Gimme a Break

 

If you’re just beginning a workout and/or running routine, you might be working out three to four days a week. You might even be getting in five or six. You are probably not exercising every day of the week. In fact, I’d advise that you don’t. Like the sound of that, right?

Then there’s the other type of exerciser, the one who has been at it for a while, the one who was seeing progress but might be hitting a plateau and not seeing much change, or the one who feels like if she pushes a little harder, she’ll reach some goal quicker. Sometimes we get so deep into a training plan and so motivated by our progress that we forget that our bodies need rest. What happens if we go, go, go and don’t rest? Overtraining and injuries can result.

Overtraining Syndrome is when your body is fatigued and overworked. Instead of making progress, you may see a decline, such as your running pace slowing down. If bodies don't have time to repair from a work out, the muscles never get rebuilt and become weaker and more prone to injury. Want another reason to take a rest day each week? Overtraining Syndrome can even increase fat by increasing your levels of the stress hormone cortisol! So while it’s awesome if you get really motivated in your training, you should also be aware of physical indicators of overtraining and rest when necessary.

Here is a list of common physical effects associated with overtraining. If you are working out every day and notice that you have more than one of these symptoms, you may want to take a day or two off each week instead of training daily.

• Increased irritability or even depression
• Insatiable thirst
• Insomnia
• Headaches
• Muscle soreness for days after an intense workout (soreness should begin to lessen after 2-3 days)
• Immune system lowered (getting sick easily or over and over)
• Higher resting heart rate (your heart rate before you get out of bed in the morning) or sometimes lower resting heart rate, depending on the type of overtraining (endurance athletes like runners may more likely see a decrease, whereas those who are overtraining with strength training will likely see an increase in resting heart rate)

What do you do if you feel like overtraining might be the reason your performance is tanking? Take a full week off, decrease training volume when you do go back to it, eat well, and get 7-9 hours of sleep each night to allow your body to properly recover. And don’t compare yourself to your buddy. What she can handle each week might not be what your body can handle. Train hard but train smart.

The following final note about recovering from overtraining comes from: http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/overtraining.html

The longer you overtrain, the worse its effects and the longer it will take to recover. "The treatment for the overtraining syndrome is rest. The longer the overtraining has occurred, the more rest [that is] required. Therefore, early detection is very important. If the overtraining has only occurred for a short period of time (e.g., 3 - 4 weeks), then interrupting training for 3 - 5 days is usually sufficient rest. After this, workouts can be resumed on an alternate day basis. The intensity of the training can be maintained but the total volume must be lower. [...] The alternate day recovery period is continued for a few weeks and then an increase in volume is permitted. In more severe cases, the training program may have to be interrupted for weeks, and it may take months to recover. An alternate form of exercise can be substituted to help prevent the exercise withdrawal syndrome."

So a person who is having overtraining symptoms from running every day but who doesn’t want to totally quit working out might substitute riding a bike, yoga, or lifting weights or a combination of different exercises every other day to keep active and keep his/her body in good condition until running can resume. Running volume (mileage/days a week) should then be decreased when it is resumed to prevent overtraining from recurring.

How to Prevent Overtraining in the First Place!

• Gradually increase physical activity. 
• Don't do the same exercise every day.
• Take a complete rest day once a week.
• Cross train - work out some way that is different from your normal routine.
• Mix high intensity interval training with low intensity endurance training throughout your week.

 If you begin to feel excessive fatigue or irritability, you can log your workouts, resting heart rate (it’s good to know what’s normal BEFORE you feel like you might be overtraining!), how you feel each day, and how difficult the workout felt to monitor progress and ward off overtraining before it puts you out of service with illness or an injury. If you have several consecutive days of very difficult workouts and your heart rate seems off, then rest up.

Best wishes on a positive training experience and reaching your goals in a healthy, safe way!

Article by Cyrena Shows.  Visit Love the Fit Life for more great tips and advice.

HIIT the Pavement: Quality over Quantity

While it’s true that getting in 10,000 steps and being active at least 30 minutes a day leads to better health, I believe that quality workouts are more important than quantity (as in, getting in as many miles as possible in a week).

Research has proven that workouts that incorporate high intensity interval training (HIIT) promote better fitness benefits (i.e., weight loss, fat loss, muscle gains = a leaner, more fit body) than steady-state workouts (which improve overall cardiovascular health), such as walking at a moderate pace. HIIT workouts are when you simply do intervals of hard work mixed with intervals of short active rest, like a run/walk interval program where you are running for a short distance or time and then walking for a short distance or time, rinse and repeat. Even if you only plan to walk, you can set a timer to do intervals of very fast walking mixed with intervals of moderate pace for recovery. Another example of HIIT would be strength training mixed with short bursts of sprints or jumping jacks mixed in. No matter which type of HIIT you are incorporating into your week, you will see much faster progress in your body and in your progress as a walker or runner. Be careful not to do HIIT every day, though. Your body can suffer from doing this type of workout too often. To burn more calories throughout the week, mix steady-state cardio and/or strength training with your HIIT workouts.

Gymboss makes a great interval timer that you can purchase on Amazon.com, and they even created a free timer app for your phone that you can use to set your intervals to help you do your HIIT workouts.

See http://www.builtlean.com/2010/06/04/high-intensity-interval-training-hiit-best-cardio-to-burn-fat/ for more info about HIIT.

A sample beginner’s run/walk HIIT workout program (without strength training, which I highly recommend you should be doing, though!) might be:

Monday: steady-state moderate walking 3 miles

Tuesday: HIIT 1.5 miles with ½ mile warm up and ½ mile cool down

Wednesday: rest

Thursday: HIIT 1.5 miles with ½ mile warm up and ½ mile cool down

Friday: rest

Saturday: HIIT 2 miles with ½ mile warm up and ½ mile cool down

Sunday: steady-state moderate walking 4 miles

Total: 15 miles

(Or if you’re going to take my advice and start strength training, do two days of HIIT, one day of steady-state cardio, and three days of strength training for the best fat-blasting benefits.)

Many beginners just start with a time goal instead of the mileage goal. In a run/walk interval program, you want to start out with short run intervals paired with longer walk intervals, such as 30 seconds of running followed by 2 minutes of walking for a total of 30 minutes each day, 3-4 days a week. Eventually, you work your way up to longer run intervals paired with very short periods of walking, such as 10 minutes of running with a minute of recovery walking. Many people complete “Couch 2 5K” plans and run races this way, and it works well for them, while some use this method of training as a stepping stone to running distance races with no recovery. Jeff Galloway is the inventor of the run-walk-run method of racing. He believes that this is how our bodies are meant to cover distance. You can read more about him at http://www.jeffgalloway.com/

Cool Running offers a free Couch 2 5K plan and a phone app, too. Here is a link to their running plan: http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml

There are others available online, as well.

Photo courtesy of: www.stephaniekeenan.com

Article by Cyrena Shows.  Visit Love the Fit Life for more great tips and advice.