August 19, 2019

Do you know these 8 signs of overtraining? Part 2

Kennst Du diese 8 Zeichen für ein Übertraining? Teil 2

After explaining in the first part of this article what overtraining is, how it occurs and what warning signs there are that can help you recognize overtraining, in this second part of this article I will go into more detail about what you can do to avoid overtraining in the first place.

4 ways to prevent overtraining

Now that we know what overtraining is and how you can recognize it in order to take action and prevent worse, I would like to talk about how you can prevent overtraining from happening in the first place.

The most reliable strategies for preventing overtraining are the ones you probably already expected. They aim to support your body's natural recovery mechanisms. They're free of any fancy bells and whistles, but they work.

If you do the following, it is very unlikely that you will ever be affected by overtraining syndrome.

1. make sure to get adequate amounts of sleep

According to surveys conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, 43% of Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 rarely or never get enough sleep during the week (12). 60% said they suffer from sleep problems every night or almost every night.

Now, too little or poor sleep is far worse than most people will believe (13). Insufficient sleep increases the risk of mortality and chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer, and can also severely affect quality of life and productivity.

Poor or inadequate sleep can even slow weight loss, lead to weight gain and muscle loss, and decrease the body's production of testosterone (14, 15).

The bottom line is that your sleep hygiene is like your diet: it either works for you or against you - whether you realize it or not.

Sleep poorly over an extended period of time and the consequences, which are inevitable, can be devastating. Sleep well and enough and the benefits will be surprisingly far-reaching.

2 Eat enough food

Many people know that the amount of protein they eat affects recovery, but not as many realize that this also applies to the amount of calories they consume.

The reason for this is quite simple: if you supply your body with less energy than it burns, then you generate an energy (or calorie) deficit. While this may be necessary for fat loss, it also impairs your body's ability to build muscle protein and can lower levels of anabolic hormones and increase levels of catabolic hormones (16, 17, 18).

All of this, of course, impairs recovery and slows - or stops - your muscle growth.

3. control your stress levels

Many people think that stress is purely negative - something you should avoid at all costs. However, this is not well thought out. Our bodies are designed to cope with acute stress, which is one of the reasons why exercise has so many health and wellbeing benefits.

Too much stress, however, can cause problems. Chronic stress causes us to age faster, makes us more susceptible to disease and increases levels of systemic inflammation (19, 20, 21). In addition, excessive stress causes a chronic increase in cortisol levels, which, among other things, impairs our body's ability to recover from our workouts (22, 23).

For these reasons, good stress management is an important step in preventing overtraining. I would even go so far as to say that your quality of life and longevity will greatly depend on how well you manage stress.

4. rest or unload

As much as we like our workouts, it is also necessary for us to refrain from them occasionally. There are two ways to achieve this

1. stay away from the gym for a week

Spend the time you would normally spend working out doing something relaxing.

2. plan a de-loading week

A de-load week involves a reduction in weekly training intensity (training weight used) and/or volume (number of sets performed).

For example, if your training consists of five workouts per week with 70 to 80 heavy repetitions of multi-joint exercises, then a de-load week might include halving the volume (35 to 40 repetitions) or dramatically reducing the intensity (training at 50 to 60% of 1RM weight instead of 80 to 90% of 1RM weight).

What about supplements?

I saved this part for last because, quite frankly, I see it as less important than proper nutrition and training.

However, even though there are unfortunately a lot of products in the supplement industry that promise far more than they can ever deliver, there are also many natural substances that have been scientifically proven to have positive effects on muscle growth, performance, recovery and much more.

In my experience, the following supplements have proven their worth when it comes to supporting regeneration:

Creatine

Creatine is a compound that occurs naturally in the body and in many foods such as red meat. Creatine is probably the best and most studied molecule in the field of sports supplementation and the results of hundreds of scientific studies are quite clear:

Supplementing with creatine can help

Build muscle and strength (24)
Increase anaerobic endurance (25)
Reduce muscle damage and soreness (26)

If there's one supplement I would really recommend to anyone, it's creatine. Creatine is safe, inexpensive and effective.

Although creatine is sometimes claimed to be bad for the kidneys, such claims have been clearly and categorically refuted by many studies (27). In people with healthy kidneys, creatine has no harmful side effects, even when taken long-term (28).

Only people who suffer from an existing kidney disease should refrain from using creatine to be on the safe side, or discuss its use with their doctor (29).

Whey protein

You don't necessarily need protein supplements to recover effectively from your training sessions, but considering the amount of creatine you need daily for optimal recovery and maximum muscle gain, adequate protein intake from whole foods alone may be impractical. This is the main reason I recommend the use of protein supplements.

Multivitamin products

Similar to protein supplements, multivitamins won't speed up your recovery per se, but they can make it easier for you to get all the micronutrients your body needs for optimal recovery. The problem with our Western diet is that it has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese when it comes to getting enough of all the important nutrients, which can make getting enough from whole foods alone a laborious undertaking.

Greens supplements

Greens supplements are an extension of the concept of multivitamin products and, in addition to essential vitamins and minerals, provide other healthy phytonutrients that are important for the body and can support regeneration and muscle building.

Sleep supplements

As we have already seen, the better you sleep, the better your body can recover from the stress of training and daily life. Good sleep hygiene is like a good training program: it improves your life and quality of life in every area.

Many people use pharmaceutical sleep aids and tranquilizers to solve their sleep problems. Unfortunately, these medications can be addictive and are associated with a variety of concerning side effects and risks, including the following:

Depression (31)
Increased risk of cancer and overall mortality (32)
An increased risk of infections
Delirium, nightmares and hallucinations

A better approach is to first address lifestyle issues and other factors that can affect sleep.

If this alone is not enough and you continue to suffer from sleep problems - or simply want to sleep better - it may make sense to use sleep support supplements made from natural and safe ingredients.

The bottom line on overtraining

Overtraining syndrome is a real phenomenon, but our bodies are nowhere near as fragile and breakable as some gurus would have us believe. You can probably train much harder than you think without risking overtraining.

The latter is especially true if you follow the advice in this article and do everything you can to maximize your body's ability to recover from the stress of training and daily life.

Of course, there may be times when you go a little too far with training frequency and intensity, or when you don't sleep or eat enough. If this is the case, look out for the signs of overtraining described above and respond to them. If you do this, serious overtraining should not be a problem for you in the future.

References:

Source: https://legionathletics.com/signs-of-overtraining/

By Mike Matthews

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