To get results from your workouts, you need to place stress on your body. Without subjecting your body to a certain amount of controlled stress, it won’t adapt and become stronger or develop greater endurance. Fitness training is a balancing act. You need enough “controlled” stress to cause it to change but not so much that you burn yourself out or get injured.
You’ve probably heard the term “overtraining” used a lot. Overtraining is a more severe form of “overreaching.” Overreaching refers to fatigue and declines in performance that comes from placing too much stress on your body without giving your body time to recover between sessions. It usually responds to a few days of rest or a change in routine. Overtraining is a more extreme form of training exhaustion that often includes physical signs and symptoms like changes in heart rate and blood pressure, psychological symptoms like anxiety or depression. Athletes who fall into the overtraining category usually need several weeks of rest to recover. Most overtraining falls into the category of overreaching, not severe enough that you have to take weeks off from exercise to recover.
When you overreach, you may not get the results you expected despite the intensity of your workouts. That’s because your muscles aren’t getting sufficient recovery time to make the adaptations they need to make to grow and change.
Listen to Your Body
The best approach is to avoid overreaching AND overtraining. This requires a balanced exercise routine and awareness of how your body feels on a given day. The trite saying about “listening to your body” still carries a lot of wisdom. It is important to listen to what your body is telling you. It’s normal to feel tired after a workout, but if you feel exhausted and lack motivation for the next two days, you’re probably pushing too hard.
Overreaching can also come in the form of psychological staleness. You simply aren’t enjoying what you’re doing as much as you did or you’re feeling down or irritable. If you don’t listen to your body and try to “push through,” overreaching can become overtraining and take weeks to resolve.
Add Variety to Your Fitness Routine
The best approach is to avoid reaching the point where you’re “overreached.” One way to do this is to add variety to your workout. After tackling a high-intensity workout, do a lower intensity one the next day. Hardcore, high-intensity workouts can be exhausting just as training with heavy weights to failure can be. You already know how important it is to let the muscle groups you worked through strength training rest for at least 48 hours. Do the same with high-intensity cardio workouts. Don’t do high-intensity workouts two days in a row. With so many workout options from low-impact step to circuit training and yoga, you have lots of options for working out. Take advantage of that. Variety will help you avoid psychological staleness too. It also reduces your risk of injury by not repeatedly hammering the same muscles and joints over and over in the same way.
Another way to avoid the exhaustion that goes with overreaching is to incrementally increase the volume and intensity of your workouts. A sudden increase in intensity and volume raises your risk for overreaching and for injury. Put aside your eagerness to “get fit fast” aside and gradually add training volume and intensity. Keep an exercise journal. Write down what you do but, just as importantly, write down how you feel afterward. Doing this will help you monitor your body more closely.
The Importance of Nutrition
Factors other than exercise put you at risk for overreaching, especially excessive calorie restriction. The stress of training increases your requirements for protein and carbohydrates. Protein is important for muscle repair and recovery, and you need carbohydrates to replenish muscle glycogen. In addition, you need more calories when you’re burning them up during your workouts. Without a balanced intake of macronutrients and calories, your body is less able to recover after a workout.
Though low-carb diets are still somewhat popular, they’re not ideal if you’re doing high-intensity workouts. A study carried out at the University of Birmingham found runners that trained intensely and ate a low carb diet experienced fatigue, muscle soreness, decreases in performance and mood changes. The symptoms improved once their carbohydrate intake increased. After a workout, help your muscles recover by eating a protein/carbohydrate snack. Just as importantly, make sure you’re not cutting your calorie intake too low even if you’re trying to lose weight. In women, under-eating and overreaching can lead to cessation of menstrual periods and bone loss.
The Importance of Sleep
Just as your muscles need time to recover after a workout, your brain needs time to “reboot.” Give it the opportunity by getting 7 to 8 hours of sleep a night. One sign that you’re overreaching may be sleep problems. Pushing your body too hard can over-activate your sympathetic nervous system, the “fight or flight” part of your nervous system that revs you up. As a result, you may have problems falling asleep, staying asleep or have early morning awakenings. Stress hormones may increase and suppress your immune system leading to an increased risk for colds and other infections.
How Can You Tell if You’re Overreaching?
Excessive fatigue, lack of motivation, poor sleep quality, sore muscles, decreased performance, weight loss, lack of appetite, irritability can all be signs you’re overreaching. One objective sign you can follow is your morning pulse rate. Take your pulse as soon as you wake up in the morning before getting out of bed. Keep a record of it. If you have a pulse rate that’s five or more beats above your baseline in the morning, take a few days off to recover.
As mentioned, keeping a workout journal and documenting how you feel after each workout will make you more aware of when you’re overreaching. You should feel tired after a workout but you shouldn’t feel exhausted for the rest of the day. If your workout performance is declining and you lack motivation, you may need some time to recover.
References:
Sports Performance Bulletin. “Recovery: how the right nutrition can help prevent overtraining”
Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2014 May;46(5):1036-45. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000000177.
Best Practice & Research Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages 191-209, June 2003
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?
How to Reduce After-Exercise Fatigue