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Katie
Katie Chasey is a personalized training programmer and the head coach of the RXBound Training Team, where she is an Olympic Lifting, Russian Kettlebell, and all around Strength and Conditioning Coach.

She has an extensive background as an elite-level show jumper, volleyball player, and swimmer and has competed in a variety of sports both in the United States and internationally.
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Overtraining or Under Recovering?

by: Katie Chasey

Before getting into a discussion on overtraining, you need to ask yourself: what's my situation? What kind of athlete are you - one with unlimited resources to help recovery, or one with a more terrestrial daily grind? There's a lot of controversy regarding “overtraining,” but I think most would at least agree that recovery is part of the landscape. Perhaps if we spent as much time discussing proper recovery, there would be less talk about overtraining.

“Overtraining is our way of saying you’re doing to much on too little. Here's my best example: Take athlete number one, working 60 hours a week and training hard and heavy, using a well-planned program. You are single, sleeping perfectly, getting manual therapy weekly and doing great home recovery plus maintaining an amazing diet. Your body might handle the stress. But now let's look at athlete number two, working 60 hours a week and struggling with 3 kids and a mortgage. Your diet is horrible and you simply show up at the gym and lift "whatever the guy next to you does.” Now throw in the barking dog next door and you’re down to 4 hours of sleep at night. Which person will be overtrained? More importantly, who will be under-recovered?” – Clint Hill, MSc, Human Biomechanics

Are you overtraining or just under-recovering?

If you are the 20, 30 or 40yr old mother or father of three who gets little sleep and works full-time, you must have a program that allows for proper recovery time. Therefore, your training must also be adjusted accordingly – and this comes first. How much can you actually do? Be realistic. You might be able to do a very intense training session and might even attempt to do more than one per day, but if you cannot sleep at night, don't have access to an ice tub or a sauna, maintain a poor diet (this is your body’s fuel), then this is not the right way to use your body. Stress will eventually take over.

This does NOT mean to avoid training or working out or even doing a couple on a day if you can, it just means you need to be smart and efficient and avoid simply “doing what the next guy/girl” does. You come first. Make a plan that is do-able and reasonable and stick with it. You will know if you are doing too much or not. Your body was created to be smart – it will tell you. And, if you do not have the other parts of the puzzle (diet, ice/heat, sleep, etc.) you will need to simply re-evaluate, and that's okay.

So what does it mean to overtrain?

Many high school and college coaches, physical education professors, and personal trainers seem to constantly be warning athletes about working out too hard, and in most cases, scare the athlete into taking full no-work rest days. They insist that these days are mandatory as the body can be “overworked” and muscles need to rest. Well, they do need to recover but consider this quote by Dr. Michael Hartmann, Sport Scientist:

“Overtraining is real, but it is very misunderstood and grossly overstated by most people. 99% of people will never experience overtraining, and maybe only 5-10% of athletes. Now, fatigue is common and a normal response to training. For full blown overtraining to occur, that fatigue would have to accumulate over a period of months. Overtraining is a whole system issue which has effects on the endocrine, neuromuscular, and cardiorespiratory systems.”
 
With that being said, here lies the real question: Is it actually overuse or overtraining? Overuse is using the muscle over and over again to a point of wearing it down. This is never good and especially dangerous when proper technique is lacking. I may touch on this in a future post but for now let’s consider the way we keep overtraining at an arm’s length.

Rest? Or Recover?

Rest is accepted to mean freedom from activity or work (i.e. being inactive). I would encourage you to think about this. When is the body ever really at “rest” (even sleeping it is recovering and rebuilding) and “motionless?” Never completely. So, in our “rest” period when the body really is always doing something, why would we not let it do its job properly? Well, here is my point… this would be called proper recovery.

Recovery is generally known as the act of returning towards normalcy, or regaining a baseline level. You can imagine why I dislike the theory of “rest days” now I am sure. I prefer to actively recover the muscles, the mind, and the body as a whole.

So if we recover well, is it possible to overtrain?

Just as the first example shows us, the answer is both yes and no. You can take the same standard (not personalized) training program and give it to two athletes, but get different results. Why? Because no two athletes have the same lifestyle, time frame, injuries, or home situation (to name just a few factors). But it's more than that, as not everyone knows the proper way to recover. Therefore, a program must meet the individual needs and goals of each individual athlete. And, a recovery plan must be a part of the regimen. There is no “one size fits all” to any training program, much the same way that there is no perfect diet that suits everyone all of the time.

An athlete overtrains only when they do not recover well. It is like a car. What would happen to a car if you kept putting in the wrong gas, never changed the oil, and drove it across country without stopping? Was the car designed to drive across the country? Yes. Are we asking it to do something that it wasn’t manufactured to do? No. But, this car will break down, overheat, run dry, and stop. Is it the car’s fault or the driver’s fault? The driver. Was it the road’s fault? No. It dies because we didn’t care for it the way we were supposed to. We didn’t check it’s fluids, we drove it into the ground, and we didn’t even care to rotate the tires. Well, you catch my drift. So we overtrained this car. Was the car bad? No.

So, back to my theory on these “rest days” we hear so much about. Never be motionless. A car needs to run, it cannot sit in the driveway for too long. Things get dried out, stiff, and rusty. The body needs to move, the lymphatic system needs to flush, the heart needs to beat, and the muscles need to breathe oxygen. Forget the cheat meal (there are plenty of opportunities in the year to eat a little something you wouldn’t normally) and a day sitting on the couch. Instead, just change it up. Swim, hop on your bike, or go for an easier run… then stretch. Eat well and hydrate. This is a great way to spend you recovery day. These are just starters for “active recovery” - More to come on proper recovery of the body. Until then, keep moving and train well.





CATEGORY: Training