How To Avoid Overtraining

In Western training circles there are a few things that we focus on, seemingly more than anything else. Adding weight, pushing ourselves, ‘feeling the burn’ and many other things of that nature. Hard work is often focused on to the detriment of other things that go along with the quest for health. Things like balance, diet, and of course recovery. Partly because of this and other reasons many people in the Western world have come to fear ‘overtraining’ the state where your body’s recovery is not keeping up with the rate at which it’s breaking down with training.

So this leads to many adopting different routines that are less intense and less strenuous in order to combat this overtraining. However what most overtraining actually is, is not so much that you are training too much but rather that you are under recovering. For example if you did one workout a week but spent the rest of your time eating like crap, staying out late, and putting wear and tear on your body then you’d be in a state of overtraining.

But the problem wouldn’t be the workout routine, it would be the lack of things that balance out the workout routine. Many bodybuilders, lifters, and athletes train six days a week and suffer no overtraining effects, especially in former Soviet Union countries that do things a bit different than are done in the West.

So let’s break down some myths of overtraining as well as how to avoid it.

The Training Methods That Lead To Overtraining

Many believe that they have to push themselves to complete exhaustion each and every training session when this isn’t an effective way for long term development and growth. You should certainly work hard and push yourself but there’s a difference between intelligently pushing yourself and pushing yourself to the breaking point each and every time you hit the gym. It’s wise to train in deload weeks to keep your central nervous system and even your muscles from over fatiguing.

Don’t think you have to kill yourself every workout. It’s much better to push yourself little by little but stay consistent. Better to do 6 days a week of medium to light training than 3 days of week of maximal training. Whether that’s going to failure or maxing out. Building muscle, developing strength, and becoming more healthy and athletic are all things that take time. They’re all marathons, none of them are sprints as far as time taken goes.

Learn to periodize your training, which essentially means plan your training intelligently. There are times when you’ll push and times when you’ll back off. This is a whole science and entire forests of books have been dedicated to the subject. Search on Amazon and you’ll plenty to help you with developing a program. I haven’t found a clear cut one I like yet, otherwise I’d recommend it here. But maybe let me know if you find one.

Ying & Yang, Two Parts Of The Whole

We tend to focus on having bigger lifts, bigger muscles, bigger jumps, and the like and think that the only way to get there is hitting things harder. However we miss the 66% of training that makes the biggest difference. Diet and recovery. You need plenty of good foods if you’re going to keep gaining. As a matter of fact diet is more important than training when it comes to looking and feeling your best. You can’t outwork a bad diet unless you’re young or a professional athlete that can dedicate all their time to training as well as has good genetics.

But for anyone else that isn’t going to work. Your diet has to work for you and not against you. Don’t starve yourself. Eat plenty of healthy nutrient dense foods. Organ meats, regular full fat meats, natural dairy, raw honey, things of that nature. Stuff that’s stuffed with not just good macros but also good micros. Focusing on macros at the expense of micros is a mistake, something I’ve written about before. If you’re confused macros refer to macronutrients which are carbs, fats, and protein. Micro refers to micronutrients which are things like Vitamin A, zinc, potassium, Vitamin C, things of that nature.

Both are required for full functioning. Getting your macros right does not mean that you’re getting your diet right. I’m saying obsess over micros because that’s a path to insanity but rather focus on foods that give you the biggest bang for you buck micro speaking. Training is a third of becoming healthy, strong, well muscled, or athletic. Don’t neglect diet which is perhaps the biggest of the three when it comes to results that you’ll get. If you only focused on one of the three, the three being training, diet, and recovery, I’d say diet would be the best.

Growth Happens Outside The Gym

Eastern bloc lifters and athletes seem to do a better job focusing on recovery compared to their Western counterparts and because of this can often produce better results. What is recovery? All the following and more are recovery. Sleep is recovery. Meditation is recovery. Low level physical activity, such as walking, is recovery. Massage is recovery. Sauna is recovery. Ice bath is recovery. Steam room is recovery. Chilling out and napping are both recovery. Things that we often forget. We often train hard but then hustle and bustle after that, never taking a moment to just relax for a moment.

We are all about go, go, go, go and do, do, do, do that we grind ourselves down into nothing. This works out good for people at the top of corporations who use us as worker bees to make money but it’s not good for life balance and overall wellness. You need to train hard yes. But you also need to recovery ‘hard’. Take time to smell the roses. This isn’t just important for better athletic performance or muscle growth or building strength but also life as well. Mental health as well as physical health.

Over Training Or Under Recovering?

Which one is it really? Don’t forget diet and recovery, two thirds of the muscle building/athletic performance/strength building journey. Imagine anything else where you’re only getting 33% of the results from your efforts. Imagine if your work only paid you 33% of your pay check or you only had 33% of your living quarters? How much would that change things? It’s not different when you train hard but forget diet and recovery. You’re getting 1/3 of the results you otherwise would have. Sabotaging your efforts. You’re already working hard at the gym, you might as well make that count for all it’s worth. And to do that make sure recovery and diet are where they need to be as well.

If anything I said here helped you I’d recommend checking my books out on Amazon.

-Charles Sledge