At the dawn of the New Year, a lot of people are keen on getting in shape and shedding some of the holiday weight as part of their new year’s resolutions. Of course, this means, “eating healthy” and exercising. While altering your body composition is possible, it won’t happen overnight. Many of us lose sight of this because we want to achieve our “ideal” bodies A.S.A.P. Some people are under the impression that exercising with high frequency and high intensity leads to faster results. After all, “no pain, no gain,” right? I’m afraid that’s not the case and you could very well find yourself to be overtraining.
Overtraining is when the volume and intensity of the exercise exceeds your recovery capacity. As a result, you will stop making progress and even begin to lose strength and fitness. So how do you know if you’re overtraining? What happens to your body as a result of overtraining?
For starters, you may be exercising too much if you feel exhausted rather than energized after your session. Muscle fatigue epitomizes overtraining syndrome.
In addition, it has been shown that overtraining increases susceptibility to muscle, tendon, and ligament injuries. There is also potential for abnormal hormonal output, including changes to the menstrual cycle in women. In the long term, overtraining can leave you with mental stress, depression, and/or anxiety, which may be linked to the stagnating progress of your fitness levels. Prolonged, over-accumulation of such stressors lead to high cortisol levels. Cortisol has been known to reduce fat burning and increase fat storage as a result of elevated insulin levels. It can also burn away muscle mass for energy, ultimately making you weaker and fatigued with less muscle.
A lot of the detriments are related to the lack of recovery time when overtraining. For example, your immune system becomes significantly weaker, your muscle and energy stores become significantly depleted, and on top of all that, the muscle soreness will last for days – talk about feeling the burn! When you work your fast-twitch muscle fibers, it takes at least 48 hours for that fiber to heal and fully recover. So, if you train the same muscles everyday, you are pretty much beating a dead horse. Give yourself some time to rebuild those fibers that you worked on, otherwise your regime really is counterproductive. Another good way to combat this is “split training.” A “split” is a training program whereby you train different muscle groups on different days, which obviously gives you the rest time that you will need.
So what are some other things to keep in mind about overtraining?
With any sort of exercise regime, we must not forget two other vital components that go hand in hand with exercise: nutrition and sleep. If you have been overtraining, ensure your caloric intake is close to (or temporarily exceeds) your caloric expenditure. If the body is depleted in nutrients and in energy, it is important to increase the carbohydrate, lean protein and healthy fat intake, which will help the rebuilding process. The importance of sleep for recovery goes without saying. Even sedentary people need adequate sleep to function properly, so you can only imagine how much sleep you need if you are leading an active lifestyle. If getting enough sleep is a problem, or if you find it hard to fall asleep, check out my article on getting a better sleep right here.
Exercise is not a bad thing, but as for all things in health, everything in moderation. Let us know what you think about overtraining in the comments below. Remember, be safe, be smart, eat right, and hopefully you will get closer to your health-related goals.