Overtraining?

I got a question for you. I workout 3 times a week and I also unload trailers for 6 hours a night. Packages range from 5-150 lbs, usually around 40 lbs. Would this be considered to be overtraining?

Do you feel overtrained? Are you getting stronger each week in the gym or making steady progress? Are you overly tired every day? Do you have a lack of motivation or energy? Are you eating less than usual or have a loss of appetite? Only you can tell if you’re overtrained.

You may be able to handle three days in the gym and three nights of packing and moving stuff and not have a problem. Someone else may have a problem. I think you can put many demands on the body, and it will adjust accordingly. Overtraining isn’t the evil that everyone makes it out to be.

Most people are undertrained and out-of-shape, so for them, a few workouts or a job where they do some heavy lifting makes them feel overtrained.

most people under eat not overtrain. most likely 3 training days a week wont cause your muscles to be overtrained, but the work you do burns alot of cals. up your intake and you should perform better

guru x

That sounds very close to the work I was doing at UPS the summer after high school. I don’t believe it was overtraining for me. Actually, I was in great condition while doing that. If you’re eating and sleeping enough, it shouldn’t be a problem after awhile.

I work 6 days a week(10 hours a day) with seafood and lifting boxes and fish anywhere from 50-300 pounds(the latter using 2 people). I also work out 4 times a week and have not experienced any overtraining. As others have said overtraining is harder to do than most will tell you. As long as you are eating good and getting enough sleep you oughta be all right.

I think your age has a lot to do with how much your body can take and how much it will adapt. Overtraining is very subjective. While in college during a summer break, I poured concrete 40 hours a week and still did a 3days on/1 day off. I was definitely overtraining, but I didn’t know that I was until I went back to school and put on 10lbs of what seemed to be all muscle in 2 weeks. It is amazing what the body can do under stress.

It’s a very personal thing. Put it this way, you’ll know when your overtraining.

If diet is in order though, as Aceto says, then overtraining in impossible.

The ideia that overtraining can be avoided by means of correct diet is a popular misconception that doesn’t make much sense. Obviously a bad diet will make matters worse

NateDog described some simptoms and there are a ton more of possible ones. There’s really no way of telling the threshold point beyond which overtraining or even true overtraining syndrome will occur as this is highly individual thing.

True overtraining will have an impact on your nervous (sympathetic or parasympathetic), endocrine and immune system and it’s something that an athlete may never recover from.

The list of possible symptoms is very large and some common ones that you should be look out for are:

Loss of strenght (sometimes only on specific exercises)
Decreased bodyweight/LBM
Loss of libido
Inability to sleep
Disturbed slepp paterns
Lack of tolerance to sunlight
Reoccurring infections (a lot of times of respiratory tract)
Loss of appetite
Increased sweating
Negative Nitrogen balance
Increased/decreased resting heart rate
Lack of motivation
Etc,etc…

To the original poster. I don’t think you should be concerned about overtraining since the loads you’re lifting at work aren’t really that heavy,. Just keep the volume at the gym within reasonable levels and don’t train to failure all the time, or don’t train to failure at all.

I have been pretty tired lately very hard to get out of bed sometimes. I sleep around 10 hours a day at times. I eat 5 meals a day. Get on average 3600 calories a day.

I don’t see I would be overtraining though. I have been unloading trailers for fedex for 5 years now and would think my body would be very use to it by now.

Is it best to eat before you workout?

I have to get in on this and say that the over-training scare is probably limiting most people from making serious gains. I absolutely agree that under-eating is usually what most people are experiancing and not over-training. Over training is usually experianced by pro athletes. Now imagine the volume they put in and compare it to yours. Probably not even close… and these people are gifted yes, but not as gifted as most would make them out to be. A lot of us “average joes” are just as gifted and don’t know it because we don’t push ourselves hard enough. Just remember to feed your body and not your stomach.

lionside I would agree w/ RS here. And I would say that you are not Overtraining… Read what restless wrote also…