sunday coffee vol. 8
Hey friend, thanks for being here - and as always, today’s gonna be a good day 🙂
I’ve been dialing up my training for my next Ironman 70.3 lately. This means…
more miles
more strength training
more movement
etc.
Normally, this is great for me! I love the journey towards a difficult goal and the added volume of training is a challenge I welcome with open arms.
But 1 night last week, I didn’t sleep very well.
When I woke up the next day, I was exhausted! But knowing that I only had an hour to hit the gym before I started work, I threw on my clothes and drove over anyways.
About 10 minutes into my workout, I was hitting a heavy bench press when I felt a sharp pain in my left elbow. To rack the weight, I broke my form a little bit and put a lot of strain on my neck in the process.
As the day went on, my neck stiffened up and my elbow made it hard to lift even a coffee mug to my mouth.
I had foolishly pushed myself too hard, and was experiencing symptoms of overtraining - so I felt that this was a great topic for us to cover this week.
After a few days of ice, heat, and rest, I’m doing a lot better now. But this is something almost all athletes struggle with at some point - because we’re taught to push ourselves, but we aren’t taught where to draw the line.
Overtraining is what happens when we cross that line.
To understand overtraining, we first need to cover how the body adapts to training stimulus.
The SAID Principle
The purpose of training is to help us improve.
So when we’re training for anything, we’re sending a message to our bodies that we want to be better at something. For example:
If I want to be a better free throw shooter, I’ll work on my form and shoot 1,000 free throws.
If I want to be stronger, I’ll lift heavy weights 3-5x a week.
If I want to run a marathon, I’ll start running longer and longer distances.
These are all examples of the SAID Principle in action. The SAID principle is a key foundation of sports science, it stands for:
Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.
Simply put, your body adapts to the demands you place on it so that it can handle them better in the future.
Training is a fickle thing though. Push yourself too hard, and you overtrain. If you don’t push yourself hard enough, you undertrain and your body might not be forced to adapt at all.
But what is overtraining?
Overtraining
Overtraining
a condition in which an individual exceeds their body's ability to recover from intense physical training or exercise. It occurs when the frequency, intensity, or duration of training is too high, leading to a prolonged state of fatigue that can negatively impact performance and overall health.
Overtraining sucks. It can leave you bruised, beaten, and exhausted, while actually pushing you further away from the goals that you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
Here are some visuals to help explain how overtraining affects the body.
The first graph shows the performance results we want from our training.
The second graph shows what overtraining does to our performance.
What we want
What we do NOT want
Some things to look out for that may signal you’re overtraining are:
Increased Fatigue: A persistent feeling of exhaustion and a decline in energy levels, even with adequate rest.
Decreased Performance: Despite continued training, there is a noticeable decline in athletic or exercise performance.
Altered Recovery Rates: Slower recovery times between workouts, with lingering muscle soreness and stiffness.
Mood Disturbances: Overtraining can lead to irritability, mood swings, and a general decrease in motivation and enthusiasm.
Insomnia or Poor Sleep Quality: Disrupted sleep patterns, including difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep.
Increased Risk of Injuries: Overtraining can compromise the body's ability to repair and regenerate tissues, making individuals more susceptible to injuries.
Weakened Immune System: Overtraining may suppress the immune system, increasing susceptibility to illnesses and infections.
Overtraining is a continuum that can range from a single day of overdoing it, to a chronic state of poor performance and under-recovery that can last weeks, months, or even years.
Safe to say, it’s in your best interest to avoid it at all costs.
That said, here are 5 area’s to focus on if you want to avoid overtraining.
5 ways to avoid overtraining
Listen to your body
Pay attention to signals of fatigue, persistent soreness or tightness, and signals like dehydration, hunger, etc. If you consistently feel exhausted or notice a decline in performance, it may be a sign that your body needs more rest.
Include Rest and Recovery Days
This is why you want to schedule regular rest days into your training program. These days allow your body to repair and adapt to the stress of exercise. Overtraining often occurs when there is insufficient time for recovery between intense workouts.
Remember, recovery and adaptations happen after the workout, not during.
Diversify your Training
Avoid excessive repetition of the same exercises or training modalities. For example, you woudn’t go into a gym and hit the bench press every single day of the week because then your chest would never recover and you’d get hurt.
Incorporate variety into your workouts to prevent overuse injuries and reduce the risk of overtraining specific muscle groups. This will help to keep your routine interesting too!
Get 7+ Hours of Quality Sleep
This one seems to come up every week, and rightfully so. Without good sleep, your training isn’t gonna be worth very much.
Make sure you get 7+ hours of high-quality sleep each night. Sleep is crucial for recovery, and a lack of it can STRONGLY contribute to overtraining. Try to stick to a similar sleep schedule, ideally following your circadian rythym.
If you want to read more tips on sleeping well, here’s a previous sunday coffee edition where we covered this.
Fuel your body well
Going into work, a workout, or really anything without being properly fueled is setting yourself up to perform poorly.
Provide your body with the nutrients it needs for recovery and energy. Consume a well-balanced diet that includes an adequate amount of protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals. This will support your body's ability to repair tissues and replenish energy stores so that you can kill your workout AND your recovery.
Wrap-Up
Today, we covered the SAID principle, Overtraining, and 5 things to focus on to mak sure you avoid it.
To recap, those 5 things to focus on are:
Listen to your body
Include Rest and Recovery Days
Diversify your Training
Get 7+ Hours of Quality Sleep
Fuel your body well
Thanks for reading 🙂
Dane