How To Avoid Overtraining

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Whether you’re an experienced and well trained athlete, or simply a 42 year old overweight and stressed out business owner, if you’re training for a particular goal, whether it be to win the 100 m at the next Olympics, or simply gain sight of your privates again by ridding yourself of that overhanging belly, chances are you’re going to have to do some fairly hard training.  But training hard and training smart is not the same thing.

Without getting into too much scientific gobble-de-gook your training regime is forcing your body to undergo some positive adaptations so that it changes.  For some, you are looking at burning more calories while sleeping so you can drop some kgs of body fat.   For other’s you’re simply trying to run as fast as you can for as long as you can, without collapsing on the footy field.

But there’s a fine line between positive and negative adaptations.

Lifting heavy can be good for your goals.  But too much lifting heavy and you can cause more damage than you can cope with and end up with an overuse injury.  You could become burnt out, mentally fatigued and lose motivation.

If you want to train hard without getting hurt, injured, tired, fatigued, burnt out or demotivated, you’ll need to follow a simple formula for success:

WORK HARD + RECOVER WELL = BEST PERFORMANCE

If you’re serious about achieving your goals then you’re using a training diary to record your training, nutrition and recovery programs.  If you’re not but wish to get one, I can help you.  Simply click here for further details.

No two people adapt to training and recovery in exactly the same way so it’s vitally important that you become accustomed to LISTENING TO YOURSELF, but how?  Easy, read on…

Your body gives off signals to let you know how you feel.  A classic sign of lowering oxygen levels to the brain is THE YAWN.  It usually happens at night time as your body slows down.  Hormones controlling your respiration rate cause oxygen levels to slowly lower.  A yawn is your body’s way of fighting this by attempting to grab some more.

By keeping a written record of certain body readings you can see at a glance how well (or NOT) your body is coping with your training, nutritional and recovery programs.

I recommend to all my clients that they keep a written record of their morning resting heart rate, their morning body weight, the quantity and amount of sleep and their fatigue levels and here’s why.

SLEEP:  Do you leap out of bed ready to attack the day?  Or do you smash the crap out of your alarm 3-4 times before dragging your head off your dribble ridden pillow?  One of the first signs of over training is consistently poor sleep patterns.  Given it’s when your body performs the best part of its recovery from the day, (and burns a truckload of calories if you’ve done the right sort of training) a great night’s sleep tends to indicate the brain has done its job.  On the flip side, a poor night’s sleep means the brain has had a hard day at the office.  Repeat this trend over a short period of time (5-10 days) and all of a sudden your training is directly impacted.  If you then try and force yourself to train harder, you’re on a slippery slope downward.

Record the amount of sleep in hours and the quality (a rating out of 5) over a 30 day period will give you some good data to work from.  Remember you’re looking for patterns and trends like a sudden change.

HEART RATE:  If you wake up every morning and take your pulse before getting out of bed, you’ll get a good idea of what your resting heart rate is.  Any time you wake and discover your heart rate is up (6-10 beats per minute higher than average) your body has not recovered (returned to homeostasis) and any training that day should be kept to a minimum (if at all).

DAILY BODY WEIGHT:  It’s unfortunate, but so many people today get hung up about a number on the scales.  If you’re training hard, you MUST MUST MUST be watching your body weight every day, not because you’re looking for the number to come down or go up, but because you need to track your water levels.  Dehydration hampers your ability to train severely.  Keeping hydration levels up means your body weight should only differ from day to day by .5 – 1.5 kgs.  Any more than that (in either direction) any your body is NOT adapting in a positive way to the training stress you’re placing on it.

If fat loss is your goal, remember fat and weight ARE NOT THE SAME THING.  Body weight is made up of water, bone, muscle and fat, where as fat is made up of well, FAT!!!  The scales don’t measure fat loss, they measure weight loss.

FATIGUE LEVELS:  Feeling tired and sore after training is a normal response to training.  Feeling fatigued all the time is a sign that you’re not adapting positively to al the stressors.  By recording your daily feelings you can see and monitor any trends.

Summary:

Heart rate, body weight, sleep and fatigue levels take 2 mins to track and provide valuable information so that you can make objective decisions about the way in which you follow your training, nutritional and recovery programs.

If you’re serious about achieving your goals you simply must keep an eye on whether you’re overtraining or not.