Signs That You Might Be Overtraining.
Always tired?
Performance declining?
Weight plateau?
Trouble with Sleep?
What is Overtraining?
Overtraining is really just under-recovering, but it is when you are putting in a tonne of effort/ work in the gym without giving yourself adequate / appropriate time to recover from that stress.
This happens often for people whom have performance or body composition based goals, but lack the guidance on how to structure rest and recovery into their training.
How do you prevent Overtraining?
Giving your body the necessary time it needs to recover (rest days out of the gym) can be immensely helpful, but there are some other factors that can come into play. Like getting enough sleep, eating enough food and developing a mindfulness practice to help manage stress.
Here are the signs you may be Overtraining?
You’re always tired.
No matter how much coffee you drink, no matter if you take ‘it easy’ in the gym or not, you are always tired.
It might be hard to wake up in the mornings, or you might just feel super gassed during workouts that wouldn’t normally do that to you.
This can also appear as brain fog/ trouble with concentration.
Your performance is declining.
You’re not progressing on your lifts, or you might even be regressing. Maybe lifts that were once 80% effort, are now feeling like you’re maxing out.
You might get gassed early in workouts, find it hard to maintain paces that you normally could, or you might not be able to tap into that extra gear that you once had.
Your weight has plateaued.
This is if you are training for weight loss or body composition and you notice that you are no longer steadily losing weight or seeing changes in your body composition.
Even if you decrease calories more, or work out harder, your body seems to be resistant or maybe even gaining weight (Big red flag).
You’re having trouble sleeping.
You might find it hard to fall asleep, even if your body is exhausted, or you might be waking up multiple times throughout the night for no apparent reason, and when you do it might be hard to fall back asleep.
Sleep disturbances and trouble sleeping could be signs that your body is having a hard time getting into a parasympathetic state of rest.
So What Do You Do?
All hope is not lost, and neither are the fitness gains. It may just be time for you to REST. Like really REST. As in taking a week or two off from trying to give 100% effort in every session.
Use your time in the gym to focus on mechanics of a lift rather than the weight you lift; approach workouts at slower pace; swap some workouts for some time on the foam roller or mobility balls.
Outside the gym you can focus on building a better sleep routine; start journaling and getting all your thoughts out of your head at the end of a day; focus on meditation, mindfulness and eating enough food.
