theaestheticproject

HOW TO RECOGNIZE AND MANAGE OVERTRAINING

I want to cover a very controversial and important subject, I will talk about overtraining. Why? Because lately I

found myself in a state of overtraining and this is not the first time. The subject itself is a very important one to be

discussed because it might influence your development, inside and outside the gym. CT Fletcher fans might ask what is overtraining and

say its all bullshit, but im going to let you decide!

This article will be divided into 2 parts:

1. how to recognize if im in a state of overtraining, what are the symptoms

2. how to recover from it, how to plan my training at this period and also nutrition, plus preventing overtraining in the future.

1. So how do I know if i am overtrained? Maybe im just tired, had a hard week at work or school… but really there are

many indicators, which together link to overtraining.

✪ First indicator is your overall feeling. You feel this overall tiredness, in the gym and also outside the gym.

You will experience a lost of drive, for a example instead of going to training you feel like just staying at home to sleep. Training

simply doesnt seem as exciting as it used to be. The important thing is to feel the difference between overtraining

and just lazyness or decreased motivation.

✪ Second indicator is the training. Whether you are a bodybuilder or some other athlete, you need to analyse your progress.

If the results are have been very static, there hasn’t been a clear path of progress and even you see things going downhill,

its clear that something is not right. If you are a bodybuilder, in my opinion the best way to analyse your progress is by

compound movements like bench or squat. Usually these are the first things that go downhill when you experience overtraining.

✪ Thirdly look over your training of last few months even as far as back to six months. Now search for things like increased volume,

increased intesity and most important – have you given yourself enough time to rest and recover. We are not robots, we can not perform

good all the time, recovery is crushial. Sometimes to guarantee progress for a longer period, we need to think ahead.

Think how can I be better in long term which this sport is actually all about.

✪ Last thing is our overall health. Unusual traumas, or just pain in your knees, back, wrists, shoulders etc

might show a sign of overtraining. For me personally this is the first thing I notice and from this point I will start to look

other symptoms to make sure if I need to give my body more time time to recover, or even to take a deload week. Overtraining might even

cause fever and nausea during or after trainings. Also more intesive DOMS

So to end the first part lets shortly conclude all the symptoms that might suggest to overtraining:

✔ Tiredness, loss of energy

✔ Loss of drive or motivation

✔ Strenght loss or stamina loss

✔ Joint pains

✔ Increased doms and oftenly occuring muscle soreness

✔ Long period of training without substantial recovery time

✔ Feeling sick or nausea during workouts

VERY IMPORTANT is to understand that seperately all of these symptoms are totally normal

but when you exprience most or all of these togehter you might be experiencing overtraining.

To start off this part, its important to emphasize taking action when feeling the symptoms of overtraining. When a person proceeds to push himself even harder when being in a overtraining state, it only makes the recovery process longer.

This is a usual thing for bodybuilders in the last stages of competition prep. Usually the recovery from dieting is as long

as the diet itself, so very simply – the bigger is the stress from overtraining, the bigger is the setback!

✪ Training – these are the instructions how to set up your training. I wil give five important points to follow:

✔ Not more than 3-4 trainings per week.

✔ Number of sets should be half of what you did before. For an example: you used to do 16 sets of chest, now do 8.

✔ Rep range should stay between 8 or 10, even if you can do 12 or 14.

✔ Split should be upper/lower or push/pull/legs.

✔ Choose your most favourite exercises, the ones you enjoy the most.

This kind of process when you try to get out of the overtraining state could last from one week up to 8 weeks. I normally

do this approximately two weeks before I feel like training harder again.

Its also not a bad thing if you do something other as a sport on this recovery period

(ballsports, swimming, running (but definitely not crossfit lol) just to come out from that same “old” bodybuilding routine.

✪ Nutrition

Next subject that I will cover is nutriton. The main point is to take the nutritional side a bit more easier during that period.

If you are dieting, I would suggest you not to lose more weight at that point. Try to keep the calories at the maintenace point

or even in a little surplus. The reason why is that you shouldn’t put any more stress on your body, when dieting its smarter to give your metabolism a little break.

Good food means better mood and overall hapiness, also more energy. If you can try to do a blood test, it could give you a good

overview about your micronutrient needs, which also helps the recovery process.

✪ I dont want to be in a state of overtraining, how can I prevent it?

Here are a few steps that can help you stay in a healthier state – physically and mentally:

1. Avoid going “all out” during your workouts.

Whether your a strength athlete or doing an endurance sport, “maxing out” in all of your workouts is not a sustainable strategy.

If you want to keep on progressing steadily, there has to be a reserve kept in your workouts. This will help keeping your central

nervous system healthier and your recovery better. Working in the range between 90-100% of your capability shouldn’t be bigger than 5% – 10% of time spent training.

2. Do your deloads!

Deload means basically – training very lightly or not training at all. Usually people take deload weeks, for an example after every 2 or 3 months, you spend one week doing nothing…even if you dont feel tired. This will give our body a well needed rest (even if one doesn’t feel tired or overtrained) and again – prevent overtraining. One week “wasted” is much better than a month or two wasted, caused by overtraining!

3. Pump is the cure!

Overtraining is very often caused because of staying in a very one-sided rep range, for an example reps between 3-8. This can be compared to powerlifting, where sometimes due to a poorly planned training schemes, there is no progress but a lot of training.

Let the body recover through using a easier weight and by doing a lot of reps. This also helps to relax mentally, because

“over lifting your ego” is not the case anymore. These kind of 1-4 week pumping workouts can play a massive role in preventing overtraining and keeping a healthier state of mind.

4. Treat yourself!

Last but not least – just relax sometimes. Go and have a beer on a saturday night…or McDonalds with your buddies, whatever floats your boat! There is much more to life than lifting weights and these things also make you feel good! Actions like these produce endorfins, which reduce tension, whether it is mental or physical. Keeping a balanced lifestyle is something that seroius lifters tend to forget very often!

So thats it, I think I have covered most of what was on my mind, considering this subjest. Again this is a very serious topic, which has caused a lot of problems for me. I hope that this article helped at least some of your, struggling with the same issue. Keep in mind that these tips and notes are not from some textbook, these are all my own experiences. Some of you may deal with this situation differently or some of you may even not ever experienced something like overtraining, thinking its a myth. What ever the situation might be, I really enjoyed expressing my thougts into this article and sharing some knowledge.

Mikk

The Aesthetic Project

Postitasime oma Facebooki lehele möödunud nädalal artikli, kus Mikk jagas oma kogemusi ja mõtteid ületreeningu osas ning nõuandeid, kuidas ületreeningut ära tunda ning kuidas sellega nö. toime tulla. Mõtlesime, et jagame ka siia foorumisse neid mõtteid. Võiksite ka oma kogemustest rääkida seoses ületreeninguga – kas olete kokku puutunud ning kuidas sellega toime tulnud olete ” srcset=”/uploads/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x” width=”20″ height=”20″>, aitäh!

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Paiskasime internetiavarustesse just oma uue video, kus erilist valu saavad tunda just tuharalihased! Nii, et haarake oma proteiinikohupiimad, kanakoivad, sellerivarred ning sit back and enjoy! OVER AND OUT

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Aitäh, väga hea küsimus kusjuures! Sõjaväes on üpris rangelt reguleeritud sealse materjali tootmine ja avaldamine ning igapäeva olmet ei ole väga lihtne jäädvustada. Küll aga lubas Mikk jäädvustada varsti oma treeninguid seal (mõned jutud, kuidas ta seal leidlikult voodi najal row’e teeb ja killuvesti tooli najale lisaraskuseks pannes õlga teeb on päris pullid ” srcset=”/uploads/emoticons/biggrin@2x.png 2x” width=”20″ height=”20″>) ning linnaloale saades räägib juba pikemalt sealsetest tegevustest läbi kulturisti silmade ning üritab anda võimalikult palju infot tulevastele kaitseväelastele ” srcset=”/uploads/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x” width=”20″ height=”20″>. Lähiajal arvatavasti plaanis ka Mikule külla sõita ning teha selle kohta väike videoblog. Nii, et huvitavat contenti on kindlasti lähiajal tulemas ” srcset=”/uploads/emoticons/wink@2x.png 2x” width=”20″ height=”20″>

Hea video see viimane trennivideo. Hea töötlus!

Aitäh sulle Rete ” srcset=”/uploads/emoticons/smile@2x.png 2x” width=”20″ height=”20″>!