Overtraining Syndrome: How To Beat It & Prevent It

Of course you’re a hard charger that wants to charge hard, but how much can you charge before you decline? At what point is more no longer better? When does that perceived positive become a negative?

What you may or may not be aware of is that there is a point of diminishing returns with exercise. There’s a point where if you continue to up the ante, rather than advance, you’ll retreat. This point falls under the heading of: overtraining syndrome.

SECTIONS:

• What Is Overtraining Syndrome

• What Causes Overtraining Syndrome And How To Prevent Overtraining Syndrome

  • Common Causes

• What Are Symptoms Of Overtraining Syndrome

• How To Recover From Overtraining Syndrome

• My Thoughts

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What Is Overtraining Syndrome 

Overtraining syndrome (OTS) is a condition where an athlete’s power is zapped. It’s like the NBA players in space jam. Your performance inexplicably wanes and despite all efforts and an increased workload, no progress is made as fatigue overtakes your existence.

It occurs when your total output incessantly exceeds your ability to recover.

The result of the syndrome is: neurologic, endocrinologic, and immunologic changes (insert scary face).

Avoiding such a condition not only savors your ability to perform, it allows you to grow and/or burn fat at a higher rate, for peak mental and mechanical efficiency occurs from proper recovery.

Overtraining syndrome itself is rarely diagnosed, but in daily vernacular gets lumped in with its slightly less severe relatives: overreaching or central nervous system (CNS) fatigue.

Overreaching is also you not gifting your body with the appropriate tools or suspending it from sufficient time to bounce back between bouts of exercise. Same symptoms with less severity.

Note: there are debates in fitness circles on if overtraining is including CNS fatigue, if it actually exists, if CNS fatigue is worse, if it’s instead peripheral nervous system fatigue (PNS), only overreaching, etc.. Whatever you want to call it the impact is clear and so is what to do to treat and prevent such a state. For this reason my many references to overtraining is considering each of these various, yet strikingly similar challenges.

Regardless..

If you continue to overburden without reenergizing you will inconvenience your CNS and PNS:

• CNS is the command center, comprising the brain and spinal cord. It receives and disseminates information pertaining to: your feelings, movements (voluntary and involuntary), thoughts, and so on. Every heartbeat, breath, and eyebrow raise comes from CNS instruction.

• PNS is the relay between the CNS and your body. If CNS is the power source, PNS is the cord.

Overtraining is when the above is unable to execute as intended.

What Causes Overtraining Syndrome | How To Prevent Overtraining Syndrome

OTS causes can be explained by the principal known as general adaptation syndrome (gas). Gas has 3 potential stages: alarm reaction, resistance, and exhaustion.

Alarm reaction is the adrenaline boost we get from “fight or flight” with which we prepare to deal with a stressor. Exercise chips in as a physical stressor. Every day stress pays its fair share emotionally, but your physiological response to it isn’t so different.. This hints at why chronic stress is to be dealt with.

Resistance is your body’s attempt at a return to normalcy. If the stressor is displaced there will be an eventual positive training adaption, if not resistance will struggle on leading to the compromised third stage.

[3] Positive Training Adaptations

Exhaustion is the last (avoidable) stage and happens when energy is depleted from attempting to combat a stressor unsuccessfully. This is where the umbrella of overtraining syndrome opens.

[3] Negative Training Adaptations

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Common itemized causes of OTS are: 

Overzealous Workout Length

A few “too long” sessions won’t do it, but if you are natural and habitually lift for hours you’ll shake hands with the third stage of gas. The more trained you are the higher your work capacity and longer you can get away lifting marathons, but the exhaustion stage will ultimately come if you don’t tighten up.

Prevention

75 minutes or less is the way to go, not including your 5-15 minute warm up. Minus the concern with contributions to OTS.. Spending too long on the weights or any workout with an elevated heart rate will make a session catabolic to the point of risking muscle tissue.

Overabundant Exercise Frequency

Being curt with rest days is probably the number one factor for OTS; also where training experience comes into play.

The more years you’ve been at it, the more load you can handle, for the more chances you’ve given your body to adapt to greater loads.

This isn’t to say veteran gym rats can’t overtrain. It’s to say it takes more for them to overtrain than a typical rookie.

Prevention

What frequency is good for you depends on multiple factors: stress management, training experience, genetics, calorie intake, macronutrient split, sleep habits, etc.. But I recommend 2-10 weight training and/or high intensity cardio sessions (do cardio like an athlete) per week and 0-6 low intensity cardio sessions weekly. What number is too much for you comes from awareness. Best to start on the lower end, then add while accessing over time.

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PLANS

High Intensity

Intensity is how heavy you lift compared to your one-rep max. The heavier you go, the more taxing the load is on your body.. Particularly if your frequency of lifting is 4+ times weekly, particularly particular if your sets total approximately 20+ per lift. 

If you’re rather intense for months on in, IE in the hypertrophy-power range (1-10 reps per set), without a stamina-focused break, it’s likely you’ll overtrain.

Prevention

Cycle in stamina-based training every few months. When doing so go with 12+ reps each set. You’ll give your CNS some relief and often such a deload leads to greater strength gains when you get back to regularly scheduled programming.

Low Calorie Intake

Biological processes are energy-intensive. Physical and mental stressors are energy-intensive. Many, if not most, have a goal of losing fat when exercising. This requires a calorie deficit.

A calorie deficit is when you consume less calories than you burn.

A calorie is a unit of energy. 

With the goal of fat loss you’re depriving yourself of the energy needed to function at peak capacity. Eventually this may become a physiological issue if you aren’t cognizant.

Prevention 

Have refueling days where your calorie intake is higher. This is often referred to as calorie cycling. More details on calorie/carb cycling here - how to lose fat and maintain your metabolism.

When done correctly you’ll help stave off OTS, along with other benefits you can enjoy, like extra energy, while still losing fat.

Another prevention method if you’ve been low on calories for a while is reverse dieting. A reverse diet is where you consume more calories to repair a slow metabolism after being in a calorie deficit for a while.

Sleep Shortage

Sleep is oftentimes overlooked. If you recharge your phone and not yourself - you’re wrong. Clocking Zs is one of the principal aspects of fitness for progression, and for simply being able to perform. Everlasting, subpar sleep hygiene is a certain route to training-induced lethargy.

Prevention

Grab 6-9 hours of sleep most nights and supplement with naps (how to power nap) when you have trouble hitting your desired number. Make this as prevalent as brushing your tongue and your quality of life will quickly jump like Dennis Rodman on the boards.

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Life-Induced Stress

All stressors tax your CNS. Daily worries, social issues, and so on. The ramifications of ramped cortisol release from over-stressing is a nod to OTS. Cortisol is a stress hormone we release without issue - in moderation. Take away moderation and you insert problems. Not only does it contribute to overtraining it contributes to fat storage by pumping out more than needed insulin.

More than needed insulin means more than needed energy gets stored. Surplus energy is stored as adipose tissue.

Prevention 

Learn to manage stress. Tactics to do so are without an end, yet it isn’t an “overnight” fix; takes effort - how to manage stress.

What Are Symptoms Of Overtraining Syndrome

Several clues have the potential to inform you you’re on the overtraining spectrum. The shades are different, but what they have in common is abnormality. 

When on the spectrum to one degree or another your body has held back on giving you its full potential. 

It’s a survival tactic.

I tend to mention the body being an incredible adapter. It realizes your recovery methodology falls short of its liking, not only isolation, but as a norm.

This new norm is disrupting homeostasis, so adjustments are to be made.

Those adjustments are like when your phone goes to low power mode. Still does the things it normally does, but now your iPhone is being economical about it.. A little less fervor.

For example you may be in the gym feeling like you’re giving 100% effort, and you are.. Yet you aren’t hitting the numbers you’d normally hit with 100% effort.

Why?

Your body has lowered what 100% effort is for you for your own good. It has forcibly taken your foot off the gas.

Your controlled effort may be 100%, however your uncontrolled effort has been tampered down to keep you from doing indissoluble damage.

Symptoms of overtraining:

• Unexplained mood swings

• motivational gaps

• Easily startled

• Low libido

• High blood pressure

• Chronic stress

• Muscular weakness

• Reduced appetite

• Dehydration

• Sudden extreme hunger

• Widespread tingling (feels like 1000 bee stings)

• Fatigue

• Body aches

• Prolonged muscle soreness

• Insomnia

• Weakened immune system

• Increased minor injury frequency

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How To Recover From Overtraining Syndrome

You’re familiar with overtraining, you know why you have or could possibly experience it, you know how to prevent it, but what if you’re in the thrusts?

Depending on the severity there are 4 moves you can go with, in combination or isolation. If you’re like me and want to do your best to stay active or if pressing pause is almost entirely out of the question.. Start with step one and progress as needed:

1. Sleep more. As mentioned, coming up short on Zs is an expedient way to overtrain. With this being so.. Logging an appropriate amount of Zs is a way to stay fresh. This may bring you back from the depths of CNS decline without moving to further steps, but it may be too little too late.

2. Up your calorie intake. Again OTS results from an inability to recover quickly enough. It takes energy to recover. Calories are units of energy - more energy, better recovery rate and potential. If you're on fixed calories this is a step you may want to avoid, yet it may be necessary for long-term success.

3. Deload. Touched on this earlier, but to deload is to lower the “intensity” of your workouts for a period. Intensity isn’t always as hard as you go, but it also refers to how heavy you lift. Lowering the resistance to where you can hit more reps i.e. 12+ range will give your CNS a little less work to do.

4. Give it a break. The one we all want to avoid, but could be the only key. Take some time off. The grimness of your reality will determine how long you need. You could bounce back in days, could be a week, could be weeks, and in the worst cases months.

Note: it’s hard to put it in park once you get rolling, but if steps 1-3 don’t bounce you back, it’s a must. A voluntary pause always trumps one by force.

My Thoughts

From personal observation, overtraining seems to be a continuum from overreaching on.

Whatever your belief or what you call it, the approach remains the same. Give your body the tools and/or time to recuperate.

If you don’t you’ll harm yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Everything is connected my friend.

The game is about learning yourself thoroughly. Learning yourself enough to identify the days you “don’t feel like training” versus you approaching a point of needing a little extra break on top of your ordinary guidelines.

Recover, but don’t fall off for reversibility occurs, which is detraining. You begin going backwards from lack of use. Balance is the mantra.

Follow the prevention measures and hopefully you’ll never have to take an unwanted break.

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So, It’s About That Time

In summation, listen to your body. Get to know your body. Take preventative measures to keep your body in mint condition. Overtraining syndrome is when your work output exceeds your ability to recover; find that sweet spot where work output matches recovery and you’ll see greatness. Leave a comment and tell me about your experience with the overtraining spectrum. Don’t be frustrated, be mindful when you put those muscles to use. Be Great.

Sources:

[1] Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov/Pmc/Articles/Pmc3435910/

[2] Emedicinehealth.Com/Anatomy_of_the_central_nervous_system/Article_em.Htm

[3] Nesta Personal Training Manual

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