The Ultimate Guide To Strength Training: How To Avoid Overtraining
Have you ever been consistent at the gym and then completely stopped? If you have then there is nothing wrong with that and you should not be frustrated with yourself when this occurs. I know you have goals you want to attain and expectations you have set for yourself, but unfortunately for the majority, this is not possible as life is an ever-changing factor in most of our fitness journeys.
When having conversations with online coaching clients around their approach to training before starting with MSC, it tends to go like this:
Me: So how often do you currently train?
Client: I am to be in the gym 5-6 times a week
Me: Oh okay cool, and what is your training style like?
Client: I have a back and bicep day, chest and tris, legs and shoulders.
Client: But I struggle with staying consistent with my training.
Me: I see, do you tend to feel that most of the time the sessions feel like a big chore?
Client: Yeah sometimes, but I just push through because I know it's good for me.
Does this conversation snippet sound familiar to you? If so, then this might be the article you need to help you break this never-ending cycle.
What Is Overtraining
Put simply, overtraining is when you exceed your body’s limit to effectively recover from your training sessions. I am sure you are aware that the body needs time to rest and recover. But are you aware of why?
When we rest we allow the body to repair any damage that has occurred, you are a self-healing organism. What the body also does is adapt so the next time you are faced with a similar situation, your body is much better equipped to handle that. When we overtrain we are inhibiting this adaptation process by continuously applying stress to the body when it has not recovered from the last bout.
Now you may be asking yourself ‘have I ever been overtrained’ and the answer to that is more than likely. especially when starting on your journey. Listed below are a few indicators of someone who is overtrained:
Lack of Strength
Lethargic with daily activity
Headaches
Constantly sore muscles days after training
Joints starting to randomly hurt
Severe lack of motivation to train
These are only a few indicators of overtraining and as you can see, overtraining takes a toll on the body far greater than just having DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). Having one of these symptoms does not mean you are overtrained, however, if you are ticking off a fair few boxes then some time away from the gym would be advised.
How Do You Overtrain
As stated previously, overtraining comes about via lack of rest and excessive load on the body. Something you need to understand is that training is a stressor on the body, the same way work is a stressor. Different stressors weigh heavier on the body but they can all lead to you feeling overtrained.
As previously mentioned, overtraining is gradually achieved through constantly neglecting the need for rest and recovery. The most common people that I encounter who are overtrained are those who train a minimum of 5x a week and are pushing themselves to the limit every session.
If you are one to train this many times that is fine, however, it is not an easy training style to adhere to. The reason professional athletes, bodybuilders, and powerlifters can commit to so many days of training and not experience overtraining is due to the way their training plan is set. They incorporate training periods where training loads are much lighter than what they usually do. Or they just have complete periods of rest because they know that resting will not kill your gains.
Overtraining can also be achieved in a single session but this is coined overreaching. When training, a lot of it comes down to experimenting with movements, body positioning, weight selection etc. The latter is often where we go wrong, lifting excessive amounts of heavyweights in a single session is a surefire way to overreach. We all like the feeling of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) which can be a common after-effect of training, a bearable discomfort. However, there is a limit to where the DOMS are beneficial and detrimental to your muscle gains.
Symptoms of overreaching
Extended periods of extreme soreness
Tender muscles
Limited range of motion in affected areas
Bruising
Ways to avoid overtraining
Many people will experience overtraining, which is not an issue, I have been training myself for around 8 years now and I have experienced it multiple times (more so in my early days of training). The problem is when it is a continual pattern and find yourself in this fatigued state more often than not. Here are some ways to reduce/avoid overtraining in the future.
Listen to your body
I know we all have heard the old school sayings of ‘Push through the pain’ or my personal favourite that I abided by for a while in my younger training days ‘Pain is just weakness leaving the body’ until I realised, I was in pain the majority of the time. Understanding your body may sound cliché but its effectiveness is undeniable. Knowing when to increase that weight, push that bit harder in your lift, or even attend the gym after an extremely stressful and busy day could make the difference in you saying, ‘what a good session’ instead of ‘damn this session hurt, I need some ice!’
Track Your Session
Another means to help reduce overtraining is tracking your training sessions. Being aware of what muscle group you have been training the past two weeks can not only be a fantastic tool for progressing your training but can also help reduce overtraining. Let’s think about it, we have two people, Jane and Lisa. Jane wants to improve her shoulders and chest. But she has been hitting these muscle groups 4x a week and going as heavy as she can each time, not considering the amount of work these muscles have been under as she is only focused on the goal of a bigger chest and shoulders.
Then we have Lisa who also has the same goal, but she has been keeping track of her training and lifts. On the third day, she realised that she had been doing the same movements at a relatively heavy weight for the past two days in a row. From this realisation, she has decided to make her third day a rest day rather than attending the gym and placing even more load on these already fatigued muscles.
This may seem insignificant at the time but what Lisa has done is allow her body to adapt and recover which will not only increase her gains and progress but also build a better relationship with training and builds the understanding that training is a journey once started, not something to be rushed.
Rest Days
There is a stigma associated with rest days which I never understand. It has been associated with weakness and people continually say you should be working more than resting, which is true to an extent, but you cannot work without having rest. What I want you to understand is that rest is the icing on the cake for your gains, without rest your body will not be able to adapt and recover from not only the stress placed on it during training but also the stress placed on it from everyday life. Having 2-3 rest days in a week is fine, having a healthy work-to-rest ratio will make training seem much less of a chore and you will find yourself pushing harder on the days you do train.
Calculate Load
If you are a numbers person then there is a way to calculate how much load you are placing on your body per exercise, this is known as tonnage. The way to calculate tonnage is
KG x Reps= TKG (total KG)
TKG x Sets= Tonnage
Example: 60kg squat for 3 sets x 10 reps
60kg x 10= 600 TKG
600kg x 3sets= 1800 tonnage
But please keep in mind that tonnage is not the be-all and end-all when determining load in the session as other factors play a role such as intensity of movements, time under tension, rest periods etc. however, it can still be a useful tool when monitoring your load and being mindful of overtraining.
You can also monitor how many sets you are performing on a muscle group each week, if you are pretty new to training (5 months- 1.5 years) then you should aim to do 10-20 sets per muscle group every week. The more experienced you become, the more sets you will be able to perform due to greater resistance to muscle damage.
Conclusion
Overtraining is a part of fitness journeys; you will most likely experience it eventually, and I don’t want you to feel bad for overtraining. In my opinion, once you have overtrained then you are more aware of the markers and will be more conscious of them going forward and have a better understanding of when you are approaching that overtrained state.
In my professional opinion, the best way to avoid overtraining that I tell people are:
Intentionally incorporate more rest periods into your training weeks and overall training journey.
Pay attention to the body when you feel tired or have areas that are feeling sore or achy, random aches are an unfortunate side effect of getting older.
Keep yourself fueled with a high-protein diet and do not be afraid of carbs
If you have experienced overtraining or overreaching then feel free to drop me an email here and tell me about your experience and how you overcame it. I am always interested to learn other ways to deal with it.
I hope this helped
Till next time
Myles