Symptoms of Overtraining
When you are eager to gain muscle mass there seems to be almost nothing more important than getting into the gym and hitting the weights as hard as you can as often as you can and therefore you tend to instantly dismiss any symptoms of overtraining. The problem with training so often is that your body can only take so much physical stress. Every time you train your muscles in the gym you actually make tiny micro tears in the muscle and these tears take 2-3 full days to recover and because of this it’s so easy to overtrain. Your muscles will never grow to their maximum potential if you don’t allow them adequate rest time to grow and fully recover from your previous workout. Sometimes symptoms of overtraining actually trick you into believing you aren’t training enough or are not getting any stronger so you end up pushing harder instead of taking a much needed break.
In terms of weight training frequency for maximum muscle growth more is certainly not better as the human body can only take so much work. Where the problem lies is in your eagerness to get bigger and stronger. You typically associate muscle and strength gain with more and more work in the gym when in fact it’s as much about getting adequate rest and allowing your muscles to fully recover than it is about workout frequency. The biggest professional bodybuilders in the world know this and that’s why many of them have months off at a time after a big show. You simply can’t keep training at 100% capacity all year round. Even the most advanced bodybuilder should take at least a full week off for every 12 weeks of straight training.
When it comes to training frequency everybody is different so there is no specific ideal when it comes to how many times you should workout each week and for how long. I maintain my body weight at 110+kg by working out 3-4 times per week. I never train anymore than this and I hit every body part at least once per week. I either train my whole body over 3 or sometimes 4 workouts per week. When I tried to keep up the intensity by training hard 5 times per week my body only got weaker, I felt tired all the time and I lost weight. So for me 3-4 workouts per week allows me to get stronger and my muscles always stay big and full.
Recently I had slight tear in one of my shoulders, it wasn’t bad but I decided to rest my whole body for a week instead of training around it. The following week I went on a holiday to
Although symptoms of overtraining are not always obvious some of the first symptoms of overtraining are a general feeling of lethargy or feeling tired more than usual. When you feel overtired you usually think that perhaps you aren’t getting enough sleep but when you look and see that your sleeping pattern has not changed outside of the normal, this can be a tell tale symptom of overtraining. Overtraining symptoms like tiredness, left unchecked will often lead to mental and physical fatigue. When you are fatigued you are more likely to become irritable and cranky at even the smallest of things that may not usually bother you. In this case you may even get an idea from the people around you that you are not acting like your normal self.
Symptoms of overtraining sometimes take time to manifest and may be so gradual that you don’t even notice a change in your usual behavior until it’s too late. As soon as you detect any overtraining symptoms it’s best to take a break. I usually take a week off when I feel overtrained. A week may sound like a long time to go without a workout but any good bodybuilder will agree it’s only a week and you can’t lose too much size in just one week, it would be a different story if someone told you to take a year off training, I’d certainly have a problem with that. You will find that you will come back bigger and stronger once you take some time off and then get back into your normal heavy duty training regime.
Some other common symptoms of overtraining include longer than average muscle soreness, a decrease in strength and a longer than normal recovery time with minor injuries. More serious injuries may require medical attention and you may need to consult a sports physician regarding a suitable length recovery period for your particular injury. Like I previously mentioned, you may be more tired than usual as a symptom of overtraining but if you can’t sleep even though you are overly tired, this is usually a sure sign of overtraining.
Symptoms of overtraining are often only minor signals at first that you may easily overlook but once you are aware of a few of the more common overtraining symptoms it’s best to take a rest. Even if you don’t take a full week off, at least give your body 3-4 days of extra rest on top of your normal schedule as a precautionary measure. As a general rule though, even if you are not suffering from any of the common symptoms of overtraining, I’d still recommend taking a full week off for every 12 weeks of high intensity training. At the end of the day, if taking some extra rest days helps make you bigger and stronger in the long run, it’s got to be worth it I reckon.
FitBuff.com's Total Mind and Body Fitness Blog
August 14th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Total Mind and Body Fitness Carnival #10…
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