How do you know if your overtaining? I did hella bench and peck work yesterday, and am hella sore and will probably be ready to do it again in another 3 days…I do this for about ever muscle group, really hard and then rest untill they are 100% then bomb them again…I think i might be overtaining though because im not gaining alot… dont know the exact deff. of overtraining and am just throwin that term around…
cheerz
Crappy sleep, waking up feeling tired, muscle spasms, lack of motivation. Those are the ones I thought of quick off the top of my head.
Nick, why have you posted this in the Supplements and Nutrition forum?
You have been posting a lot recently, and asking questions to learn how to improve, which is good, but most of your questions should be in the Beginner’s forum dude. Most of your questions are tube-steak boogies.
There are many signs/symptoms of overtraining.
Some are more prevalent depending on what aspect of training is being over training.
Signs can be:
Anxiety (to add to what already has been said…)
Mufasa
Dammit Cartman, Stop saying Hella!!!
The tough thing about overtraining (O.T.) is that it’s multi-faceted with psychological, metabolic, and physical components. Sadly, there is no single test that can be used to definitively indicate O.T.
Actually there are two distinct types of overtraining: sympathetic O.T. (from excessive intensity) and parasympathetic O.T. (from excess training volume). They have different alterations among the widely-used O.T. monitoring variables.
The hallmark criterion, though, was hit upon by TriGWU: sub-par performance.
But I have to note that despite my work in this area, I’ve recently read that some researchers seem to think O.T. doesn’t exist! Having experienced full-blown overtraining syndrome (which can’t be corrected even with 8 weeks totally “off”), this notion is hard for me to swallow.
I suggest doing O.T. PubMed searches with the name “Fry”. Andy Fry is the man in this area, as are Kellmann and Kenttaa.
I have been experiencing the physiological symptoms of what I think may be overtraining for the last three years. I did everything I could from taking time off, changing my diet, cutting back on training/volume, all with no results.
The thing is, I never had the “classic symptoms” and was always ready to go to the gym. But I noticed that I was gaining fat/losing muscle definition and dropping strength. I was used to maintaining a relatively lean 10% BF @ 220 so I noticed these things pretty quickly.
I did everything from going to my family doctor to going to an endocrinologist to get checked for low testosterone. While my initial testosterone showed in the low normal range, 2 months of HRT did absolutely nothing even though my test levels were through the roof.
I finally contacted a CHEK practitioner in CA who checked my cortisol rythms as well as other suspect symptoms.
My cortisol levels were way low and my cortisol/DHEA ratio was way out of the normal range.
At this point, I am working with the CHEK practitioner to hopefully fix this problem over the next six months using natural/herbal supplements.
This is a very frustrating thing to deal with and I really don’t know at this point if it can ever really be fixed.
I guess my advice is be very careful, especially if you don’t use drugs. Take time off and see how your body reacts.
And like Mr. Lowery said, do a lot of research to find out as much as you can. Normal doctors seemed pretty useless in my situation.