Understanding the “overtraining syndrome”
So many people think that if they are going to begin a healthy lifestyle of eating and exercise they go about it in a way that can harm their body instead of improving their body. (This happens a lot at the beginning of each year).
Many of you would not of know that there is such a thing as “oxidative stress”, yes another type of stress in our world!
Oxidative stress is a critical component of fitness, a recovery period is necessary to allow the body to bounce back adequately. The key is to train in a manner that provides enough physical stimulus to increase fitness without over training or causing excessive oxidative stress. Rather than exposing your body to the same amount of stress and intensity day in day out, you enhance its ability to fight free radicals by mixing it up with very hard days and very easy days.
Over training also leads to adrenal fatigue and this affects your cortisol level, which flows onto low quality sleep, and affects your hormone levels the next day. Cortisol plays a major role in our hormone system, which you can link to here to get an understanding: https://kerriefatone.com.au/understanding-why-sleep-is-important/
You may read about mitochondria which are the power plant of your cells – you want as many mitochondria density packed into your muscles as possible so that you can utilise fat and glucose.
The best way to do this is short intense work in sprints and you can do this with weight sets. You can perform this once a week such as a tabata style workout (20 seconds on 10 seconds off for recovery) or the sprints can be as short as 5 secs sprints to 30 sec sprints.
To optimise fat burning, metabolic efficiency, and blood sugar control, you want to maximise the body’s ability to generate ketones and burn fatty acids as a primary source of fuel while avoiding frequent fluctuations in blood sugar. You do this by:
1. Do a short aerobic workout as many mornings a week as possible, pre breakfast.
2. Avoid frequent snacking
3.Save all your carb intake for the end of the day (post training), eat high amounts of healthy fats and moderate protein intake.
4.Stay mildly physically active all day long – stand more than sit.
Ben Greenfield “Beyond Training”
So the reason I have highlighted these from Ben Greenfield’s book is to get some of you to stop training everyday and burning yourselves out – because scientifically you are not doing your body any justification for continuous hard training day to day.
Ben goes into so much depth of over training – and I take on what he says as he has competed in many Ironman competitions, including Hawaii.
In my business of health coaching I am focusing a lot of the problems caused by adrenal fatigue/cortisol imbalance and obviously thyroid concerns.
Over training is one heck of a highlight to these issues.
I have always been one to say “train smart”, and it’s always “quality over quantity”.
Believe me I need to take a leaf out of my own book so many times (as some of you know this already), growth in strength, muscle gain, power, endurance is all done whilst resting, not in the doing!
The best trait you can have is to listen to your body. If you are tired – rest, if you haven’t got the effort in your legs for that extra kilometer – then stop running, walk.
The points I made above are smart ways to train, to gain endurance, power and speed.
If you are a weekend warrior or an exercise enthusiast then training a few times a week is perfect – just mix it up.
If you are an athlete you would most likely have a coach to help support you to your destination goal. Hence you should not be doing what others do, you will have your plan of training and definitely a plan of recovery.
Please note I do not diagnose, I help people to understand the importance of their health and guide them to implement ways to give them a life of longevity.
Yours in health
Kerrie Fatone
–professional health and fitness coach
