How To Find BALANCE, Where You Are Enjoying Your Training and Improving!
After reading this post you will understand why MORE IS JUST MORE AND NOT BETTER. You will also have ideas on what signs you can be listening too in terms of overreaching, and how you can regulate your own training by listening to your body.
In CROSSFIT, and most other functional / high intensity fitness. We are really really good at pushing until we lay on the floor in a puddle of sweat, and we don't really feel like we had a good workout unless we are DEAD by the end of it.
I don’t know if this type of training just attracts people who enjoy feeling this way, or if we train people to be like this - probably a little bit of both.
In my line of profession, I come across people who are in big big trouble due to this culture and mental skill. People who are struggling with productivity and functioning in their daily life, having massive guilt about taking days off often trying to train more because they are not seeing improvements and they think they need to WORK HARDER.
Many of whom, when reaching me are experiencing injuries, burnout and severe physical and mental health issues that follow that they often have been doing WAY MORE than their body can handle - for WAY TO LONG.
Sometimes I think a part of the problem is having the professional athletes to look up to, that share so much of their life and training online and through social media has created this expectation and normalized hard training, multiple times a day.
Resulting in that many NORMAL people have come to believe they need to be training like professional athletes to get the same results, performance, body composition ect.
One minor issue, or okay many, is that this is not your only job. And without the recovery protocols, mid day naps, and the lifestyle choices where training is your main focus - you are doomed to fail.
When you add in 8-10 hours of work, possibly high stress &/or sedentary job that pays the bills and all the other social, family obligations, wake full nights if you have young kids or occasional late nights that come with living a normal life - very few people can actually cope with ALL the training volume.
This results in just spinning the wheels and not getting better, and unfortunately gradually getting worse.
Here is Why: stress and strain compounds:
Stress is often used as a negative term, but stress or as i like to call it strain in a general setting can be defined as any type of change that causes physical, emotional, or psychological response. Stress is your body's response to Strain and can be anything (and everything) that requires attention or action.
As per this definition, high stress is both getting yelled at for not doing a good job (emotional and psychological strain) but also when we push ourselves through a hard workout (physical and psychological strain).
If you have ever had a really tough day at work, or if you are going through grief, loss or other demanding emotions - you will notice that you dealing with that strain, leaves you with LESS power to push yourself through a workout, you have less to give.
We need Strain and Stress in the right amounts
We need stress to grow. Stress is how we signal to the body - hey I'm gonna need a little bit more from you. And by STRESSING and Straining the body with strength training or a demanding task, then resting, we grow stronger. But notice the REST element there, that is essential for recovering and allowing the adaptations to happen.
What we do know is that without REST, STRESS compounds and builds up. Our bodies are good at coping with stress if given time to do so. But if we load it up too much every day of the week, you can fill the cup to the brim until it starts to overflow. Rest is the million dollar, secret ingredients that is needed for you to adapt to the training you have so excellently put in.
How do you know dealing with too much STRAIN?
Over a long time, if you are filling your cup with "stress" at work, "stress" at home in your personal relationship, "stress" of the pandemic and then adding 7+ "stress" workouts each week, and minimal amount of downtime, recovery, relaxation, you may slowly be overfilling your cup.
These are some typical, but subtle signs and signals you should be looking out for to find out if you are doing TOO much of the good stuff.
Fatigue & Loss of Motivation: Not the kind where you are tired after a workout or want to do something else than going to the gym that day. I am talking about the kind where you wake up tired, exhausted, not enthusiastic about your day & tasks. When you get to the weekend and you don't want to make plans and just want to sleep. As too much strain affects our hormones and we can feel mood changes, depression, mental fog and lack of concentration.
Persistent Soreness, Muscle Pain, Injuries: While it is normal to have DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) in your muscles from a hard session both from strength or high intensity metcons. This should last for about 48 hours after a session. If it lasts longer. or the pain is reoccurring in a joint or always in the same place (like lower back, shoulder ect), you might be over reaching for your current capacity.
Decreased Performance and Workouts FEEL harder than before: We all have bad days, but when your old easy weights are feeling extra heavy week after week, and you are not improving or have levelled out in your performance you are showing signs of overreaching.
Irritability and agitation: When normal day to day things irritate you, make you angry and you feel anxious about daily stuff. Also when you feel general anxiety about missing out on your workout and fear that you are going to lose all your GAINZ.
Loss of appetite, decreased sleep quality and weight loss: If you are losing your ability to eat and rest, feeling like it's a struggle getting your normal meals down and experiencing weight-loss (weight loss alone is not signs of overreaching, its when combined with the above)
Lack of sex drive: As we know from the hierarchy of needs, the body has an ability to switch off our reproduction functions when its under threat. And if you are experiencing lack of drive or deviations from your normal self this could be signs you are not producing the hormones needed.
Decreased immunity and more frequent flu, cold, infections or illness: Too much stress reduces our immune response, so if you find yourself more frequently getting a cold or catching a stomach bug, this could be signs of overreaching.
What to do about it!
It's important to be aware of these symptoms. IF you read through this and recognise two or more of these symptoms - and have been feeling that way for more than 2 weeks it might be possible that you are doing TOO much to what your body can handle!
Don't worry though, there are things and steps you can take to unwind your overreaching and get you back to feeling motivated and getting better at the gym. ALL you need to do is to adjust your current STRAIN/STRESS to your current REST/RECOVERY.
You have three very simple options:
Rest More
Train Less
Or a combination of both.
This means that you need to start taking your rest and recovery as seriously as you take workouts.
Plan in downtime and a weekly rest day
Reduce stress at work
Get 7.5+ hours of sleep
Eat enough calories
Take a full rest day
Drink 2.5-3l of water per day.
Do low impact workouts and body maintenance work
Last but not least - set boundaries and sort out stressful personal relationships
To implement these items or 3 of these items, most people with full time jobs also need to stay away from the gym 1-2 days each week, sleep in instead of doing the morning class, take a walk in nature after work instead of going to the gym or even do a date night with your significant other to fill your batteries.
I recommend to most of my clients to combine both if possible. And to start tracking their mood, and factors listed above in a journal to see improvements (see why you should be journaling)
Common excuses and negotiations:
BUT my friend trains 2 hours more each week than me......
It's important to remember your reaction to situations as an individual. Two people can sit in a performance review meeting for their team and one experiences extreme stress while the other one walks away feeling calm and collected. In the same way some people can run for multiple kilometers feeling good, and others need to rest for a week.
Our tolerance to stress or strain is individual as well, and no two people react the same or have the same identical lives. Your buddy that seemingly can train more hours than you, may have better opportunities to rest and chill or have a stress free job or sleep 1 hour more each night.
It's a dangerous game to start comparing your strain to someone else's when you don't know the whole story.
But I Used To Train like this last year……..
Your tolerance to stress and strain can change! As mentioned above many lifestyle factors affect our ability to cope, rest and recover from strain. And your ability changes depending on how busy, stressful or strainful your schedule is.
This is why you can train 2x per day when you are on a holiday and are just chilling by the pool eating loads of good food. And why you are dying from 4x per week when you are launching a new project at work.
With knowing the signs and signals above, you can adjust and moderate your strains - or adjust your lifestyle, rest and chill factors to better cope with the load.
Big Picture:
You should always be feeling relatively fresh, 1-2 days of over reach and pushing hard is okay, but weeks on weeks of feeling suboptimal, sore, tired and fatigued is not good for you or your GAINZ.
A Pro athlete, and a wise man once told me, if he still looked at girls on the street, he knew he was training the right amount. As soon as he stopped, he knew his primal sex drive was compromised and he would bring down the volume of training and take a few extra rest days and get a massage that week.
I think it is the perfect way of auto-regulating your training.
Take a moment to reflect on how you are feeling, and if you have any of the signs above of overtraining, over reaching you are more than welcome to reach out and get an accountability partner on your journey to find a better balance. I offer remote and in-person coaching to help you achieve this. Check out Remote Coaching or Personal Training for more info.
Don't Push Through, listen to your body and take some well deserved rest days!
More Is Just More - not better
That’s all for now, Any Feedback, Questions or Concerns
-don’t hesitate to reach out!
