My experience of 'overtraining'
I thought I’d write a short, personal piece about overtraining as it’s something that some regular gym-goers don't really believe is a real thing, and if they do believe in it, they don’t think it will affect them. I’m going to cover the science behind overtraining and the things to look out for in a further blog post, but thought I’d share my own experience first.
I’ve always trained pretty hard - 5,6,7 times a week using every training system I studied and I often trained until I started to feel nauseous or shaky. My training plateaued and I thought the way to beat it was by working even harder.
I did this for quite a few years until one incident made me realise the downsides to training to excess.
When I was 34/35yrs I had a particularly intense period of training - training twice a day for several weeks at a time. After one particularly intense session I felt nauseous at the gym and the feeling didn’t pass so I headed home.
At home I felt a bit dizzy and my vision became a bit blurry; I put this down to a hard session and being dehydrated and tried to carry on as normal. My vision got worse and having put my then 2yr daughter to bed, I had to lie down on the floor in her bedroom. I remember trying to talk to my daughter but for some reason I couldn’t say anything and my body didn’t seem to want to move or function. My wife came upstairs, saw me and thinking I’d had a stroke, called the emergency services. By the time they came I was able to move a bit but couldn’t talk properly and was unable to use the left side of my body.
After various tests in A&E and a follow-up meeting with a consultant, I was diagnosed as having a hemiplegic migraine - a rare condition that paralyses one side of the body. It took a week for me to regain full use of the left side of my body and for me to be able to string sentences together properly.
Ever since that experience (which, I imagine must’ve been incredibly scary for my wife), I’ve paid more attention to my body when I train. Training can become very addictive and it can be hard to stop but it’s important to know the signs of overtraining and take a break.
Having pushed things a bit too far with my training, here’s a few things to think about:
Listen to your body - if you train regularly you’ll be tired, but feeling absolutely shattered after your workouts is a warning that you may be overtraining
Pay attention to how you’re feeling mentally - if you’re beating your personal bests, achieving more reps/weight and progressions but are getting frustrated and tired, then it’s a sign that you might need to have a break. Feeling stressed, depressed or anxious about your gym achievements is a big indicator of overtraining
Book in rest/recovery - If you’re training hard, “book in” 1-2 weeks of recovery/rest time after 8-12 weeks training. This is especially important if you’re doing any kind of linear progression training such as German Volume Training or hypertrophy training.
I’m going to do a further blog post covering the science of overtraining - keep tuned.