Are you over-training?  Is Your Body Under Stress?

Do you know the difference between being just a little tired or on a down-cycle, and being legitimately run down or over tired? One of the biggest challenges to achieving your fitness goals is consistency.

Juggling your training with enough sleep and rest, as well as the ‘perfect’ nutritional diet is hard enough, but add to that your work-life, your personal/ home life and suddenly it gets more tricky! So, how do you keep up the pace without over doing it, becoming sick or injured?

What is over-training?

Overtraining occurs when a person experiences stress and physical trauma from exercise. The key to remember when training is that it’s the exercise that breaks your body down, but it’s the rest and recovery that makes you stronger and healthier. This doesn’t happen overnight, or as a result of one or two sessions.

We all know regular exercise is extremely beneficial to our general health and fitness, but we all must remember that improvements to our body can only occur given time.

Please note when I use the word stress I use it very ‘broadly’. Stress is stress, whether it’s a physical, mental or emotional stress, it still has the same effect on your health and well-being!

Whilst there are no specific tests per se there are quite a number of signs and symptoms to be aware of.

If you suffer from one or two of the following signs or symptoms it doesn’t automatically mean you are suffering from overtraining. However, if you recognise five or more of the following signs and symptoms, then it may be time to take a close look at the volume and intensity of your work load.

Physical Signs & Symptoms

• Appetite loss
• Chronic muscle soreness or joint pain
• Decreased performance
• Delayed recovery from exercise
• Elevated resting pulse /heart rate
• Exhaustion
• Frequent minor infections
• Increased susceptibility to colds and flu’s
• Increases in minor injuries
• Insatiable thirst or dehydration
• Intolerance to exercise
• Lethargy
• Weight loss

Psychological Signs & Symptoms

• Anxiety
• Apathy or no motivation
• Depression
• Fatigued, tired, drained, lack of energy
• Headaches
• Inability to relax
• Insomnia
• Irritability
• Reduced ability to concentrate
• Twitchy, fidgety or jittery

As you can see by the number of signs and symptoms there are a lot of things to look out for. Generally the most common signs and symptoms to look for are a total loss of motivation in all areas of your life (work or career, health and fitness etc.), plus a feeling of exhaustion. Need help with ‘Emotional’ stress management ? Or Maga Relaxing treatments, click here to read more….

If these two warning signs are present, plus a couple of the other listed signs and symptoms, then it may be time to take a short rest before things get out of hand.

Sounds like you’re over training?

What do you do now? Click HERE to read more….