8 strategies to avoid overtraining
You've been in bed for 9 hours, but you still feel like you haven't slept at all. Everything feels stiff, your muscles are sore, and you don't feel like working out. Thank goodness for coffee! With a double dose of caffeine, you pull yourself together and drag yourself to the gym.
It doesn't get any better in the gym, though. You wobble under the bar and even the weight you normally use to warm up feels incredibly heavy.
You no longer manage to increase your performance. On the contrary, you even have to reduce the weight at times - so you even get worse. And as if that wasn't frustrating enough, you also catch a cold every four weeks or so.
Do you regularly feel like this (or something similar)? Then you have probably trained too much over a long period of time and are overtraining. Theoretically, we could distinguish the term "overtraining" from "functional" and "non-functional overreaching", but that would only be unnecessarily complicated.
For our purposes, "overtraining" now simply means that you have trained more and harder than you could handle over an extended period of time. This can then manifest itself through the symptoms described above.
Of course, the whole thing is obviously not at all beneficial, because 1) it's not good for your health, 2) you feel tired all the time, and 3) when you're overtraining, you're obviously not reaching your fitness goals - in the worst case scenario, you're even moving far away from them as your performance deteriorates.
However, this doesn't have to happen to you, because there are some things you can do to NOT fall into the trap of overtraining.
Take rest days
Probably pretty self-explanatory, but still important! The more break days you take per week, the more time you have to regenerate physically AND mentally.
The less advanced you are as an athlete, the more break days you can allow yourself. For example, as a beginner, you will achieve excellent results with only 3 training days per week. However, the more advanced you become, the more often you will need to train to continue to see results.
This is because you will need a higher weekly training volume to improve over time. However, even if you are very advanced, you can usually allow yourself at least one training-free day per week to recover at least a little.
Use lighter weights sometimes
Constant training with heavy weights and low reps puts a lot of strain on your musculoskeletal system. For example, if you always train with heavy weights (say, weights with which you can do fewer than 8 reps), then this can(!) over time lead to damage to your tendons, ligaments, and joints.
If you train close to muscular failure, then you can build muscle just as well with light weights (as long as you also use more reps, of course). This has been shown in many studies. This does not mean that you should never train with heavy weights. Training with heavy weights also has its own unique advantages.
But you don't ALWAYS have to train with heavy weights!
Example
Suppose you train your chest twice a week. On the first chest day you can do exercises with 6-8 reps and on the second chest day you can use lighter weights with 12-15 reps.
Don't always do the same exercises
If you perform the same exercises over and over again, then the same joint structures of your body will be subjected to stress over and over again. This can(!) lead to local overtraining, which is characterized by gradually worsening injuries.
Fortunately, to build muscle you don't always have to do the same exercises, as there is quite a wide range of effective exercises you can use. By training with many different exercises for a given muscle group, you'll probably build muscle even better, as you can then train the muscles from different angles.
Of course, if you change up your exercises too frequently then you'll spend too much time learning or relearning each new movement and won't be able to focus on progressive overload for a given exercise. As such, it's best to only swap out exercises after your body has become used to them over a period of a few weeks at least. Try to make exercise substitutions at the end of your training cycle, and only change the handful of exercises that you feel are no longer working for you.
Example
One day of the week you can do the barbell bench press followed by the incline bench press with dumbbells, and another day you can do the incline bench press with the barbell followed by the cable pulley flys. Then after about 5-7 weeks you can switch one of these exercises out for a new one.
In order not to overload your central nervous system (CNS), you should also be careful not to have too many exercises in your plan that put a lot of weight on your spine. This is because part of the central nervous system is located in your spinal cord.
So it's best not to do squats or deadlifts with the barbell every day. Although these exercises are very effective for building muscle, they also put an enormous strain on your spine and therefore your CNS.
If you are new to training, then ignore this tip. As a beginner, you need to do the same exercises several times a week to learn the technique of these exercises faster.
Since you can't lift much weight at the beginning of your training career, and since the exercises are more about improving your coordination than training your muscles at this stage, the risk of injury is not great, even though you will be doing the same exercises more often.
Once you have learned the correct form for these exercises, you can move on to a wider range of movements.
Don't always train to muscular failure
While you do recruit all of your muscle fibers when you perform a set to muscular failure, you also put a tremendous strain on your nervous system. The high levels of fatigue associated with training to failure are disproportionate with the only slightly higher level of muscle gain from recruiting all your muscle fibers.
The best way to train to failure is to do so tactically. You could, for example, go a little closer to failure from week to week (by increasing the weight or the reps) until you (almost) reach muscular failure on every exercise in the last week before a planned deload.
In the following deload you can recover from this strain.
Use regular deloads
Many training plans are designed in such a way that a training session is scheduled for Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Such a training schedule gives you at least 48 hours to recover from each training session.
But there is a problem here. In order to continue to improve, you MUST train hard. And if you train hard, then this time is not enough to regenerate COMPLETELY. This means that from training session to training session you will always take a little souvenir - a little bit of fatigue.
This can manifest itself, for example, in you gradually becoming more tired and in the gentle twinge in your knee from a few weeks ago eventually developing into a chronic injury.
To avoid this, just put in regular deloads. Most of the time, a week of doing fewer sets, lifting less weight, and doing fewer reps will do the trick.
Don't diet too hard or for too long
Dieting is exhausting and saps your strength. This is probably known to all of you who have dieted (long or hard). Generally you are just tired, you have less power during training, and your body needs longer to heal muscle damage or small joint injuries.
This is mainly because you are in a calorie deficit. You are supplying your body with less caloric energy than it actually needs for optimal regeneration. As a result, you need to be especially careful during a diet to avoid overtraining.
You can do this by not dieting too radically or for too long, AND, of course, by following the other points in this article.
It is best to go only so deep into the calorie deficit so that you still have enough energy for training. You can also build in diet breaks of several weeks or even months every now and then.
Eat a balanced diet
This probably sounds boring and may make you think of your grandmother, who used to admonish you with a raised finger: "Eat your fruits and vegetables!" Nevertheless, it is super important for a fast recovery that the calories you consume come from the right sources.
That is, you should make sure to have the right balance between proteins, carbohydrates, and fats; you should also, of course, supply yourself with sufficient vitamins and minerals (micronutrients). In order to regenerate optimally, your body absolutely needs a sufficient supply of these important nutrients.
In theory, it is debatable whether or not carbohydrates help you to recover faster (because they are not essential), but most people seem to recover faster when eating a carb-rich diet.
Okay, but what does a "sufficient" supply of these nutrients mean? We could explain this in great detail. But to keep things short for the sake of this article:
Protein: about one gram for every pound of body weight
Fat: around half a gram for every pound of body weight
Carbohydrates: the rest of your calories (though remember that alcohol is also a macronutrient with calories, so factor this in if you drink alcohol)
Vitamins and minerals: plenty of colorful fruits and vegetables
Sleep more and better
Sleep is not to be neglected at all when it comes to the topic of overtraining. With plenty of good sleep, your entire musculoskeletal system and your central nervous system, which controls your muscles, will regenerate better.
To function OPTIMALLY, most adults need about 8-9.5 hours of sleep per day. Of course, it's not only the time you spend in bed that counts, but also the quality of your sleep.
Example
To improve your sleep quality, you can do a few things: don't drink caffeine too late, don't exercise too late, don't eat too late, avoid blue light in the evening (through blue light blocker glasses or certain apps), meditate, and keep your bedroom well ventilated and completely dark (or get yourself a sleep mask if this is not possible).
Conclusion
Here are all the things you can do to avoid overtraining at a glance:
1. Take rest days.
2. Use light weights from time to time.
3. Don't always do the same exercises.
4. Don't always train to muscular failure.
5. Do deloads regularly.
6. Don't diet too hard or for too long.
7. Eat a balanced diet.
8. Sleep more and better.
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