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Rapidly increasing training volume and intensity can damage health, causing fatigue, irritability, and immunity risks.
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Training becomes harmful when it becomes an obligation, losing pleasure and causing symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
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Identifying signs such as persistent fatigue, injuries, and declining immunity requires gradual rest and attention to nutrition
Constantly challengingyourself to demand more and more in training and competition can harm you in the long run. Increasing training volume and loads excessively and rapidly can pose serious risks to your health.
Feeling constantly fatigued and exhausted at the end of each workout, being irritable, and having to deal with muscle discomfort constantly are all warning signs: you are pulling too hard.
Getting physical activity and keeping moving feels good. It benefits your heart and bone health, you can more easily keep your weight under control, and your mood and mental and physical well-being also benefit.
The benefits are many and across the board. Driven by enthusiasm and eagerness, one could fall into temptation by getting carried away and overdoing the hours of training, meeting exactly the opposite effect.
Overtraining
That’s when you’re giving it your all on all fronts: lots of high-intensity, high-volume hours. Too much. Each of these factors must be managed carefully and increased gradually and methodically.
Overtraining in most cases stems from a lack of rest between workouts, but a lack of attention to proper nutrition to support physical activity, or not getting enough sleep or sleeping poorly, can also influence it.
Compulsive training
When exercising is no longer an activity you choose to do but becomes an activity you feel you must do, it means you are exercising compulsively. You feel you have to train, for this or that reason, and should you skip you would feel guilty. By doing so, you will turn this moment into yet another obligation to attend to, losing the pleasure and rejuvenating aspect that physical activity conveys.
How much is too much?
Everything is relative and personal. There is no guideline that indicates a limit within which exercise becomes counterproductive and at worst dangerous to health. The rule of common sense applies.
How to tell if you are overreacting?
The signs and symptoms that should set off alarm bells are different. Among the most common are:
- Prolonged muscle fatigue;
- Lowering of immune defenses;
- increase in injuries;
- Constant feeling of fatigue, irritability and lack of energy;
- Excessive fatigue from the beginning of training;
- To no longer be able to make progress and improve;
- Increased resting heart rate;
- Placing training above all else;
- sense of depression or anxiety.
What to do to remedy this?
Rest. A stop period will help you regain your energy and motivation. Once you have recharged your batteries make sure to resume your workouts gradually. Throwing ourselves headlong back into the old routine is not a good idea.
Pay attention to:
- eating well;
- Hydrate yourself properly;
- Sufficient sleep;
- Give yourself time for rest and recovery;
- don’t overdo it!
Haste is bad advice
Whatever your level, beginner or advanced, don’t believe in flash improvements. The fast and furious technique is not the best choice you can make. It may take away some of your satisfaction in the short run while making you pay dearly for it in the long run.
Every goal must be earned and consolidated with time. Don’t trust those who promise or boast immediate results because they won’t last, or worse, you won’t last, even risking injury or incurring bornout syndrome, a symptomology that involves emotional and physical exhaustion accompanied by a reduced sense of accomplishment.
Why speed up the time? Enjoy every extra mile you can run, every second you shave off from your PB, every milestone that, no matter how seemingly small, is infinitely important when embedded in a larger picture. A brick gains value when looked at as a whole as a constituent part of a solid wall.