So, how do you know if you are experiencing overtraining symptoms?  Many of you have been busting your butts this year, perhaps a little too much.  If you have been pushing your body to it’s physical limits with little or no recovery, you may be overtraining.  Sometimes referred to as “overtraining syndrome“, this is pretty common to people perhaps just getting started with a program or those who are working towards a big event and want to get the most effort in before hand.

Most, if not all, of the Beachbody programs have recovery periods built into them.  This is by design and very important to keep progressing throughout the 60-90 days of the program.

The focus of today’s post will try to clue you in to the overtraining symptoms to look for as well as some tips that you can use to try and prevent overtraining.

Overtraining Symptoms

It is important you know the overtraining signs and symptoms.  Otherwise, you may not realize that you have been hit by this all too common condition.  Here are the most telling sign to be on the look out for if you think that you might be overtraining.

Simply put, your body needs the rest, your muscles need the rest and they WILL NOT grow and your strength WILL NOT improve if they are not given the proper amount of time to recover.  Often, people will mistake overtraining symptoms as a sign that they are plateauing in their fitness program, when in reality it is simply their bodies trying to tell itself; “I need some time here…!”

Illnesses occur when you are overtraining due to the amount of energy that your body consumes trying to build muscle while still trying to maintain your workout routine.  If you are exhausting your body constantly with your workout while your body is trying to fight off illness with antibodies produced by amino acids found in protein, your body will eventually not being able to do both at the same time and illness will occur.

Many, including myself, have tried to workout while being ill/sick, and we all know it’s no fun!  Sometimes, this is okay as it get rid of some of the yuck and gunk through sweat and getting the blood flowing, but other times, this will only set you back even further.   Suggestion:  Take the day off and get yourself better!

Here are a few questions to ask yourself to determine if you might be overtraining:

If you answered yes to more than 1 of these questions, you may need to back off for a little while and allow your body to recover.

Effects

There are a number of both physical and psychological effect that overtraining can have on your body, here are just a few for each.

Treatment

This is a pretty easy one…TAKE A BREAK!  Slow down a bit.  That doesn’t mean you have to do nothing for a week, you can still stay active and allow your body to recover properly.  That being said, there is a under-appreciated value in simply going to bed early, sleeping in late and just relaxing for a day or two.  Trust me, you aren’t going to regress in any training/results that you have gained at this point, you are more than likely going to promote further results and improve your performance afterwards.

Programs like P90X, P90X2 and Insanity have a built in recovery WEEK!  That’s right an entire week of recovery.  Each program manages them a bit differently and the term “recovery” is used a bit loosely, it is more like “active recovery”, but they are there and they are there for a reason.  After 3 weeks of crushing your routines, all of that work has taken it’s toll on your body and these programs recognize the value in giving your body the rest.  So as you go through these programs, don’t take the recovery periods lightly and simply keep going, your body will not respond well!  It is not a race, its a marathon, pace yourself.

Here is a quick, although seemingly simple list of ways to treat overtraining.

Summary

You need to ensure that you recognize overtraining symptoms!  Otherwise, your body is eventually going to say; “Enough is Enough!“, and give out on you.  When that happens, you are going to be setting yourself back even further than if you had simply taken a few days and allowed your body to recover properly.  Sorry folks but you are NOT invincible and while you have the will power and the motivation to keep going, sometimes you need to listen to your body and give it some much needed rest.