“It” has gotten so out of control that “it” has become a problem.
I stood in front of the full-length mirror and admitted it. “Baby, you have a problem“. I even said it out loud.
That’s all fine and good, but in admitting that I have a problem now meant that I had to be accountable. Guilt by acknowledgement is a difficult pill to swallow, because all it means is that I am responsible for finding the solution. Compounded with the facts that I am not that smart (dropped out of college because it was “hard”), I am not a good problem solver, and lastly, with denial being my best friend, I’ve lost the battle before it has even begun. Normally, when faced with a trilemma, I drink or binge eat. Luckily for me, I was in St. Lucia, on vacation, so I drank a stiff rum punch.
It started off as a twice a week habit, then gradually grew into an everyday thing. Fortunately for me, it never grew into twice a day habit.
When Ronit, director of Transform the Planet asked me to contribute to her project in the capacity of fitness /nutrition writer, I thought wonderful. Fitness, like art, is my passion. Raving on and on about something you love is totally normal. It is expected.
Unless of course, you are me.
I jumped in head first, spending hours upon hours reading fitness articles, learning about workout techniques. I would forgo food to read and learn. I became fascinated with studies that offered quick results with minimal work. I tried them on MYSELF. I was intrigued by results produced from starvation. I tried them on MYSELF. I read that in order to stay fit, I had to workout everyday, for 4 hours a day. Then another study promised me 30 minutes a week, so I tried that. But I didn’t see the problem in any of this, because, after all, this was a passion…right?
Wrong. It has taken until now to finally realize that yes, I have a problem. Going to the gym everyday may seem like a harmless habit, unless of course, you are me. And take it to the next umpteen level and over train, all the while believing you are a ninja.
Yep.
Overtraining occurs when you train beyond the body’s ability to recover—exercising longer and harder, hoping for better results. Take for example my goal to run 5 miles in 40 minutes, with my warm up and cool down. I trained everyday, running 4 miles in 35 mins, which is nice, but my shin splints would make it difficult to continue to 5. So instead of running everyday, I started to allow more recovery time or longer resting period between runs. I found my shin splints were minimized and my distance was maximized. Yay for me!
Without adequate rest and recovery, these training regimens can backfire, and actually decrease performance. Training, (I’ve learned the hard way), requires a balance between overload and recovery. Too much overload and/or too little recovery may result in both physical and psychology symptoms of overtraining. Signs of overtraining include a feeling of general malaise, depression, decreased sports performance. Me, I just felt stale.
For the workout-obsessed like me, let’s examine recovery further.
It takes a while for your body to get used to any new activity. That’s why we moan, “I’m so out of shape,” meaning, “Physical activity is hard right now because I rarely do any.” But I think it’s easy to assume that the initial discomfort we feel after doing something novel is a sign that it was a really bad idea. And when that discomfort persists, it translates to, “I hate running/swimming/weightlifting/jabbing this fork in my eye.”
When we undergo the stress of physical exercise, our body adapts and becomes more efficient. It’s just like learning any new skill; at first it’s difficult, but over time it becomes second-nature. Once you adapt to a given stress, you require additional stress to continue to make progress.
There are limits to how much stress the body can tolerate before it breaks down and risks injury. Doing too much work too quickly will result in injury or muscle damage, but doing too little, too slowly will not result in any improvement. This is why personal trainers set up specific training programs that increase time and intensity at a planned rate and allow rest days throughout the program.
Building recovery time into any training program is important because this is the time that the body adapts to the stress of exercise and the real training effect takes place. Recovery also allows the body to replenish energy stores and repair damaged tissues. Exercise or any other physical work causes changes in the body such as muscle tissue breakdown and the depletion of energy stores (muscle glycogen) as well as fluid loss. Without sufficient time to repair and replenish, the body will continue to breakdown from intensive exercise.
This is also the time for soft tissue (muscles, tendons, ligaments) repair and the removal of chemicals that build up as a result of cell activity during exercise.
Do not feel guilty to take a day off. The body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training can actually weaken even the strongest athletes.
Rest days are critical to performance for a variety of reasons. Some are physiological and some are psychological. Rest is physically necessary so that the muscles can repair, rebuild and strengthen.