all stress factors in our life. Going through a non-training related stressful period such as a break-up, relocating or a job change could increase the stress levels outside of the gym. These factors should also be considered while adjusting training volume and recovery period.
How would I know if I am over-trained ?
A simple 4 question self-survey is helpful to assess recovery:
1- How is your sleep?
2- How are your energy levels?
3- Are your muscle&joint aches worse than usual?
4- How is your strength?
If you can find it hard to be honest or come to a conclusive result with this survey, you can use heart rate variability as a gauge.
Time interval between heartbeats= hrv. As a rough proxy, you can measure average morning heart beat rate. You can establish a normal morning average morning heart rate. If you see a change of more than 10%, it’s a sign you should reduce your workload. A deload week is an ideal way to do just that. It helps
1- to prevent overuse injuries, and
2- re-sensitize the body to training.
Tips for more seasoned athletes:
The day following the training day, a lighter set than a working set can be performed to increase blood flow and create cell stimulus. It helps fastening the DOMS recovery. We are talking about a light set of 10-15 % of your 1 rep max for 12-15 reps.
References:
1- Overtraining in endurance athletes: a brief review PMID: 8350709
2- Does overtraining exist? An analysis of overreaching and overtraining research PMID:15571428
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