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At the risk of repeating myself, it’s time to talk again about an important and common fitness issue: Overtraining. “What are you talking about?” you may ask. “Exercise is so healthy! The more the better!” Right? WRONG.
In fact, overtraining can be as bad as no training at all. Just ask Dr. Paul Donohue, author of a daily newspaper column titled “To Your Health,” that has been syndicated to more than 175 newspapers for the last 20 years. Donohue states that overtraining is a state of physical and psychological stress brought on by far too much work and far too little rest. Overtraining is also popularly known as “burnout”. Sure, your exercise program may be demanding. And that’s okay. But only you can judge if it has passed the line between a healthy level of exercise and a harmful one.
Donohue tells us that fatigue and a drop in energy are two signs that you may be overdoing things. Other signs include a decrease in strength and coordination, chronic muscle soreness, loss of appetite, un-refreshing sleep, poor performance and a loss of interest in your exercise routine.
A rise in your resting pulse rate is also an objective indication that you may be spending too much time in a state of exercise, and giving yourself too little rest. The resting pulse is taken in the morning while you’re still in bed. Dr. Donohue advises that you don’t take it immediately after the alarm has rung. Instead, lie quietly for five minutes, and then take it. If your resting heart rate has increased by five to ten beats a minute, that’s a sign that you’re overdoing it.
Take heart! There is a cure: Rest. You don’t have to be completely inactive, of course. Active rest will do just fine. Dr. Donohue states that three to five weeks of lighter exercise should free you from the symptoms of overtraining. Then again, only you will be the best judge of when your body is ready to start responding to some heavier training again. You also might want to mix up your program a bit. Make sure you hit up a variance of different WODs, and don’t let your muscles get into a rut by always training the same groups! Mix it up, or else little progress will be made.
Stay fit, but be responsible!
**Please note that the Gymnastics seminar will be at 6:30pm on Friday night**
Skills to be covered –
Handstands – with and without support
Muscle ups on the rings and bars
And much more 🙂
Todays’ Workout:
Buy – in: 5 min row at 26 strokes per minute – everybody on the same timing!
WOD: ZG 1 Competitor
Competitors in the Zone Games, give this one a shot at your target weights for the AMRAP – treat it as specific preparation for those movements. Don’t destroy yourself though, just focus on quality and crispness of movement under fatigue.
Elite – 4 rounds, each for individual time of:
- Row 300m
- 12 sumo deadlift high pulls (65/95)
- 6 barhop burpees
- Clock is set on a 5 minute rotation, the faster you go, the more rest you get!
- Scoring is combined time of your slowest and fastest intervals.
Zone 2: scale sdhp’s to 55/75
Zone 1: scale as needed (sdhp’s, distance)
Cash-out: Partner stretches – hamstrings, quads, pecs
Great article, but I’m a little confused about this “Rest” you speak of.
What’s a barhop burpee?
Chris, “rest” for most of you appears to be when:
A. you don’t show up to the Zone for a WOD but find something equally hard (or harder) to occupy the void that occurs from not doing the daily WOD. (i.e. KDF going on and “easy” 2hr Finlayson repeat session with the Donald or Heather doing 4 bootcamp/aerobics classes at her work – “it’s a rest cause it’s not the WOD”)
B. you show up to the Zone with the idea of taking it easy but then proceed to choose a Zone higher than normal because it’s an exercise you’re good at or because you want points for your “top performer” ranking
🙂
turts
PS Justin read up on barhop burpees in the post about the games!
Ahh, that make perfect sense. I’ll try to have more rest days to get ready for the Zone games. Today for example, I’ll “rest” by showing up at the Zone for a workout, but I’ll take it “easy”. Sure sure.
Yeah right Chris…. and the evening before the games you’ll run a 1500m race at the track; but that’s ‘resting’ because you would have preferred to do the 5k.
It is! And I won’t run all out either 🙂 Because I’ve often done races where I don’t go all out…
These rest days are killing me, maybe I should stop resting all together.