The term overtraining was introduced by Hatfield (1988) to describe a series of symptoms caused, substantially, by an altered relationship between training and recovery.
Overtraining is a fairly frequent condition, a rather complex syndrome whose causes must be sought in various triggering factors.
Let's look at the diagram shown in the figure: the results, intended as the improvement of athletic performance, depend essentially on:
- training: it causes stress to the organism and stimulates it to adapt by improving its performance skills;
- diet: ensures the energy substrates needed during training and recovery;
- rest or recovery: set of modifications and physiological adjustments that allow the body to restore the psycho-physical equilibrium that a situation of stress (training) has gone to alter.
As we can see by looking at the different figures, it is sufficient that only one of these three elements be altered to negatively influence the results. If these deficiencies persist over time you can enter the aforementioned overtraining phase, with stagnation or even involution of the service.
Causes of Overtraining
- excessive training and inadequate to one's lifestyle
- excessively standardized workouts
- insufficient sleep
- lifestyle too stressful
- too frequent competitions
- Health problems
- inadequate and / or unbalanced diet
- food poisoning from excess of certain supplements
- psychological problems (relational, family, social, work, etc.)
How to recognize Overtraining?
Overtraining can occur through one of the following symptoms:
- accelerated resting heart rate
- excessive fatigue during training even at medium-low heart beats; difficulty raising heart rate during training; difficulty in lowering the frequency to normal values during recovery
- apathy, insomnia, irritability, depression
- amenorrhea (in women)
- excessive weight loss
- loss of appetite, overwhelming desire for sweets
- recurrent infections, lowering of the immune defenses
- hormonal changes: excess of cortisol, ACTH and prolactin
- chronic muscle soreness, tendinitis and joint problems
If you recognize some of these symptoms, it is good to rest for at least a week or two, consuming slightly more than the normal amount of nutrients.
- High cortisol and low cortisol in overtraining
- Are you over training? Here is the test
Prevention
The prevention of overtraining is very important as it is very easy to get into this condition and it is very difficult to get out of it. The strategies to prevent it include:
APPROPRIATE REST: allow yourself a fairly long rest period between training sessions; sleep at least 7-8 hours a night; improve the quality of sleep (controlled temperature and humidity, suitable mattress etc.); promote recovery with massages, creams or salt baths and hot water
POSITIVE MENTAL APPROACH: accepting your own limits, facing them with the conviction that with commitment and willpower you can overcome
PERIODICALLY CHECK YOUR OWN HEMATIC VALUES: in particular hematocrit, hemoglobin, testosterone, cortisol, ACTH, prolactin, lymphocytes; if there is a decrease in hematocrit and hemoglobin and / or a decrease in the testosterone / cortisol ratio and / or an increase in neutrophils, eusinophols and basofoli, it is likely that we have entered a phase of super training
FOLLOW A BALANCED DIET: take the various nutrients in the right proportions (ranging from sports to sports); if you follow a high-protein diet, take a few days to reduce protein intake and increase your glucose intake; do not demonize fats, but take them in the right proportions; allow yourself days when you take in high quantities of calories.
TAKE SUPPLEMENTS WITHOUT ABUSING: the use of supplements can be useful in case of reduced dietary intake or excessive consumption during physical activity; for this purpose it is possible to use multivitamin and mineral supplements, glutamine, BCAA, antioxidants, iron and folic acid, maltodextrin and mineral salts during training. Many other products fall into the category, what matters is that their intake is not causal but linked to a proven lack.
ADAPT TRAINING TO YOUR OWN LIFESTYLE: obviously, those who lead a particularly stressful lifestyle, full of commitments and exhausting activities both physically and mentally, cannot expect to train like those who work a few hours a day sitting behind a desk.
GIVING PERIODIC REGENERATION PERIODS: within your training program, plan a week of discharge at the end of each mesocycle; at the end of each microcycle suspend the main activity for a few weeks and allow yourself a rest period characterized by the practice of recreational activities.
Read Also: All Remedies for Overtraining »
Overtraining and Body Building
Bodybuilding is probably the sport with the highest risk of overtraining. In many cases after the initial encouraging progress, muscle development stops and the performance remains almost unchanged over the years.
The causes of this phenomenon are to be found precisely in overtraining. Body building is a very expensive activity for our body, just think that every extra kilogram of muscle mass increases daily caloric consumption by about 50 kcal. For our body, used since ancient times to save as much energy as possible to survive periods of famine, this increased energy expenditure is a serious problem.
By continuing to train, ignoring the correct recovery times (which are far longer than commonly thought), a hormonal profile is gradually established that makes any further purchase of muscle mass difficult.
With the due differences between the various types of athletes (easy gainer, hard gainer), progress inevitably passes through nutrition and recovery; the more and better you eat and the sooner you recover; the type of training is less important: that muscle exhaustion is reached with a few heavy series or with medium-low loads and short recovery periods, with supersets or stripping, with heavy duty or with other advanced techniques, it does not matter, what really matters is to recover the stress of training. Such as?
Eating every two to three hours (5-6 meals a day), sleeping enough but not too much because during prolonged sleep excessive muscular catabolism occurs, training with rationality abandoning the concept "the more I do the better".
Do you really think you can recover from the heavy Friday night workout by spending the night in a nightclub with alcohol and cigarette smoke? Or you train intensely and devote the same commitment to nutrition and rest, or it is better to dramatically decrease the volume and intensity of your workouts.
See also: overtraining
