When it comes to your fitness program, more is not always better. Just as it’s important to exercise your body on a regular basis, it’s also critical to allow your body time to recover from those strenuous workouts. Now I realize you’re thinking, I just got myself motivated to GO to the gym, and now you want me to take time off?!? But trust me, even one day off each week will give your body the time it needs to repair muscle damage, refuel energy stores, and everything else it needs in order to give you the results you want. That’s right – if you don’t let your body rest from its training, your results will suffer… along with your performance, your muscle strength, your energy, etc. And if you continuously deprive yourself of rest between workouts, you put yourself at risk of developing overtraining syndrome.
What Is Overtraining Syndrome (OTS)?
Exercise has a myriad of health benefits, from lowering blood pressure and cholesterol to increasing energy and reducing risk of injury. Ironically though, too much exercise will cause the opposite to occur. With overtraining syndrome, you could experience a higher resting heart rate, higher blood pressure, less energy, more injuries… the list goes on. You fall victim to overtraining when you continuously exercise in excessive amounts without planned recovery time. This behavior will inevitably lead to injury, chronic fatigue, and a host of other symptoms that not only hurt your performance, but will require time off to recover from.
One such consequence of overtraining syndrome is the overuse injury. As the name implies, this type of injury occurs from repetitive movements performed over an extended period of time. Although not always associated with overtraining, an overuse injury can be a preliminary sign to step back from your training a little. Overuse injuries can also be caused by muscle imbalances or inflexibility that have gone unchecked or by training too hard for your fitness level. Examples here would include runner’s knee, swimmer’s shoulder, tennis elbow, shin splints, tendonitis, and IT band syndrome. If you are suffering from an overuse injury, allow yourself time to heal with plenty of rest, icing of the injured area, and cross-training with different activities.
What Causes Overtraining Syndrome?
Overtraining is usually caused by one of these situations: 1) not enough planned recovery time in a training program, 2) too much high-intensity training, 3) increasing the intensity or frequency of your training too quickly (a good guideline is to increase your workout intensity by no more than 5 to 10% at a time), or 4) a combination of too much training, too much stress, and too little sleep – all of which have an impact on your body’s ability to rest, repair, and recover.
A carefully designed program must include adequate recovery time, during which your muscles build strength, heal minor tissue damage, synthesize proteins, and refuel. The length of time required is determined by the type and intensity of your workout and your individual fitness level. This is the central reason why strength training is done on non-consecutive days; the body needs about 48 hours to rest and repair before you challenge it again.
Signs & Symptoms
So how do you know if you’re overtraining?
I’ve compiled a list of the various symptoms that have been linked with OTS, although you won’t necessarily experience all of them. In fact, the most universal symptom of overtraining is chronic fatigue, so pay attention to your body! If you feel tired, rest. A day off here and there is better than having to take a few months off down the road…
Symptoms of Overtraining Syndrome
- Chronic fatigue
- Elevated resting heart rate
- Decreased post-exercise heart rate recovery
- Increased blood pressure
- Hypoglycaemia (low blood sugar) during exercise
- Decreased performance during workouts
- Decreased motor coordination
- Continual muscle soreness
- Digestive upset
- Restlessness
- Loss of appetite
- Sleeplessness
- Sudden weight loss
- Headaches
- Frequent sicknesses
- Lethargy
- Irritability
- Depression
Prevention
Planning recovery time into your program is the key to preventing an overtrained body. Monitor your fatigue levels, increase your training intensity only gradually, rest when tired, and include cross-training in your workouts to add variety and discourage repetitive movements. Also be sure to train opposing muscle groups equally and address any muscle imbalances in order to prevent possible overuse injuries.
In the end, it’s important to listen to your body. Exercise can significantly improve your quality of life, but as with anything else, it has its limits. If you take the time to recover between workouts now, then you lessen the chance that you’ll have to take months off later.
I’ll be addressing the concept of cross-training in my next article, so be sure to subscribe to my posts!
