Exhausted, tired and just plain flat: that's exactly how athletes who are affected by overtraining feel. We tell you how you can tell that you should take a break and what the symptoms of overtraining are.
Do you know that feeling when suddenly nothing works anymore? You gave everything in training and still you couldn't get the performance in the competition.
Instead of feeling fit, you lose shape and just feel drained.
Why?
Too much training and too little recovery can lead to overtraining. Find out what's behind it here.
Table of contents
Attention: Too much sport makes you sick!
What is overtraining
Less is sometimes more. If you train over a long period of time without giving your body a break, you risk overtraining.
Overtraining is a chronic overload reaction. This occurs when athletes train too intensively and/or too frequently on a sustained basis and do not maintain sufficient recovery phases between training sessions.
One also speaks of a so-called overtraining syndrome. This simply leads to a drop in the athlete's performance and can also cause injuries and longer-term damage to the entire body.
How overtraining occurs
Overtraining occurs when the balance between training and recovery is no longer correct. If you train almost every day for several weeks and do not allow your body to recover, then you are well on the way to overtraining.
This path builds up slowly and goes through different stages.
1. intentional overuse
This is the area where you have the best training results. You set a stimulus during your workout that causes supercompensation.
Your body gets enough rest after training to recover. To do this, you give it enough protein and eat a healthy and balanced diet. This allows the muscle to wash and prepare for the next training session.
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For faster recovery after a workout, Foodspring has developed Recovery Amino Drinks. You simply mix the powder with water and drink it after the workout.
The drink contains everything the muscles need now. In the Recovery Aminos from Foodspring contains only natural ingredients.
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2. continuous overuse
Healthy nutrition and sufficient recovery time have been missing for several days? Then you deprive your body of the opportunity to adapt and become stronger. Instead, your performance will drop if you don't give your body enough rest after the set stimulus.
The risk of injury also increases. And overtraining symptoms appear gradually.
3. overtraining
You have repeatedly pushed your body to its limits over a period of several weeks and taken breaks that are too short. You feel limp and can hardly pull yourself together. Your performance in training is not getting any better either.
Then you are in overtraining!
Attention: Sport is so dangerous when you have a cold!
Overtraining symptoms: How to recognize too hard training
You probably ask yourself the question: At what point am I overtraining? When is it too much and how do I notice it?
There are a number of signs such as fatigue, decrease in performance, frequent injuries, restlessness, weakness, increased blood pressure and many more.
Some of these overtraining symptoms are easier to recognize than others. They also manifest themselves very differently depending on the person.
#1 Listlessness as an overtraining symptom.
Feeling sluggish and don't feel like moving? Listen to your body. It is trying to tell you that it needs rest and relaxation.
Sure, there are days when you have to fight your inner badass and others when it's worth fighting back.
Often such days are also signals from our body, which cries out for rest.
#2 Unusually strong muscle soreness
If you eat well, eat enough, and suffer from unusually severe muscle soreness after an intense workout, it may be an overtraining symptom.
Unlike normal muscle soreness, the pain is much more intense and lasts a few days longer.
Beginning athletes in particular often want to achieve too much too fast and end up overtraining as a result.
#3 Overtraining Symptoms: Failure to progress
You train and train, but your performance just doesn't improve anymore?
Most of the time, you feel the need to even increase your training volume and think it's because you haven't trained enough.
But this is completely the wrong direction. A drop in performance is the first sign that you should lower your training intensity.
Less flexibility, strength and endurance are typical overtraining symptoms.
The trigger for this are the hormones. These get out of balance through overtraining. As a result, your muscles not only react more slowly, but the results also fail to materialize.
Therefore, sport without regeneration is completely pointless!
#4 restlessness and lack of concentration
This overtraining symptom occurs mainly in strength athletes.
If you overdo the training, you can overstrain your sympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for musculature, blood circulation and metabolism, among other things.
If this is overstimulated, you become overly nervous, irritable and restless. It is difficult for you to concentrate.
Under constant nervous tension you regenerate even slower and a vicious circle is created.
#5 Excessive fatigue
First of all, it is completely normal if you feel fatigue or have heavy legs for a few days after training.
However, if the fatigue does not disappear, it is a clear sign that your training volume is too high.
Fatigue accumulates in a body when it has no chance to fully recover. This in turn leads to low energy availability.
This means that your body draws from its own energy stores, such as carbohydrates, proteins and fats.
#6 Overtraining Symptoms: Chronic Injuries
Another overtraining symptom is chronic injuries. Overused joints and muscles can cause constant pain.
If this pain doesn't subside within a few days, you definitely shouldn't take it lightly.
In fact, overtraining stresses all systems in the body and makes it more difficult to fight off infections. Therefore, frequent illnesses and infections of the upper respiratory tract are also a sign that you have trained too much.
In addition, low bone density or low testosterone levels may also be among the symptoms of overtraining.
Can I work out with sore muscles?
#7 Overtraining symptoms: Insomnia
You suffer from acute insomnia or toss and turn in bed all night?
This could be a sign of overtraining syndrome.
Sleep gives your body time to regenerate and rest.
However, the overproduction of stress hormones disrupts the relaxation phase. This makes sleep less effective, leading to chronic fatigue and mood swings.
#8 Loss of appetite
You suddenly have no appetite anymore?
This is also due to a hormone imbalance. More training should normally stimulate appetite, not suppress it.
However, the physical exhaustion caused by overtraining can actually lead to suppression of the feeling of hunger.
#9 Metabolic disorders are among the overtraining symptoms.
If your energy availability is low for an extended period of time, you may experience a nutrient deficiency.
This affects your health and performance. Other medical complications may also affect the cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, endocrine, nervous or reproductive systems, among others.
Among other things, this can trigger menstrual disorders.
#10 Mental stress and depression
Overtraining in combination with lack of sleep and an imbalance of hormones can have a very strong effect on the psyche.
In this case, you should definitely see a doctor or an athletic professional.
This is what happens when you take a break from training!
What are the consequences of too much training
Listen to your body. If you don't pay attention to the symptoms of overtraining, it can have serious health consequences for you. On the one hand, the risk of injury increases and on the other hand, there is a risk of damage to tendons, ligaments and muscle tissue.
You should take this risk seriously.
But your psyche also suffers from overstraining. Overtraining can take away your enjoyment of the sport in the long term. You certainly don't want that.
The body's own defense mechanisms are also weakened by excessive training. Your immune system is then too weak to defend itself against bacteria and viruses.
Your hormone balance is also affected by too much sport. Too many training sessions and too little regeneration throw your hormones out of balance.
Your body is under constant stress and secretes too much cortisol. Heart disease, high blood pressure, insomnia, and immune system dysfunction are often associated with elevated cortisol levels.
What you can do about overtraining symptoms
As an amateur athlete, you don't usually get into the real overtraining. You rather get into a preliminary stage. Into the unintentional, non-functional overuse. The culprit is a wrong diet and too little rest.
Proper overtraining occurs most often in professional athletes. Professionals have a much higher training volume and train with a completely different intensity than normal athletes.
If you have been experiencing the above-mentioned overtraining symptoms for a long time, you should definitely shift down a gear.
Take a break for 2 days and reduce your training. It also makes sense to include meditation, autogenic training or relaxation exercises in your training plan.
It may take a few weeks for your body to recover from overtraining.
How to avoid overtraining
The best way to protect yourself from overtraining is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Always increase your training volume and intensity slowly.
Give your body enough time for regeneration and get enough sleep. This way you do a lot to avoid overtraining.
Also, make sure you eat a healthy and balanced diet. This is the basis for regeneration.
What else you can do to avoid overtraining? Plan your workout. Set goals and don't forget about recovery periods.
On non-training days, you can also do something for your mobility as a change. How about yoga?
Our conclusion
Long-lasting imbalance of training and recovery leads to overtraining. This can manifest itself in many different ways. Recognize the overtraining symptoms early enough and give your body some rest. This is the only way to improve your performance.
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