Exercise places stress on your body. Stress isn’t always a bad thing. The right kind of exercise stress – controlled stress – ultimately makes you stronger, more powerful, or gives you greater endurance, depending upon the type of training you’re doing.
A certain degree of stress is beneficial and necessary to see change, but too much can have the opposite effect – interfere with fitness gains and leave you feeling burned out. When this happens, your performance begins to decline. Of course, you want to prevent this from happening, and you can if you follow some overtraining guidelines.
Monitor for Signs That You’re Overreaching
The term overreaching simply means you’re pushing your body too hard for the amount of recovery time you’re giving it. Overreaching is a more benign, self-limited form of “overtraining” that some trainers refer to as “underperformance syndrome.” Fortunately, you can usually correct overreaching with 10 to 14 days of modified training and more rest.
Overtraining is a more serious form of “pushing your body too hard.” It’s characterized by over or under-activation of your central nervous system and can take weeks or months to amend. That’s why you want to prevent it. To do that, you have to be aware of when you’re pushing yourself too hard or not resting enough between sessions. To do that, know your body and monitor it closely.
How do you know when you’re crossing the line? Monitor for subjective symptoms like excessive fatigue, injuries, sleep problems, lack of motivation, mood changes, and decreased performance as an indicator you’re pushing too hard. It’s also helpful to have an objective way to know if you’ve crossed the line. One of the best objective indicators is your resting heart rate.
Overtraining: Monitoring Your Resting Heart Rate
Your first-morning heart rate, before you get out of bed is a good indicator of whether your body is stressed. Here’s how to check yours:
Measure your heart rate when you wake up each morning BEFORE getting out of bed. Count the number of beats in 20 seconds and multiply by three. This will give you your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Record your heart rate each morning in a notebook. Your heart rate should stay within a narrow range, assuming you check it as soon as you wake up. If you find your pulse rate is elevated from baseline more than 7 beats per minute several times in a row, you’re not giving your body enough time to recover.
The signs of overreaching often come on gradually, although they can appear quickly if you suddenly increase the volume and intensity of your training. True overtraining, as opposed to overreaching, usually comes on gradually and can take weeks or months to become a real problem. Adapt the recovery time you give your body based on your workouts. If you do a lot of eccentric training, you’ll likely experience more soreness and fatigue and will need more time for your muscles to recover. Always wait at least 48 hours before retraining the same muscle group again.
Overtraining: Adjust Workout Intensity
If you believe that you’re pushing yourself too hard, based on your heart rate or how you feel, it’s time to dial back the intensity of your workouts. If you’re doing high-intensity interval training and weight training using heavy resistance, lighten up on the weight you’re using and increase the number of reps and do a circuit-style workout. Shorten your workouts and reduce the frequency with which you exercise. Cut your workouts back by at least 50%.
If you’re working out most days of the week, cut the frequency back to three days temporarily. If your morning heart rate is high several days in a row and you’re experiencing severe fatigue and performance declines, take 10 to 14 days off, depending on the severity of your symptoms. Don’t worry. You won’t lose your fitness gains and when you come back you’ll be stronger.
One way to avoid overreaching or overtraining is to alternate high-intensity workouts with lower intensity ones. If you did a kick-butt HIIT routine one day, follow it with a light, circuit workout or a yoga routine.
Overtraining: Optimize Nutrition
No matter what type of training you’re doing, nutrition is the key to performance. It’s not uncommon for women to reduce their calorie intake even when training hard in hopes of losing weight. If you’re placing your body under stress without giving it nutritional support, it can’t properly recover, not to mention your muscles can’t optimally grow either.
Make sure you’re fueling up before your workouts with a snack that has a ratio of 3 to 1 carbs to protein. The carbs help you replenish your muscle glycogen stores while protein gives your muscles the building blocks they need for recovery. Make sure you’re getting between 1.2 and 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight and eating enough unrefined carbohydrates – fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.
Overtraining: Rest and Recovery
Rest and recovery mean two things – enough rest time between workouts and sufficient sleep. Not getting enough of either increases your risk for overreaching and fitness burnout. The combination of intense training and lack of sleep elevates cortisol, a stress hormone produced by your adrenal glands. High cortisol reduces your immunity to infection and leads to muscle breakdown since it’s a catabolic hormone. Not consuming enough calories can also stress your adrenals and lead to greater release of cortisol. See how all of these factors tie together?
Overtraining: Manage Stress
To prevent overreaching and overtraining, make sure the rest of your life is balanced. We talked about how calorie restriction, lack of recovery time, and insufficient sleep can elevate your cortisol level, but so can stress. One of the goals of reversing overreaching and overtraining is to bring cortisol down and restore balance.
The Bottom Line
Yes, you need to train hard to make significant fitness gains, but don’t do it every day. Just as importantly, make sure the rest of your lifestyle supports your hard training and that you’ve optimized sleep, recovery, nutrition, and stress management. Balance is important no matter what your level of fitness.
References:
Competitor.com. “Think You’re Overtraining? Check Your Pulse”
Related Articles By Cathe:
5 Subtle and Not So Subtle Signs That You’re Training Too Hard
What’s Overreaching and How Does It Differ From Overtraining?
