After my newest bout of motivation in my last emo post, I’ve been following up with some good progress on the training end of things. I’m still figuring out exactly how much I should train. You hear so much about overtraining and how it can derail progress. After much research, the answer is the ever frustrating “it depends.”

The reason is because it’s constantly in flux, and the old familiar “listen to your body” line comes up over and over and over again.

Overtraining

Because of my history of pushing myself too hard too quickly, I tend to error on the side of caution to avoid major injuries. Overuse injury aside, I’ve accomplished that goal.

After my last post, I was on a tear. I did consecutive days at the gym for the first time in forever and felt great. Tired, but great! After a day of rest/recovery (that 2nd day was my birthday) I did a 5k training session, which went pretty well. I felt a little sluggish, but my performance had improved since the last time I ran.

Then I made the mistake of going to the gym the day after that. I figured I did one back-to-back, so maybe I can start a new program of two days on, one day off. Which in theory sounds great, but as I just said, having just done my first back to back workout in a long time, probably not the smartest thing to do.

It’s amazing how the body fights so hard to keep itself from changing, even when you’re trying to make it healthier overall. Anyhow, working out 4 times in 5 days, it was easy to tell I had overtrained.

Evaluation

The first sign of overtraining was my triceps were extremely sore. We did tricep work both days of the first back-to-back, so I anticipated soreness but this was something different. I have a pretty high pain tolerance, needles don’t bother me at all. But I had trouble sleeping because they hurt so bad.

I’m one of those types that avoid taking any medication at all, even pain killers. I was forced to take some just so I was able to fall back asleep, it was that painful! My range of motion was even impeded throughout the day.

Usually soreness for me only lasts one or two days, even the second day it’s diminished significantly, but in this case it wasn’t. Like I said, this felt different.

By the end of that 4th workout, I noticed that I was moody the day before and I really felt exhausted in a different way than normal. For a couple days I felt like I was in a fog and even had difficulty concentrating on work, or even getting the motivation to work!

The final sign was after that workout, usually you’re tired but in a good way. This time, I just felt beat.

I looked up a ton of articles (as per usual) and persistent muscle soreness, irritability, drained when what would normally be a good workout, and general exhaustion were all on the list.

Some other symptoms listed that I didn’t have were elevated resting heart rate, getting sick/infections easily (lowered immune system), increased incidence of injuries, depression (might have had that mixed with moodiness), insomnia, loss of appetite.

Usually, if you have at least three of these, then you may be overtraining.

Listening To Your Body

There’s that phrase again, but it really is valid. My body was screaming that I needed a couple recovery days as soon as I sat down after that 4th workout. The next day was a scheduled day off, but I pretty much decided as soon as I got home that it would be stretched to two days (it actually got inadvertently stretched to three due to work).

It’s always a fine line whether to push or rest in fitness. Is it a “working the muscle” burn or is it an “I’m risking injury” burn? Do I push myself to workout with lacking motivation, or is my lack of motivation due to overtraining?

Deep down inside I usually know the answer, but consciously having to question it constantly frustrates me a bit. I suppose that’s something that will get better with time and getting better in tune with my body.

In Flux

Another frustrating part for people that love routines like myself is that answer is constantly changing. In the workouts since my recovery, I’ve shown substantial improvements in performance at the gym, so I can likely push myself slightly harder and be fine.

As they say, “when working out you break your body down, in recovery you build it up.” So even though doing those 4 workouts in 5 days completely wrecked me last week, that’s not to say that I wouldn’t be able to handle doing it this week.

That being said, I probably won’t do that this week, but you know what I mean.

Other things that factor in the overtraining debate are your normal body cycles, how much sleep you’re getting, and stress coming from outside fitness.

I’m happy that I listened to my body and took a few days off to recover, because it easily could have gotten worse. But since I caught it early, my body repaired itself has led to an increase in performance.

While I very much do NOT recommend pushing yourself to moodiness and decreasing performance at work, I’m happy to a degree I pushed myself to see my current limits instead of constantly holding myself back in fear.

To find a silver lining, for the first time I felt like I actually earned a day off as opposed to “I should probably take tomorrow off to avoid overtraining.” Definitely won’t make a habit of that though.