Overtraining...An Overlooked Issue

A few years back during my college years the word overtraining did not exist in my personal dictionary or my friends' that I trained with on a continuous basis. It was like a non-stop mission searching for the Holy Grail.

This means in "gym lingo" we keep weight lifting day after day whether we have homework, finals, or even worse a public speech, It did not matter to us if we still got together and exercised until we built a satisfactory size of guns or biceps.

I say impressive arms are where walkers and people driving their cars will make a complete stop just to admire our hyoooge biceps bursting out of the x-small t-shirts which we have struggled wearing almost every darn day.

Yup, we were completely superficial and shallow individuals, but we did not see it that way; and who cared at the time as long as you had people who admired you and gave you complements every now and then.

But you see the problem was we could not find our Holy Grail that we had been searching for and working hard for in the gym all that time. And we did not quite understand why the heck that was?!

Then we started reading more information from different avenues beside bodybuilding magazines that were more realistic to fitness enthusiasts like you and me.

We are interested in building decent muscle size and we are not like those professional bodybuilders who might use steroids and other drugs enhancing performance.

Therefore, we can do weight training almost non-stop and still make progress in muscle size beyond the normal look you and I are striving to attain.

So I started reading about overtraining and how damaging overtraining can be to your body. And what was even better I started reading my exercise physiology other health promotion textbooks where our path was enlightened by having more knowledge even though it was boring to read through the scientific abstracts and jargons at that time.

Let me first give a basic definition but which is fairly easy for the average person to digest.

Overtraining basically is when individual is working out using high intensity (lifting heavy weights) or high volume ( lifting lighter weights but more reps and more frequent) without an adequate rest so the body can recover.

Examples of overtraining signs and symptoms are like:

- Reaching a plateau (stop progressing in building muscle size or strength)

- Start to feel weaker- where your muscle size and strength developments are decreasing, and that is one scary thought for us that you don't want getting there!!!

- Feeling fatigue- you don't feel like working out just to name a few, and there are other signs and symptoms that I had during my non- stop weight lifting.

- Being moody- easy things can aggravate you like seeing a nerdy student chatting with a good looking girl in the gym and stuff like that.

- The immune system can get weaker- due to the physical stress you put on your body during the workouts. Then the body can be more vulnerable to getting sick and takes a longer time for recovery.

- Poor quality of sleep- sleep can get interrupted so your anabolic hormones and recovery won't be optimal; therefore, muscle stagnation -aka- reaching a plateau and strength will diminish like mentioned above.

- Emotional crisis - watching programs on TV like rerun episodes of the Bonanza where Hoss gets rejected from a chick who was sending the wrong signals but she really like his younger brother!

That is just plain wrong and sad and can bring tears to your eyes. Yes, I do watch the Bonanza episodes, and I don't care what you say.

- Getting jittery and feeling restless - this is another sign of overtraining. It feels like you overdosed on espressos and your central nervous system (CNS) gets hyper-stimulated.

This is particularly true for individuals who are lifting heavy weights for a prolonged time which usually can last 6 weeks or longer.

How Far Are You From Overtraining?

That is an important question you need to ask yourself if you have one or more of the above signs. Ask yourself if you have been lifting heavy weights or doing another type, and if you have been practicing strenuous physical training for a lengthy time have you been experiencing lately some of the above signs?

Even if you workout a few times a week like three or four days/week which sounds reasonable, still, this can be too demanding on the mental and physical state of your body, because of the other added psychological stresses.

As we all know, having stress in our daily life can and should be healthy, but the issue here is that we sometimes put ourselves in too stressful situations and don't know how to get out of it at the right time.

Eating nutrient-dense foods to feed every cell in your body and strengthen the immune system will help you to cope with stressful situations (to a certain degree) is also critical. And when I say "to a certain level" that foods can help you is because there is no replacement other than minimizing or if possible eliminating the cause of this particular overwhelming stress.

If that particular stress happened to be too much physical exercises then stop and take a few days of rest to recover.

The same thing with occupational stress which can be much harder to avoid but still you should at least try to minimize or lessen the frequency and /or the intensity of your workouts, and that way your body does not receive a double whammy of stressful situations.

Wrapping It Up

Many experts agree that the psychological and the physical stressful situations have similar physiological negative effects if these stresses are overwhelming and continue for a long time.

I can go so far and say that it can be even deadly if it goes beyond your body's threshold, but I know most of you are smart enough not to even step close to that zone.

So be observant and listen to your body all the time if it starts aching and complaining outside the norms; then maybe it is good time to lay off for a while and enjoy life like watching squirrels chased by the neighbors' cats or something like that.

However, best of all, and this goes for you muscleheads out there, if you want to build impressive bodies where you can put on the x-small size T-shirt and have people stand still and admire your physique, then you should prevent overtraining as much as you can, period.