• A triathlete or a bodybuilder prepping for a show may train over three hours per day in order to get all their training in, and that’s considered normal. The mere thought of that training volume is enough to make you tired.
• An elite CrossFit athlete may spend six to eight hours per day in their gym, and for them it is just another day at work. You, by contrast, are thankful that you can even find one to two hours a few days per week to lift some weights and get your metcon in.
• One girl may hit up Orange Theory Fitness (OTF) workouts five to six days per week. She has the body that you want and crushes her workouts in the “Orange Zone” every time, without breaking a sweat. You try to hit up your OTF workout as often as you can, yet your metabolism won’t budge.

What gives?

The Real Definition of Overtraining

There really is no such thing as overtraining. Instead, there are five factors that separate those who thrive from those who struggle with the extra work asked of their body:

1. Under-recovering
2. Work Capacity
3. Mindset
4. Underlying imbalances
5. Stress

1. Under-Recovering

My first ever personal trainer used to tell me all the time, “There’s no such thing as overtraining. Instead, there is such a thing as under-recovering.” In other words, if you are not supporting your body’s needs outside the gym, or you are not training within your personal threshold for activity, then the effects of overtraining begin to happen:

• Slowed metabolism
• Suppressed appetite
• Lowered mood
• Anxiety
• Stress
• Hormonal imbalances
• Missing periods
• Sleep disturbances
• Fatigue

You are a smart cookie, and probably have heard about what you should be doing for recovery efforts. Things like:

• Eating enough real food
• Digesting your food properly (gut health)
• Not relying on caffeine or sugar to function
• Sleeping 7-9 hours per night
• Drinking an adequate amount of water
• Mobility and stretching
• Varying the intensity of your training
• Recovery hacks (ice baths, infrared saunas, massage, chiropractic care, etc.)

If you’re having a hard time hitting your training as hard as you like, chances are you are missing critical components of your recovery. One of the most common missing links I see in my own practice is the concept of eating enough. Quite frankly, if you are a moderately active female and eating less than 1800-2200 calories per day, you are not eating enough.

Eating enough also includes the types of foods you are eating. Are you eating only chicken and broccoli out of fear of what carbs or fats will do to you? Are you avoiding fruit because sugar makes you fat? Are you avoiding “too much” fat? Are you simply not planning your meals or eating erratically?

2. Your Work Capacity

In addition to your recovery efforts, everyone’s body has threshold where they thrive in training. If you go over that threshold too often or too quickly, then you end up digging a hole, instead of getting fitter. I am talking about your body’s work capacity.

This theory of capacity stems from John Welbourn, founder of Power Athlete, who cited a Russian science experiment that observed the differences in the work capacity of larger monkeys versus smaller monkeys. This information can help us answer the big question in fitness: Why do some of the fittest people in the world thrive off of one hour in the gym per day, while others spend six to eight hours; training like it is their job?

In the experiment, scientists observed that the larger monkeys were naturally active. They spent most of their waking hours moving around, eating, and playing. The smaller monkeys were naturally less active. The researchers then forced both types of monkeys to swap lifestyles, just to see what would happen.

The big monkeys (the active ones) were put into cages and allowed only a small amount of time each day to eat and move around. The little monkeys (the less active ones) were given various activities and obstacles to get food each day to increase activity levels. The results? Both types of monkeys experienced a significant decline in health, temperament, and performance.

Like the monkeys, some athletes thrive upon more activity or more volume, and others actually need less. A lower volume of quality training is key for them. Neither is better than the other. In fact, you see results with each, as long as you are training according to your body type.

3. The Mindset

Another huge piece of the training question is to ask yourself: “Where is my mindset?” This question is one only you can truly answer. Consider these examples:

• Do you have a smart athlete mindset? Do you know how to train hard, but also when to back off, listen to your coach, take care of your body, and take rest days in order to get stronger?
• Do you have a joyful mindset? Is training truly an enriching experience? Do you walk away from a session happier, more at peace, and more connected to your body?
• Do you hate on your body throughout the session by talking down to it?
• Do you find yourself thinking about your next meal, what calories you are burning, or your next workout during your sessions?
• Do you find yourself looking forward to when the session is over? Is exercise is more of a chore than a joy?
• Do you feel like working out is part of your daily checklist, even multiple times per day?
• Do you pride yourself in never taking a rest day? Or do you make sure you train in order to justify eating that day?
• Do you feel like a kid again, totally doing things you love, with no cares in the world?

4. Underlying Imbalances

The current state of your health also plays a role in your ability to handle more or less training. Predisposing factors or underlying body imbalances may hold you back from fully recovering.

Digestive distress is a common woe I see in average Joes and athletes alike. When your gut health is off (leaky gut, bacterial overgrowth, IBS, low stomach acid), then the rest of your health and recovery efforts are thrown off. In fact, overtraining actually makes things worse because it naturally suppresses stomach acid, making you more susceptible to constipation, bloating, wonky blood sugar, suppressed or ravenous appetite, and irregular bowels.

Other factors to consider that may set off the symptoms and side effects of overtraining include poor thyroid function, hormonal and metabolic imbalances (low or high estrogen, testosterone, progesterone or cortisol), autoimmune conditions, and underlying stress. If you have any of these underlying imbalances, then training more is not going to do a body good.

5. Stress

If your body is over-stressed, you will reap the consequences. Your ability to keep up with training will suffer, and with it, your results. Like our “big monkey” and “little monkey” example, everybody has a unique threshold of just how much stress one can handle. What stress looks like for each person is unique. Once you pass that threshold, you’re left spinning your wheels, despite doing everything right.

Say Cathy has 20 “stress dollars” in her account. She spent 10 of them on her eating disorder that she struggled with for 5 years; 10 dollars was zapped from her account because of the toll that undereating took on her body. Even though she is in a better place today, her body is still recovering and is 10 stress dollars down. Couple this with the 5 (sometimes 6) stress dollars she uses juggling a busy work schedule, and 3 stress dollars she uses on her constant need to please others. Then she wants to spend 5-6 stress dollars on 5-6 days per week of HIIT style workouts, plus at least 1-2 stress dollars on normal, everyday stress. She’s way over her limit.

On the other hand, take Sarah. She also has 20 stress dollars to spend, and she tries to use them wisely. She loves training, so she spends about 5-6 of her stress dollars towards her workouts, another 5 at her job, and another 5 towards her side business. Then 1 or 2 on the normal daily life stresses. She is just under that 20 stress dollar limit.

Sarah is able to handle the extra stress of training 5 to 6 days per week, despite her busy life outside as well, because she is under her stress limit. Couple this with some extra de-stressing efforts she takes to add bonus dollars to her stress account. She is eating enough, takes a complete day off from the gym regularly, uses proper nutrient and supplement support, and employs a gut health protocol. As a result, she’s actually earned 4 more dollars to add to her account.

Stress will constantly change throughout our lives. De-stress to restore your body and get the most out of your training.

7 Steps to Find Your Balance

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to find just the right balance for your training. For some, less is more. Some can handle more. Below are some steps to take to discover that balance for yourself.

1. Halt

Whatever it is you’re doing currently, put a halt on it, even if just for a short experiment. If something is not working or is broken, then it’s time to fix it. You have the power to do just that. Take a break for 7-30 days. As hard as it may be, in order to start fresh, you need a clean slate. What to do during the next 7-30 days? The opposite of whatever stress you’re putting on your body. Halting does not necessarily mean you have to stop moving at all. In fact, I’d advise against that. What it does mean is halting the stress and instead, getting back in touch with your innate human wiring—how you were designed to move.

2. Get Back in Touch with Your Ancestors

Like a plant needs water and sunshine to thrive, and the human body requires food and water and sleep to function, we also require movement. Not just any movement, but the innately wired movement that both you and I were created to thrive upon. When we look to our ancestors and how humans were designed to move, here’s what we see: Humans were designed to lift heavy things (moving logs, building houses, carrying stones), occasionally sprint (HIIT) from bears or for food, and thrived upon lots of low-intensity, daily activity like walking, foraging, and homemaking.

Fast forward to today, you and I still have the same wiring in us. We are not designed to sit at computers for long hours, or glue ourselves to treadmills watching Friends reruns. We thrive on variety. We thrive on function. We thrive on being connected to nature as much as possible. Include variety whenever possible.

3. Explore

What moves you? What do you love to do that makes you come alive? Team sports? Lifting? Yoga? Dance? Pilates? Spin? Group classes? A mix of it all? Make a list of your favorite ways to move your body—even if you’re not currently doing it (or not doing it as often as you like). It can be anything. Go try things that your current program hasn’t allowed you to try.

4. Adopt a Smart Athlete Mindset

Your mindset is your surest safeguard against overtraining. When your mind is in a thriving and healthy place, it will fight to help protect you from overtraining past your body’s thriving place.

Consider the athlete who genuinely wants to get better at her sport. If she is not improving, despite all her hard work and training, what does she do? She re-evaluates her training. Then she fixes it. She does what she needs to do to enhance her performance, not take away from it.

5. Set Intention

A way cooler version of goal setting is to set an intention for your fitness. Instead of just spinning your wheels, take a moment to define your top three fitness goals at this season in your life. I am not talking about body composition goals, either. I am talking about strength and performance-based goals. Things like: “I want to add 10 pounds to my back squat,” “I want to do three unassisted pull-ups,” “I want to jump up to a 20-24 inch box,” etc. You decide your top three, then set a deadline and a game plan for making that goal a reality.

6. Reach Out

You don’t have to go it alone. Overcoming a compulsion to overtrain, improving your fitness (on your own), or healing from the side effects of overtraining can feel overwhelming. The good news? Reach out. Connect to a trainer or Thrive for help in customizing a training blueprint that can help you get where you want to be.

7. See Yourself Where You Want to Be

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, envision where you want to be. Whatever you can imagine is within your capability to achieve. Do you really want to improve in your fitness or health? What does a thriving, healthy you look like? Who is the person you want to be in your relationship with your body? Get a clear picture of her.

Chances are, she is not obsessively thinking about food, fitness, or her body all the time. She is at peace in her own skin, not freaking out if she misses her workout that day. She is glowing and radiating, healthy and fit because she’s taking care of herself, not running herself into the ground. Get a clear picture of the girl you want to be and the relationship you want to have with fitness. Then, embody her. As we think, so we become. Even if you don’t feel like you are her yet, be her today, act like you are her today, and take care of yourself.

The post The Overtraining Myth appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Think about it: by definition, neglect refers to failing to care for something properly. And if you have an overuse injury, you’ve most certainly not cared for your body properly. Of course, this doesn’t mean you intended for the injury to happen. But nonetheless, it did.

Now, think about our youth athletes for a second. Think of the shear number of injuries that they are experiencing. Overuse injuries. Injuries of neglect.

Our Responsibility to Our Children

I say this not to offend, but to make you truly understand the impact we have on our young athletes as parents, coaches, organizations and professionals. I am telling you this so that you know that the large majority of youth athlete injuries are entirely preventable.

But, due to our neglect, we are failing these athletes. They are getting injured. And these injuries are staying with them right into college, university, and beyond. This affects not only their athletic potential and their athletic careers, but also their life in general.

Hockey and the Youth Athlete

Now, I’m going to talk about hockey for a minute. I live in Canada where we really do live and breathe hockey. In fact, one of my favorite photographs was taken during the Canada versus United States game in Sochi in 2014. The picture? A snapshot from a traffic camera of one of our busiest highways, which at that moment didn’t have a single car on it. Even more, every business and establishment that I know had the game live streaming that day so no one had to miss out. How could we? They were playing our game!

In my practice, pretty much every client I have has a connection to hockey in some way, shape, or form. Parents spend a fortune on their kids for hockey leagues, camps, tournaments, the best gear, and so on and so forth. But maybe that is a problem. Are we pushing our young athletes too hard without realizing it?

The truth is, we really are. We are neglecting them by not properly caring for their bodies, especially during times of high frequency, high intensity sport training.

Youth athletes who specialize in one sport, in this case hockey, usually play it year round in order to gain better skills and the competitive edge to keep them at the top of their game. They aspire for greatness, hoping to one day make it to the National Hockey League.

But this is where our neglect comes in – and we let this happen. We let it happen by not making these young athletes take the proper recovery measures and not addressing their high risk of injuries due to factors including improper technique, ill fitting equipment, training errors, coach or parental pressure, failure to recognize injuries early, or inherent muscle imbalances.

All of these things, topped with the high repetition involved in their sport and little-to-no strength training, are a devastating combination for our young athletes. Poor movement and improper technique lead to muscle imbalances, as the body has to compensate for additional pressure and torque placed on tendons, growth plates, bones, and joints. With further training, these muscle imbalances become more pronounced and overuse injuries start to occur.

Youth Athletes Absolutely Must Strength Train

Youth athletes are not simply mini adults. They lack strength, mobility, and coordination, and they also usually have inherent muscle imbalances.Therefore, we need to physically prepare our athletes for their sport.

These athletes need to work with specialists in strength and conditioning and prehabilitation in order to ensure they have adequate strength, endurance, balance, coordination, and mobility to perform the highly repetitive action of their sport. If you fail to do this, I can guarantee that your young athlete will be plagued with an injury, and sooner rather than later.

In fact, it is these very athletes that I treat at the university and college level. They come to me awaiting surgery to repair the damage that could have been easily prevented with a proper strength program during their youth. Don’t let it get to this point.

Ensure Adequate Recovery

Recovery is absolutely crucial for our youth athletes. And I don’t necessarily mean sitting on a foam roller or stretching, though that is part of it.

No, when I speak of recovery, I am referring to adequate nutrition, sleep, hydration, and time off from sport, as well as active recovery techniques including mobility and soft tissue work. If one of these factors isn’t in check, then you are putting your young athlete at a much greater risk of overtraining.

Mix It Up

Encouraging your youth athletes to play different sports throughout the year will prevent the sport-specific repetitive stress and overuse injuries they will experience from year-round, single-sport participation. Youth don’t need to be playing hockey (or football, or lacrosse, or x, y, or z) year round. They need time off from their sport so they can recover. Otherwise, they end up starting every new season tired or injured.

Even if young athletes aren’t injured, there is a good chance that without some time off they will start to plateau in terms of skills development. Going from in-season training to off-season camps back to back with no rest is not going to help your athlete in the long run. You have to look bigger picture.

Signs Your Athlete Is Over-Trained or Under-Recovered

As parents, coaches, and trainers, we need to pay attention and be sensitive to any changes in our youth athletes in terms of performance and attitude that might indicate they are being pushed too hard. The following is a list of signs to look for in your youth athletes:

• They used to be excited about their sport/training.
• Their performance stresses them out. A poor practice, or game will often ruin their day.
• They seem to always be sore or have lingering injuries/pains.
• Their sleep pattern has changed or become irregular.
• Even if they do sleep, they don’t feel rested.
• They crave more sugar and carbs then they used to.
• They’re getting sick a lot or sickness lingers.
• They’ve hit a performance plateau or performance has started to decline.

And though I specifically referenced hockey here, know that the same holds true for all sports. Remember, youth are not mini adults. They shouldn’t be treated as such. We need to pay close attention that we are not neglecting to care for them through overtraining or under-recovering. More is not always better, especially when it comes to youth sport.

References:

1. Brandon Marcello, “Recovery and Regeneration,” Perform Better Functional Training Summit. Perform Better. Providence, Rhode Island, US. June 14, 2014.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post The Real and Present Danger of Overtraining Youth Athletes appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Coaching Tip: Top Signs of Overtraining (Becca Borawski Jenkins)

Exercise is a good thing, right? Well, like all things, exercise is good in moderation.

Overtraining Can Kill You: The 3 Stages of Overtraining, Part 1 (Andrew Read)

Let’s look quickly at what overtraining is and the various stages of it, as well as how to possibly use it to our advantage before we wind up in hospital.

Overtraining Can Kill You: The 3 Stages of Overtraining, Part 2 (Andrew Read)

My friend Murray nearly died from overtraining. It took his body years to recover from the hormonal mess he’d made of himself. Are you about to do the same thing to yourself?

Heart Rate Monitoring: An Effective Test for Overtraining (Doug Dupont)

Your heart rate can tell you a lot, whether you’re working hard or at rest. A new study suggests your resting heart rate might be able to indicate whether you’re overtraining.

Video: Understanding Overloading, Overreaching, and Overtraining (Dave Ayres)

In order for you to progress you must overload. But you can’t increase all variables at once, or you will run into trouble. Learn the signs of overreaching and how to avoid overtraining.

Research Reveals New Indicators of Overtraining (Doug Dupont)

A new study suggests protein markers may be a dependable indicator of the early stages of overtraining syndrome.

Befriend Your Body: Say No to Overtraining and Say Thank You to Your Body (Valerie Worthington)

I learned the hard way that constantly beating up my body without appreciating what it gave me can only end up in a place of illness and injury. Read how I learned to express gratitude to my body.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 7 Ways to Spot Signs of Overtraining and Stop It From Happening to You appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

But wait, I hear you. You’re special. You’re different than the rest. You have better powers of recovery from workouts and you don’t need as much sleep, but your training is stuck and you need to find something particularly special to get it going again.

I have just the ticket for you. Here are my ten top tips on how to plateau, burn out, and avoid getting strong:

1. Thinking that this article is not for you.

You don’t want to learn from my mistakes, and the mistakes of many, many athletes I have witnessed, despite advice to the contrary from myself and others? Cool, you’d better get back to reading what everyone else is up to on Facebook then.

2. Having conflicting goals.

You have a set of goals that excites you. This is good. But do your goals match up with one another? You’re training for a marathon, but you want to get big and strong. You want to gain strength progressively and steadily this year, but have booked a competition every few weeks. You want to improve your weightlifting, powerlifting, and strongman all at once. You want to get super strong and improve your conditioning. There’s nothing stopping you doing any of these. But do them at the same time and you will end up stopping yourself.

3. Thinking that more strength is always the answer.

Yes, you read that right. More strength is not always the answer. If you are working at 50% of your strength capacity due to sub-optimal technique, bad recovery, mobility issues, or anything else, then you are leaving performance and progress on the table, to say the least. Find out how to utilize the strength that you have better. Believe me, it’s a whole heap more effective than busting your balls to gain a smidgen more strength.

4. Using fancy loading protocols too soon.

Yes, they are cool. Yes, they work. No, you don’t need to do them to advance your squat, pull ups, or whatever. Take a long hard look at yourself. Have you honestly maxed out on your linear progression? Or did you just have a couple of sessions where you weren’t progressing, decided that you had stalled, and that you needed a Russian program to get you going again. Are you genuinely such an advanced lifter? Let’s be honest. None of us are as advanced as we think. Get with the program by getting off the programs.

If you are at the stage where you do need an advanced protocol, and they have helped you in the past, do not jump straight into another program and expect the same progress. In fact, don’t even expect to stay on the level. This is strength suicide, and is asking for trouble. These programs are not designed to be a mainstay or base of your schedule. Back to back will break your back. My rule of thumb: Leave at least the time of the program you have just done before you even look at another one. For example, you have done a twelve-week protocol. Wait at least twelve weeks before starting another.

5. Working things you hate all the time.

In particular, I know a lot of CrossFitters who do this. (They call it training their “goat.”) I admire the determination and respect the principle. The things you hate are often the things you are worst at. The things you are worst at are likely your weaknesses. And working your weaknesses tirelessly will no doubt get you better at them, which will raise your overall game. However, time and again, I have seen people go after weaknesses with everything they have, in every spare minute, only to end up hating them even more, getting burnt out and hating the game.

Here’s my take on it: You have to enjoy the process. If it mostly involves doing things you don’t like, even if this is doing wonders for your strength or fitness, you will end up resenting some part of it. This leads disillusionment at best. And to burn out at worst.

6. Obsessing over…anything.

Why are you sweating your macros, the minutiae of your supplement stack, the guy that’s wrong on the Internet, your mate who is lifting more than you, or whether it’s better to wear this shoe or that shoe. Get on with it. Test out your theories. Prove the guy on the Internet wrong. Beat your mate.

These things will either work themselves out, or you will work them out. Either way, two weeks of getting on with it in the gym beats two months of perfect planning. (That’s not to say you shouldn’t record stuff you actually do in the gym. Record everything you do, with notes too.)

7. Treating training as separate to life.

Yes, life does get in the way of training far too often. But that is just the thing – training is not separate to life. Children, families, holidays, and weddings are all important life enjoyments and detours on the strength journey. Less fun are the stresses and pressures of everyday life (some of which are caused by the same “enjoyments” as above). Don’t think that once you are in the gym, these things are insignificant. They affect you more than you realize.

Don’t get tied up in the ups and downs of each training session. Not every session is going to be a record-breaking, personal best smashing, mood boosting session. Sometimes it’s just about turning up and doing the work. Actually, make that most of the time.

8. Not taking deload weeks.

But it’s going so well! All the more reason to deload, so you can continue to improve. But it’s max out day/hero week/my favorite mess-you-up workout this week! Are you kidding me? You want to not take a deload you so can f*** yourself up even more? If you really wanted to train hard this week, you should have planned your training better.

9. Training countless days in a row.

Show me someone who trains almost every single day, and I’ll show you someone who thinks this behavior is cool, that they are “hardcore,” and that they know it’s bad for them but they do it anyway. (Sounds a lot like smoking to me.) They do this despite everyone around them advising otherwise. In fact, when someone advises them that not resting is a bad idea, it’s another chance to show how they don’t need to rest. (If you don’t rest, this is part of the reason you do it. Admit it and let down your guard.)

Let me present you with a scenario. You’re in the gym yet again, but not quite feeling yourself. Sound familiar? Don’t get this mixed up with not hitting personal bests every session. Yes, sometimes it’s about just turning up and getting the work done, even if it sucks a little, but there comes a point when it sucks a lot and more to the point, feeling this way can be avoided. If you are experiencing a lot of these “sucks a lot” sessions, you need to either take a deload or cut down the amount you train – or both.

How do you know it sucks a lot? You can’t nail that technique despite trying for ages. Your weights or times are not getting any better. You have to scale workouts or lower the weights more than you should need to. The intensity just isn’t there. Take heed of the signs and add in some rest days. I mean proper ones. I promise you will feel and perform better.

10. Being stubborn about everything.

Some things change, and some things stay the same. The stuff we do falls on both sides. Definitely be stubborn in your work ethic, in making sure you take adequate in resting, and in chasing your goals. But there’s no need to be stubborn about everything. Be open to change, to life getting the better of you, to ways of improving the things you currently do – and to working out how to continue being stubborn for years to come.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post 10 Ways to Plateau, Burn Out, and Avoid Getting Strong appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

One great thing about being an athlete over forty is that I now understand that when I have zero excitement to work out, it’s time for a break. I no longer spend weeks trying to forcibly motivate myself back into it, or flog myself with endless insults about my lack of drive and determination. All the “come on!” and “just do it!” encouragements in the world are sometimes not enough – and are usually not what we need anyway.

I had hardly reached the more serious signs of overtraining, but the early signs were starting to subtly bleed through. Mostly notable was my loss of enthusiasm and I was starting to sleep worse. When I don’t sleep well, the fabric of my life starts to unravel. I was just tired, in general, and feeling “meh” about lifting anything.

So I took two weeks off completely from CrossFit. I vowed not to be lured into a workout no matter how fun things started to look or how many of my friends asked me to workout with them. Usually when I reminded them that I was taking a break, most of them said, “Oh yeah, good idea. Breaks are good.”

During the first week of my break, I had no trouble at all staying out of the gym, other than to coach. I ran a little, rode my bike, and played a little tennis. I even ran some stairs once, but other than having to put equipment away in the gym, I wasn’t even temped to lift a weight. In fact, when I had to demonstrate a kipping pull up for a beginning student in class, the thought that crossed my mind was: “But I’m on break!” My second thought was, “Uh oh, I hope I can still do one.” It’s funny what your mind will tell you when you make yourself rest completely. You will not lose all your strength taking a little time off. In fact, after initially easing back into your routine, you may feel stronger as your body has had time to actually recover. As Andrew Read says, “Training = work x rest.” Not work, work, work. Our bodies and minds just shut down after a while with too much work.

During the second week of my break, I concentrated a lot on re-cleaning up my diet. I tightened up the areas I had let slip a little. I think it’s always important to reevaluate your nutrition. Is it working? How do you feel? Did that last experiment work or bomb? I couldn’t pretend that my lagging energy was only caused by working out too much. Nutrition always plays a role. Always. And reevaluating only seems a natural part of the rest and recovery process.

During this second week, I was tempted to jump into a couple workouts. I didn’t, but I felt it was an encouraging sign that I was feeling better and wanted to get back in the game. In the past when I’ve become burnt out and bored with a particular type of workout, I’ve simply given it up and blamed it for not working well for me. That’s not to say the workout was working well for me or that it didn’t bore me after a while, but looking back I may have simply needed a break rather than proclaiming that it “wasn’t working.”

Today will be my first workout back in two weeks. I’m excited to go back, but I’m also a little nervous. I know to ease back in and not go for personal records today. I will spend today reconnecting with the fun and function of it all, which frankly is the point, right? Like many of you, I am an everyday athlete not trying to qualify for the Olympics or the CrossFit Games. I’m training for a great quality of life, prolonged health, balance, and fun. And to realistically achieve all of that, rest and a few breaks here and there must also play an integral part.

Don’t ignore the signs that you need a break or a rest – not even the early signs. Your body and mind will thank you.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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I came across this quotation while in observance of Martin Luther King Day and it struck a chord with me. I decided to post it at work and speak about it in the classes I instruct. There’s a certain simplicity to the quotation and it very much has an application to our athletic lives. In simple terms, we must listen to our bodies and choose to ‘walk’ when we cannot ‘run,’ or sometimes run when we only feel like walking.

I’ve been teaching a lot of big groups these days and I’ve recognized something about human nature. We don’t always take the best care of ourselves. Some of the frequent participants in my classes are starting to feel the effects of overtraining. I’m all for hard training and I tend to be tough as a trainer and coach, but I also know when it’s time for a change up. If we’re listening, when it’s time for that change we can have a breakthrough. Whereas if we refuse to listen, a breakdown.

Like many things in our society, the pendulum in our physical lives swings between polar opposites. Many in our society live completely sedentary lives while others subject themselves to habitual overtraining. As a dead end response, we sometimes overcompensate one for the other. If we’ve been too lazy for too long we bite off more than we can chew and do too much exercise without proper preparation. Those of us who are heavy exercisers repeat the same patterns day after day until our bodies force us to a screeching halt and, ironically, a sedentary state. Both results come about from a lack of listening.

There are three areas we need to listen to in our lives – our hearts, our gut (intuition), and our bodies. The answer always lies here. Our intuitions tell us when we’re in the right location and situation, our hearts tell us when we’re with the right people, and our bodies tell us how we feel. How we really feel. It’s only when we know how we truly feel that we know whether to walk, run, fly, or crawl.

I had a conversation with a client the other day who asked my recommendation on how many days a week one should exercise. I told him seven. While this may seem like an extreme response, it is my fundamental belief that the human body is designed to move. It always has been. The notion of moving our bodies every day for much of the day wouldn’t have seemed all that extreme 100 or a 1,000 years ago. Movement is not extreme, but doing so without proper preparation and most importantly without listening, is problematic.

Yes, seven days of exercise or movement is indeed natural. However, seven days of ‘flying’ or intensive exercise is certainly excessive for most anyone. Moving every day is vital, but sometimes it needs to be a ‘crawl’ day. That is where many of us slip up. While high impact and high heart rate exercise is vital for challenging our bodies and creating optimum fitness, it also has a downside.

We use a term where I coach called the ‘cliff,’ as in something you don’t want to run right over. Participants in our program train with bursts high into their anaerobic zone. (Upwards of 95% of their projected max heart rate.) By doing so, incredible efficiency is created in the body and one’s base level of fitness can make dramatic strides. The body consumes more calories at rest (excess post exercise oxygen consumption). However, training at such an intensity also has its pitfalls. Namely, the cliff. When you push to your max, a cliff looms around that corner and the trick is to see it coming versus driving right over it. Cyclists and runners call it bonking. You’re done, right where you are. We’ve all been there.

Hitting that wall is a function of overtraining, not fueling properly, and not listening to our bodies. It’s not just bonking in terms of energy that we need to concern ourselves with either. It’s the wear and tear on our bodies. Maintenance is key, which I have been constantly reminding my people. You cannot drive your car like a race car without the right tires, proper engine maintenance, and occasional tune-ups. Same thing with a human body. Arrogance is treating the body like a sedentary person does and expecting it to work well. Arrogance is also running that body into the ground day after day without proper nourishment, fuel, and care.

Wherever you are on your fitness and wellness journey, here are the keys to moving forward:

• Variation – change it up. ‘Moving forward’ does not mean the same pounding day after day; it means growth through change and always finding a way.
• Stretch – if you don’t have time to stretch, you don’t have time to exercise. Other maintenance is required as well such as sports massage, acupuncture, heat and ice, and maybe even…rest!
• Natural Fuel – The body functions best in its natural state. Feed it raw and real foods to nourish, heal, and replenish it.
• Listen – this is the king of all rules and the essence of MLK’s quote. The trick isn’t to push through pain, or arrogantly do the same thing every day, beyond our capacity. The trick is to recognize our capacity and to ebb and flow. To know when it’s time to switch from a walk to a run, or from running to yoga. The key is to keep moving. To succeed we always have to move forward but not always on the same path.

I used to work with a Ironman triathlete who paid thousands of dollars to a world class coach who told her one thing – “Slow down.” She was a classic overtrainer and by training in more pure aerobic zones she became a more efficient and effective athlete without as much wear and tear. It’s sometimes counterintuitive to slow down when we feel like we should speed up or to speed up when we feel like we’re in a funk, but that is where the breakthrough occurs. Listen and keep moving forward.

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That said, I’m always on the lookout for good information about how much volume athletes and researchers do and the relationship between volume and results. Of course, when you cross over into overtraining, then higher volume is only going to hold you back, so finding a good sweet spot is critical.

A good example of solid volume research was published by the Journal of Strength and Conditioning this month. They compared a simple design of one set at a relative weight versus three sets at the same relative weight. The weight was set at 80% of the individual’s max on a preacher curl. Since simpler is usually better, I think that’s a pretty great study design.

One problem many people would raise when looking at this test design is the difference between people. What if the genetic differences between people accounted for varying results? People without genes to handle the three sets would do better on one set right? How do we account for this? The researchers anticipated this issue and had each participant do both the single set and the three set protocols. One protocol was randomly assigned to each arm, so as not to bias right-handed or left-handed individuals, and to eliminate possible genetic differences.

The researchers discovered that the higher volume was superior for these otherwise untrained athletes in both hypertrophy and strength development. The arm performing one set only experienced about an 8% increase in cross-sectional muscle diameter (how big their muscles got) versus a 13% increase for the three set arm. Further, for strength the one set arm improved by about 20% where the three set arm improved by nearly 32% on average.

I find that an old adage holds true with exercise: practice makes perfect. Getting in there and exercising as much as you can without overtraining is really the best way. Don’t waste time and effort doing exercises you don’t need, and try to maximize your recovery so that your effort can have more volume. Ultimately your results will be better.

References:

1. Heiki Sooneste, et. al., “Effects of Training Volume on Strength and Hypertrophy in Young Men,” Journal of Strength & Conditioning, 27:1 (2013)

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If you haven’t already read the previous article on overtraining syndrome, I suggest you start there. In that article I outlined the cause of overtraining as well as the details and symptoms involved with stages one and two of your body’s adaptation to stress.

Today we talk about stage three – the stage that can literally kill you and can take years to recover from. Consider this a cautionary tale.

Stress Adaptation Stage 3

Chronic overtraining can lead to serious brain, muscle, and metabolic imbalances. These parallel chronic adrenal dysfunction and aerobic deficiency. Eventually the body becomes exhausted and many hormones are significantly reduced.

The most notable side effect of stage three is severe exhaustion. Performance at this stage is likely at an all time low and many athletes retire at this point. Athletes in this third stage are seriously unwell, with high risk of developing chronic diseases of the heart, blood vessels, and other areas.

The body has an intricate system of checks and balances in place to help manage stress. The adrenal glands selectively prepare the muscles for physical activity. Thyroxine is secreted by the thyroid gland, which increases the rate at which cells burn glucose for energy. Growth hormone is produced by the pituitary gland and plays an essential role in the elevation of blood glucose. Insulin, secreted by the pancreas, is concerned with glucose metabolism.

With so many systems interdependent on one another for proper function, one small change to any of them can create massive problems down the road. While it may seem like the sort of thing that eventually proves to be nothing more than urban gym legend, it happens far more often than people realize.

A friend of mine, Murray Ballenden, has been so struck down by his experience with chronic overtraining that it has literally taken him years to fix. Reading through his story it is easy now, with the knowledge provided by hindsight, to see where he started to go wrong and how the advice he was given actually made things worse.

At one point in time, while still a student living at home, Murray was training twice a day, six days per week, with martial arts training at night and strength or conditioning sessions daily. With little external stress –no financial pressure due to living at home, or of even having to work much – as well as the benefit of youth, he managed to get away with this for a period of time. His coaches were in love with his work ethic and he was often pushed to maintain this breakneck training pace.

However, over time the cracks started to appear and Murray often felt lethargic and exhausted. Seeking the help of a nutritionist he was diagnosed with a seemingly simple problem concerning energy expenditure versus energy intake – he was told just to eat more.

Common medical and nutritional thinking says that carbohydrates are the foods we need for energy. The problem with eating more carbohydrate is that it prevents you from using your aerobic system for both energy and repair post-training. (See this article for a good summary) So if you are told to eat more sugar in an effort to give your body more energy, what you are really doing is switching off the fat-burning aerobic system for periods of time and making it burn more sugar. Which in turn will mean you will need more sugar for energy, as your aerobic system will still be sedated by the sugar that has been put into your system.

On top of this, Murray’s immune system was being weakened by constant exposure to processed foods, such as bread, pasta, sugary sports drinks, and even stimulants such as coffee and energy drinks. The processed foods were forcing his pancreas to work overtime producing insulin, which shut down his ability to use fat for fuel and worked to store the ingested carbs as fat. Simultaneously the coffee and energy drinks overworked his adrenal system.

At the same time Murray suffered a bout of staphylococcus from a trip to Brazil to train Brazilian jiu jitsu. Staph is commonly treated with antibiotics. However, the down side to antibiotic treatment is the drugs work to crush all bacteria in your body – the good and the bad (we have some bacteria we need such as those used to help digest food. Removing these can create as many problems as having the bad bacteria in the first place). As a sign to how weakened his immune system was to become, these bouts of staphylococcus would reoccur for the next five years never fully going away.

During this time Murray was still trying to train hard and would hit Monday’s training with a vengeance, only to run out of steam by Wednesday, and either get sick or find some new, minor muscle injury needing a few days off. By the end of the weekend he was all fired up, feeling better, and ready to train again the following week only to suffer the same fate over and over again.

In a normal healthy body the aerobic system is constantly clearing away lactate. This action, the aerobic metabolization of lactate, is actually part of how we make energy when working at low levels of exertion. You’re doing it right now. With Murray’s body so weak and depleted, however, he had lost this ability. The simple act of sitting on the couch would have his body flooded with lactate as if after a 400m sprint. His days consisted of getting out of breath walking up a flight of stairs and constant trips to the doctors for more and more assistance in trying to shake persistent viruses.

A fatigue specialist who actually understood all of this, and who could see the hidden underlying problem of deep seated residual fatigue and stress, ran some tests – Murray’s liver was toxic and unable to filter his system, his testosterone levels were non-existent (remember that sex drive is a product of testosterone production and loss of it is one of the signs of the earlier two stages of overtraining) and his levels of the stress hormone cortisol were sky high. He was stuck in permanent anaerobic glycolisis.

Sadly, despite the right diagnosis Murray was still treated with a Band-Aid and given hormone replacement therapy (HRT). He was prescribed between 100mg and 250mg/day of testosterone for two years. Putting exogenous testosterone in the body causes the body to completely quit making it’s own testosterone. Now Murray was faced with being a thirty-year old on HRT for the rest of his life. At the same time, little attention was paid to his diet, so the underlying problem – being in anaerobic glycolisis would not be fixed.

After two years Murray sought out a new doctor who changed everything; he got rid of Murray’s exogenous testosterone and changed his diet.

The doctor’s solution was to change Murray’s diet to one of natural meats and fats, with plenty of high quality fruits and vegetables. Murray’s training has changed to build his aerobic system so it can help him function normally and keep him out of the sugar-burning spiral that was started early on by eating more and more carbohydrate. Minimizing the use of stimulants has also been an important part in Murray’s recovery as these only serve to mask the actual fatigue. Just like pain, fatigue should be noticed. You hopefully wouldn’t train through pain so severe you had to take painkillers to do so, so you should not attempt to train through exhaustion so bad you need a triple shot espresso to get through your session.

It’s taken four years for Murray to rebuild his body and get back to being a normal healthy person, after almost ten years of smashing himself to pieces and having it jury rigged back together by short term fixes.

If you suspect you are headed down the same path as Murray, the solutions are simple:

• Take note of how much you are sleeping. Sleep is the number one way to repair the stresses of life and training. Remember training is a combination of work plus rest.
• Eat the right food. Your system preferentially needs protein and fat – these are essential for survival. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. Eating more carbohydrates “for energy” is likely only going to serve to switch off your aerobic system and leave you weak and unrecovered from training.
• There is no need for high intensity training all the time. At Hardstyle Physical Training we tell our clients to walk for twenty minutes daily to make sure they get in some easy aerobic work every single day. They do their hard training with us, so we ask that the rest of their time be spent easy. In my own training I do the same – I use up my hard sessions for the week lifting weights and my other ten sessions for the week are all done at an aerobic pace only – no fast paced or intense efforts.

If you are wondering if you are displaying symptoms of stage one or two overtraining, please read Overtraining Can Kill You: The 3 Stages of Overtraining, Part 1.

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Overtraining can kill you.

If you’ve been around the fitness scene for any length of time you’ll have heard it whispered about like Beetlejuice with people seemingly afraid to say it out loud for fear of invoking its wrath. The workouts done by this group wouldn’t hurt an average sized cat. Then there’s the other side of the coin. The no pain, no gain crew who don’t believe you can ever overtrain and who boast about causing rhabdomyolysis in their clients. Like with most things there’s truth to both sides and the smart approach is straight down the middle.

Let’s look quickly at what overtraining is and the various stages of it, as well as how to possibly use it to our advantage before we wind up in hospital.

Overtraining is extremely misunderstood. The equation for training is quite simple:

Training = Work + Rest

You don’t improve while training, only once you have recovered from the session and your body has rebuilt itself slightly better. This, supposedly, is common knowledge, yet all too often I see people only worry about the work side of things and never about the recovery aspect.

With the high stress, constantly on-call lifestyle many lead these days it’s quite common for people to turn to exercise for an escape. I am absolutely in love with my distance sessions at the moment because they give me hours to myself where I can’t be bothered by the phone or email. But is the exercise really helping me remove stress from my body or is it adding to it?

Every single training session you do adds stress to the body. While you may find it relaxing and enjoyable, you have added stress to an already stressed out system. The only way to overcome this is a better rest strategy, not more training.

Overtraining, in its early forms is often unrecognizable as a medical condition as no symptoms may appear. The only signs may be slight decreases in performance, injuries that never seem to heal, or a cold that simply won’t go away. It’s the accumulation of all the stress of work and training that contribute to these factors.

The body goes through three stages of stress adaptation:

Stress Adaptation Stage 1

Diagnosing the early stages of overtraining can be difficult. Things may appear as slight back pain in a cyclist, a touch of ankle or foot problems in a runner, or as shoulder pain in a lifter. Usually during this time blood tests will still come back showing normal ranges, which can lead to further frustration as injuries continue or performances start to decline further.

As a coach you need to keep your eyes wide open when clients start reporting feeling a little run down. Slight changes in gait and mechanics can lead to bigger problems and injuries. Knowing your clients well and what their form should look like is important. A smart coach will cut training short at the first signs of form breakdown and instantly switch to recovery week mode.

Interestingly, in this first stage of overtraining big gains in performance can be made afterwards if used correctly. Commonly called overreaching it is not uncommon for athletes to deliberately be pushed into the red zone so that after an appropriate recovery period they have adapted better and return faster and stronger. The problem here lies in the excitement of heightened performance. The athlete and coach usually end up continuing down this road, pushing more and more until, like Icarus, they burn out and come crashing back to earth.

One of the things I am starting to see more and more, as a strength trainer who is exploring the world of aerobic work, is that the aerobic system powers our recovery system. In fact, our cardiovascular system only works aerobically. Having an underpowered aerobic system makes recovery from hard sessions even more difficult as it is the aerobic system that clears the waste products in the muscles and shuttles the nutrients in to repair them.

Symptoms of this first stage include:

• Increased vulnerability to back, knee, ankle, and foot injuries.
• Abnormal hormonal output. Including changes to menstrual cycle in women.
• Reduced sexual desire.
• Mental stress, depression, and anxiety.

The important thing to do here is to recognise the early stages of overtraining and appropriately manage other factors such as diet, sleep, and lifestyle so that the work part of the equation is balanced. This may mean reducing your training volume and intensity in the short term.

I’ve actually gone through this myself while testing training plans and have found that by reducing volume in my strength/anaerobic sessions I am actually gaining strength. All while putting in large miles at the same time – something that many will tell you is impossible. It’s not an easy feat to juggle all the balls of life so that training is optimal, but with the right diet choices, sleeping adequately, and sensible training intensities it is proving possible.

Stress Adaptation Stage 2

This stage is most often seen by athletes who perform high volumes of anaerobic or strength work, particularly those who have high lifestyle stress. Strangely, a feeling of increased energy will be felt as the adrenal system kicks into high gear to cope with the extra demands. This will be shown in a restless, over-excited state – a feeling of not needing any sleep and of being able to go and go and go.

The resulting high cortisol levels can lead to increased insulin, which reduces fat burning and increases fat storage. Maximal training intensities increase the insulin response significantly. This leads to a desire for more carbohydrate (also needed to refuel the work done at the higher intensities). The body’s growing intolerance of these, due to the heightened insulin response, however, will lead to the carbs being stored as fat, not as potential energy – further heightening the problem.

While it may seem like this is an unwinnable position to be in, at this stage the entire downward spiral can still be reversed through changing diet and training and recovery strategies.

I hate to leave you all hanging, but stage three is quite a big piece and I’ve actually got an interview with someone who went so deeply into the red zone that it literally took years to get out of. What makes it even more interesting is this is no ordinary guy – he’s a stud athlete and a clever trainer, and still wasn’t able to see all the warning signs developing from inside the eye of the storm. It’s an eye-opening, cautionary tale.

Read part two: Overtraining Can Kill You: The 3 Stages of Overtraining, Part 2

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I know how this has played itself out in my own world. For me, a healthy, happy life is about balance, but when we are preoccupied with something, even something that is ostensibly healthy, like an exercise regimen or a martial art, sometimes we can take it to an unhealthy extreme. I’d say I’m only speaking for myself, but I’ve seen the effects of good fitness habits gone bad in others as well, and have even dispensed advice about it – when asked, of course. It can manifest itself as burnout, repetitive stress injuries, illness, and even conditions with very serious-sounding names like rhabdomyolysis and orthorexia.

In an earlier article, I discussed HOW this happened to me. And that got me thinking about WHY it can happen. It started to dawn on me that I can use my athletic pursuits to self medicate the way some people use drugs or shopping or food: to take my mind off the stuff in my life that isn’t going the way I want it to. I don’t plan to transform these healthy habits into unhealthy diversions, but sometimes I do, frequently when I’m looking for escapism, frequently subconsciously.

Those are the times when I hang out longer before and after class, when I get antsy if I have to miss training, and when even the post-training exhaustion enables me to detach from whatever’s going on in my work or personal life that I’d rather not deal with. Some of this is probably normal and is one of the many reasons people pursue a fitness path in the first place.

But you can tell when it has become a bit, overzealous, shall we say. I’m not saying we need to curtail our athletic endeavors. Just, every now and then, it’s important to do a gut check and make sure that when you are rushing to your workout, you are actively rushing to something rather than actively running away from something. And if it’s the latter, see if you can figure out what it is and address it head on before your workout becomes your drug of choice.

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Exercise is a good thing, right? Well, like all things, exercise is good in moderation. Too little exercise leaves us overweight and unhealthy, but too much exercise can stress out our systems and cause a whole different variety of health problems.

While, as the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research explains, some elite athletes are able to withstand high volumes of intense workouts, it is because of their ability to control the non-training factors in their lives. When surrounded by regular life, getting proper recovery is more difficult.

• Persistent fatigue – are you more tired than you should be?
• Elevated resting heart rate – this may be especially evident first thing in the morning.
• Frequent illness – does it seem like you catch every cold and virus going around?
• Decreased strength and performance – are you getting weaker and slower despite your workouts?
• Insomnia – are you tired all day, but have difficulty sleeping at night?
• Chronic muscle soreness – are you muscles always sore and tender?
• High cortisol levels – you may notice it’s hard to get rid of the weight around your mid-section.
• Depression – loss of motivation and enthusiasm.

Most of all, just get back to the basics – schedule a massage, get regular sleep, have days where you don’t work out at all, and follow a good nutrition plan. Exercise is a great thing and endorphins make us feel wonderful, but too much can be more damaging than good.

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