Feeling Burnt Out? How To Know If You're Overtraining? 

People run and lift to get stronger and faster. It is so satisfying to have measurable improvements in times and weights and shows how quickly you are improving. Increased performance with your sport like running, lifting, jumping, etc, is achieved by increased loads that the body can tolerate. The body needs proper time, and sleep, to rest between these bouts of activity to heal, rejuvenate and re-energize.  

When you exercise, let’s say lifting weights, your muscles have small microdamage to them causing inflammation. When you eat the right nutrients, and enough calories for energy, take time to recover and get enough sleep, you’re body is able to build back that muscle mass that was damaged with exercise and even develop more. Sleep is where most of this regeneration happens to help increase muscle size, number of muscle fibers and the capacity of the muscles. Overtraining happens when the muscles don’t get the proper rest needed to recover after repetitive high intensity bouts and symptoms start to set in. This lack of rest causes hormonal, immunological, neurological and psychological disturbances in the body leading to symptoms like those listed below. 

If you start to develop some of these symptoms as a result of over training, you would be advised by your athletic trainer or physical therapist to take anywhere between 1 to 4 weeks to recover. In this time you can do low impact exercises like walking, yoga, stretching, but nothing high intensity. Other things that would be important to recovery in this time would be proper hydration and massage. 75% of your muscles are made up of water, hydrating allows for proper recovery, muscle function, etc. Thirst sets in when your body loses 2% of its water. Massage can help reduce muscle tension, allow for better movement of the tissue and jump start muscle recovery. This can be achieved by massage or rolling out the muscle on a foam roller, tennis ball or lacrosse ball. Whatever you can tolerate. It is recommended to focus on one muscle for no longer than 5 minutes of the deep tissue massage or rolling to prevent further damage to the tissue. 

If you continue to exercise through overtraining syndrome, more injuries can also result. These, leading to pain, further time loss in your sport, treatment and potentially immobilization. If you don’t allow yourself time to recover, tendinopathies, stress injuries, chronic pain and compartment syndrome are all possible results. 

• Tendinopathy- injury to a tendon, the tissue connecting a muscle to bone. May need immobilization to allow the tendon to heal. 

• Stress injuries- microdamage to a bone from repetitive impact. This needs immobilization to recover. 

• Chronic pain- pain that persists longer than the expected recovery time due to inflammation or dysfunction of the nervous system. 

• Compartment syndrome- swollen tissue or blood in tissue that leads to pressure build up in muscles and fascia surrounding the muscles. Rest for more chronic conditions, surgery for more acute conditions. 

Overtraining is a condition that is overlooked and can really affect not only your running but your overall quality of life. Journaling your runs and your day are a great way to keep track of the important things to make adjustments to your training. You can learn what feels best for you, reflect on what doesn’t work for you and look back, even weeks at a time to make needed adjustments and plan your training to prevent overtraining. 

Click here to read a little bit more about journaling and what you can record to see progress and prevent injuries and overtraining.