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How To Know If You Are Overtraining
A Logical Approach to Muscle Building
Mike Mentzer was bodybuilding's foremost iconoclast, who smashed through suspect bodybuilding tradition with a revolutionary and logical training system that is supported by the world's top exercise physiologists but shunned by dogmatic, out-dated, non-scientific trainers.
Even today bodybuilding fans are still taking about the Mike Mentzer Heavy Duty Training System and want to learn more about it. Well, here it is!
Go to Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty Training Program
How To Know If You Are Overtraining In Bodybuilding
People who start bodybuilding-training programs are often warned of overtraining. To build muscles, you have to do a lot of heavy weight lifting. Can a person over train? Most experts believe that a person can overreach. The idea of having too much training is almost contrary to the whole goal of muscle building. Simply put, over-training can be described as pushing yourself to a state where your muscles are constantly overworked with insufficient time between sessions for recovery. The consequences of over-training or rather, not giving your muscles sufficient time to recover can actually have the opposite effect to what you are trying to achieve.
People increase their volume of exercise routines for different reasons. For some, exercise is so addictive they cannot do more than enough. Others simply want to gain muscles quicker and somehow rationalize that if they do more heavy lifting more frequently they will see results quicker.
Use the following signs to avoid further damage to your body:
Increased Soreness after Exercising
Generally when your body gets used to exercise and the intensity that you put it through, the initial soreness you felt at the beginning should lessen. But if you find that regardless of how diligent you are with your nutrition and supplements that are meant to help you recover that your body aches more than ever then it means you've been over training.
Restlessness and Loss of Focus
Most power athletes like body builders experience loss of focus and restlessness when they over-train. This is because the nervous system is pushed to the limit. The supplements that most body builders take contain ingredients like Caffeine that makes them more excitable. When you're on steroids, you might appear manic. It is important that you include plenty of sleep in your rest plan (if you have one). Your body does most of the recovery when you are sleeping.
Fatigue and Sluggishness
When you are over-training you will start to feel more fatigued than normal. Exercise should never leave you feeling sluggish and tired but rejuvenated. When you start to feel bone-tired, you need to dial back and give your body some rest.
Loss of Lean Mass
You will reach a plateau where your muscles will seem like they are shrinking instead of growing. When this happens most people are inclined to train even harder but that is not the right thing to do. What your body is showing you is that it needs time to rest. Your muscles get frayed and torn during exercise, they get repaired when you are resting from one day to the next and as they heal, they grow.
Too much exercise can actually cause you to lose muscle. There needs to be a balance between what you consume and what you use during exercise as well as the hormone levels in your body. Your body produces more testosterone when you over train. This hormone increases your body's resistance to insulin, which means you will not be able to burn as much fat as you should but you might end up storing fat that you don't need.
Avoiding Over-Training
To avoid overtraining, do intense exercises over shorter durations. If you get to the point where you feel sick more often and have unrelenting soreness in your joints then you might have to stop exercising for a couple of days to give your frayed nervous system a chance to recharge.