You need a break part 1: Symptoms of overtraining

If you’ve ever experienced overtraining you know how it feels: it’s not just feeling tired, it’s being exhausted. You don’t feel exhilarated after your workouts; you are fed-up with how badly your workouts have been going. Worst of all, you no longer improve. You take steps back.

It’s easier to accidentally overtrain than it may seem, especially if you’re very dedicated to your training and spend more than five hours a week working out. It’s especially easy because the hormones that flood your body during exercise make exercising addictive. Being addicted to the exercise high comes at a high price: your health.

Symptoms of overtraining

If you experience any of these symptoms, or any combination of these, you may be overtraining:

Your resting heart rate is higher than normal
It’s not only a good idea to measure your resting heart rate to determine your fitness level, but also to ensure that you don’t overtrain. If you’re training well, your heart rate should steadily decrease. But if your resting heart rate suddenly increases even though you’re still training, you may be overtraining. This is a sign that your body is under stress.

You’re moody
When you train well, exercise should exhilarate you and make you feel good. But if you overtrain, you put your body under too much stress and your body can respond with a standard stress response: it releases cortisol, the stress hormone. This makes you feel moody and can increase aggression, annoyance and make you feel frustrated. This is one of the first symptoms of overtraining.

You’re constantly thirsty
Thirst is the first sign of dehydration. Overtraining causes dehydration because it puts your body in a catabolic state. If you find that you can’t drink enough to quench your thirst and you’ve started to increase your training load, you may be overtraining.

You’re unusually stiff
Normal stiffness after a workout only lasts for about 48 hours after your workout [link to delayed onset muscle soreness]. Soreness that lasts beyond 72 hours after your workout is unusual and can indicate overtraining. This occurs because the microtears that occur in your muscles as a result of training do not heal.

You don’t sleep
If you battle to sleep or don’t sleep well and you’ve increased your training load, it may indicate overtraining. Hormonal and nervous system overload can result in insomnia; overtraining insomnia is sometimes linked to changes in metabolic function. Bear in mind that stress and other non-exercise-related conditions can also cause persistent insomnia.

You’re frequently ill
While a good training schedule helps your immune system to function well, overtraining puts stress on your body, which damages your immune system. This makes you more susceptible to infection. If you continue to train despite infection, you’ll only get more ill.

You’ve lost focus
Exercise should help to improve your concentration and focus, but if you overtrain, the stress hormones released override the positive hormones released during exercise and instead cause more stress. If you no longer enjoy your training, don’t feel like training like you used to, and battle to concentrate, you may be overtraining.

You’re frequently injured
Any increase in training load increases your risk of injury, but this is exasperated if you overtrain. Every time you train, you cause strain on your muscles, joints and bones, and if you don’t get enough rest between workouts, strain will become injury.

Your progress slows down
This is arguably the worst part of overtraining and can lead to a loss of self-esteem. You may find that you can’t push your heartrate up as high as you should be able to and you may start to feel as though you’re battling to do your normal training and load. This is your body trying to warn you that you’re overtraining and you need to take a break.