Category 3 - Over-trained or under-recovered
When you are over-trained or under-recovered, the most important thing to say to yourself is:
"Let's explore what my body can do today."
If you use this as a framework to view your session on that day, you can easily adapt or modify your session to suit your exact needs.
Therefore, you can avoid the feeling of dissatisfaction when you don't achieve more than you did the week before.
Lower your expectations and focus on what your body can do or achieve on that day.
So what are the things that contribute to over-training?
You could find yourself in this category for multiple reasons:
- Too much volume or intensity in your overall training programme.
- Lack of sleep - acute (think one bad night) or chronic (think lots of bad nights added up, think new parents with a baby not sleeping much).
- Not enough rest days/ recovery sessions.
- Sub-optimal nutrition - a lack of macronutrients (namely protein and carbohydrates) or micronutrients (poor food quality or less than ideal fruit or vegetable intake) to name a few.
- Lots of sport specific training or racing - maybe you competed at the weekend and your training the day after and you are feeling exhausted from the race.
- You are feeling "bashed up" from lots of hard training recently. Maybe you are just about to compete at Hyrox or you are still feeling sore from your previous gym session.
This could come under the umbrella term of "over-training" or viewed in a different sense, lack of recovery.
If you fit into any of the examples above, then it is important to make changes to your training load or volume for that day or the next few days.
There are a whole host of options which you could choose. The important thing is you meet your body where it is at. As coaches, we can collaborate with you to make the right decision based on your specific needs.
For example, we could:
- Reduce the training load - we could reduce your volume by up to 60% to still allow you to train but also not further dent your recovery needs. This is a brilliant option as it allows you to train but with reduced volume so limit the fatigue from the session.
- Change the exercises used and swap to easier progressions - to limit the impact on your muscles and joints.
- Train a different body part.
- Focus on more low intensity cardiovascular exercise.
- Add in mobility exercises into your training.
- Reduce the intensity - lifting lighter weights to decrease the session impact is another option. We could focus on lifting considerably lighter, with faster speeds to limit muscle damage and still work on improving the lift.
So when you feel like you have slipped into over-training or you are feeling under recovered, then adapt your session and training load to meet your body where it is at.
Importantly, if you don't change anything for the session, then overtime, this could lead to exceeding your body's recovery capabilities which could lead to injury.
Managing the training load for an individual is the single most important factor for staying injury free and continuing to progress your training.
Conclusion
The one commonality with all of the above categories, is your best effort on the day. If you go in with this mindset, you can readily adapt your session to suit exactly where your body is at on the day.
Our team have extensive experience and expertise in helping individuals manage their training load and empower you to achieve optimal progression.
If you would like to learn more about how we can help you improve your performance, recovery from injury or reduce your risk of injury, then contact us today the link below.
- Coach Alex
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