When it comes to following your fitness routine to a T, it’s easy to get caught up and ignore the signs that you’re overtraining. While some of us assume sore muscles are signs we trained hard in the gym, the truth is overtraining can affect you in a variety of ways. This can range from feeling tired all the time, having mood swings, to the inability to think clearly, feeling pain in your joints, and more.
Chances are, you’ve experienced some of signs of overtraining without realizing it. Read on to learn the surefire signs that you’ve been overtraining and need to scale it back a notch.
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You’re Experiencing a Recurring Pain
It may seem normal to you if your right shoulder throbs all the time. You probably chalk it up to age, a high school injury, or think that’s how it’s supposed to feel after completing pullups or pushups. Joint pain is a warning sign from your body that shouldn’t be ignored. “Refusal to listen to that less polite request (i.e. pain) could mean yet more harm by either injuring yourself directly by performing an overhead movement that doesn’t exactly land the way we want it to, or injuring yourself indirectly by compensating with another part of the shoulder,” says Kristin Vallacher, coach and programming director at The Phoenix Effect. When you’re training with a lingering pain, you’re more likely to complete an exercise incorrectly and do more damage.
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You’re More Exhausted Than Usual
Sleeping soundly is a positive side effect of a healthy amount of exercising. However, when it comes to overtraining, could leave you feeling exhausted and unable to sleep well. “Inaccurately managing these levels of workloads can cause ‘overtraining’ via too much high intensity loads and or poor athlete regeneration,” explains John Ireland, director of performance of MuscleSound. Not getting enough rest and overtraining also means that it can also negatively affect your fitness performance. That’s why rest days are super important.
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Physical and Emotional Side Effects Take Their Toll
The body can physiologically respond in different ways to the effects of overtraining, says Vallacher. Physical signs can surface as an inability to focus, trouble falling and staying asleep, normal workloads seem more stressful to do, or you’re experiencing more sugar cravings or comfort food cravings. Emotionally, overtraining may show us as you feeling crankier, sensitive, depressed, and may find that the things you normally enjoy don’t feel as fulfilling. This is because the body reads these signals as stressors, but not in the positive way.
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You’re Feeling Sick
If you’re overtraining you are more likely to get sick due to a weakened immune system. Studies have also found that upper respiratory tract infections were most likely to happen to endurance athletes who engaged in too many high-intensity workouts without proper rest. Training smart is better than going hard until you compromise your health.
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Your Lower Back is in Bad Shape
If you’re overdoing it on deadlifts, squats, clean and presses while using heavy weight, your body may start to compensate and cause pain to your lower back. Overtraining not only causes injury, but it can sacrifice any gains you’re looking to make, because it goes beyond your training load performance peak. As a result, it can have the opposite effect and negatively impact your abilities. By not following a proper training plan, you put yourself at risk of disc bulges, and even harming your cervical spine.
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Your Shoulders Hurt During Overhead Presses
If you experience shoulder pain regularly, you probably blame it being hunched over a computer at the office. However, overtraining can cause shoulder impingement, which affects your upper body during certain movements such as overhead pressing. Most specifically, you’ll experience that pain or discomfort in your shoulders, rotator cuff, as well as the scapula when doing so.
A clear indicator that you may be overtraining is if your resting heart rate is higher than it should be. To be certain that your heart rate is healthy, track workouts using a heart rate monitor. One sign to look out for is if your resting heart rate skips more than a couple of beats per minute. Wearing a heart rate monitor can be a good way to monitor yourself during your workouts to prevent overtraining.
