The Home Fitness Manual

One of the easiest ways to burn yourself right out of your fitness goals is to go beyond your limits find yourself dealing with a few nasty overtraining symptoms. Mentally and physically it’s the worst. If you consistent go into your workouts feeling sapped of energy each sessions will be a demoralizing experience.

(Photo: kmaschke)

The most common reasons people suffer from this is because they never switch up their routines. They keep plugging at the same workouts each week. Even when those trusty workouts stop working people hate to deviate from their comfort zones.

Another concern is if you start suffering from overtraining you could put yourself in the position to actually turn back your progress. Without meaning too you could end up making yourself weaker. And that’s no good.

The Fine Line Between Overtraining and Undertraining

Overtraining symptoms (often confused with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which it shares a few symptoms) are the result of just spending too much time working out. The average person probably doesn’t need nor will benefit from spending a couple of hours lifting weights every single day on the same muscle groups.

Unless you happen to be a fitness model (and I don’t consider them average people by the way) or a pro bodybuilder, you’re not working out with efficiency in mind. The reason why the guys and gals on the covers of fitness magazines can stay ripped all year round is they have access to the best nutritional experts in the industry. So their advantage lies in having the right diet.

But for the rest of us, who often strive to get leaner and toned, working a certain muscle group may be a once or twice-a-week kind of deal.

The bigger muscle groups like the chest usually can rebound faster than an area like the shoulders. The smaller areas naturally need a get a bit more time away from seeing action.

Most people new to lifting should expect to see gains that are matched to the amount of effort they put into each workout. Yet, the more you progress towards your strength and mass potential the slower and smaller these gains become.

This generally causes these typical overtraining symptoms to flare up:

• Increase of injuries
• Headaches
• Lethargy
• Loss of appetite
• Pain in the muscles or joints
• Weakened Immune System

The work-around to this is to balance out hours you need to workout each week to the amount of time you need to give the body for rest and recovery.

Why Frequency Matters With Growth and Conditioning

It’s hard to imagine that you can build muscle by not exercising. On most occasions, if your gains come to a stall, allowing oneself more rest time is the answer. When your body becomes more conditioned it simply needs longer times to recover.

To prevent overtraining symptoms from ruining your motivation I recommend giving a muscle group a days worth of recuperation time before hitting it again. For beginners the body is more responsive and can produce growth with this amount of time.

The typical 3-day split is great for the beginner lifter because the body can rebound with just a day or two of rest. Another method is the 4-day split, which switches between hitting the upper body and lower body. Both of these schedules provide decent amounts of rests to let the muscles heal.

But for those who are used to working with heavier loads and greater intensity might need 5-7 days per muscle group of rest before lifting again.

In the fitness world there’s always going to be a lot of discussion on how to deal with a plateau. One way that works for me is to allow myself an extra day or so or recovery time between sessions. Sometimes an extra day or two works like a charm.

Another solution is to just give yourself a week a way from your workouts. Taking a week-long break from your routine won’t cause the world to end. And it’s not like I’m recommending you to turn into a couch potato for a week, but some moderate activity might be what you need instead of an all-out training session.

I think it’s vital to keep yourself from winding up feeling “Blah” (I believe this is the technical term.) That’s why it’s very important to allow the body enough recovery time in between your sessions. The reason is so it can heal and repair itself.

All forms of resistance training are meant to break down the muscle tissue. And if you continue to break down the muscle on too strict of a schedule you’ll one, put yourself at risk for suffering from overtraining symptoms, but, secondly, keep yourself from seeing consistent gains.