Are you worried about overtraining? You shouldn’t be. What you should be more concerned about is under-recovery.
Your body has a unique ability to adapt to the stresses placed on it. Given enough recovery, your body is capable of a very high workload.
This is not to say that people don’t feel like they are overtraining. The real issue though is not that they are working out too much, but that other parts of their health program are lacking.
An effective weight loss program places equal importance on diet, exercise, and recovery.
The #1 Cause of Under-Recovery is a Poor Diet
A well thought out eating plan is essential to recovery. Many people start off trying to get into shape by dropping their calories and increasing their activity. They have the right idea. Unfortunately, these two variables start veering too far off away from each other. The increased activity is great, however, their diet usually ends up being too low in calories. When you increase your work load, you need to compensate your diet with enough calories, and enough nutrients. Eat a nutrient dense diet, and try to lose no more than 2 pounds per week. There are 3500 calories in a pound. So aim for a calorie deficit of 500-1000 calories per day.
How many calories should you eat? That’s a tricky one, and it will vary from person to person. There are several variables to consider like your activity level, your age, your sex, and your metabolism to name just a few. There are calorie calculators all over the internet, and they can be used as a general guide, but they will never be perfect. There is only one way to figure out how many calories you should be eating. To find out how, read – How Many Calories Should I Eat.
Lack of Rest is a Recovery Killer
Your body grows and rebuilds itself while at rest. Give yourself a rest day once or twice a week. Certainly don’t workout every single day. Now, that doesn’t mean to just do absolutely nothing on those days and sit on the couch all day. This can be just as detrimental to your recovery as running a 5k would.
So what can you do on these rest days to improve recovery? You can stretch, get a massage, or do some active recovery. You want to get some blood to the muscle. Blood carries all the nutrients needed to recover, and a little extra help will improve recovery. Try some active recovery like walking, yoga, or swimming – basically anything that is low intensity in nature.
Are you getting enough sleep? Important hormones are released while you sleep that help the body rebuild itself. Your body’s growth hormone levels are at their highest after exercise and when you sleep. Both of these times your body is trying to recover. There are several benefits to high levels of growth hormone. It unfortunately gets lower as you age, so you will need to be even smarter with your weight loss program if you want to make the best use of what you have. Do your best to get 7-8 hours of sleep per night. And try to make that sleep at the same time everyday. Your body will start to recognize a routine, and it will thank you for it. Here are some more tips for increasing growth hormone.
Place just as much importance on recovery as you do with your diet and exercise routine. If you’ve noticed that your progress has stalled, or you feel rundown, under-recovery is probably the problem. Recovery planning is essential for every weight loss program. If you don’t already have a recovery plan in place, you should consider adding one in very soon.
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Nice post
I would add that consistency is the key. Your body is able to a lot of training, but if you train 2 day one week, 5th the next and so forth, chances are that you find you never recover enough… And you’ll see much more result if you are consistent in what you are doing!
Thanks Claudia. That’s true, your body is capable of a lot of training as long as you work your way up to the frequency and be consistent about it.
I think it usually comes from undereating, and I’ve learned that the hard way so I’m vigilant not to make that mistake again.
Under eating is definitely a top cause of under-recovery. People tend to drop their calories too low too soon. Patience is the name of the game.
3 days a week excercise with good diet programme should be good enough.
Thanks for the well-written article. I also agree with Claudia that consistency is key – it’s one of my biggest obstacles right now (well, that and getting enough rest). I’m hoping to really step up my fitness workouts in 2012 and all these articles are giving me great information.
I’m glad the information helps Donna! Consistency and patience – difficult but necessary.
This is good to know. My husband turned 70 last month, so getting enough rest and stretching before and after a good workout is important. I’ve introduced him to Tai Chi, also.
Good to hear he’s working out into his 70s. Rest and recovery becomes even more important as we get older.
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I was about to disagree until I read the second line. I think letting your body recover is the biggest step many people make when getting into a fitness routine. They think just working out is the key but they miss the healthy food aspect as well. Thanks for making those steps key; and keeping us all on track.
True Christine. Recovery, which incorporates things like proper rest and nutrition, are all key to a well rounded fitness program. Thanks for stopping by.
One thing to think about is resting the CNS along with the actual muscles. I have a very stressful job, it sometimes causes me to miss my physical workouts which I had previously always wrote off as “recovery days”, however even though I am getting a physical rest I am not really getting full recovery because I am under stress mentally. The body doesn’t really know the difference between physical, mental, or even emotional stress – it responds similarly to all three. Your recovery days need to be real recovery days where your not being overextended mentally or emotionally, not just physically.
I also think varying recovery days is a great idea, for example I did a 6 week program once where I started out working out 6 days a week (different styles of workouts each day), then reduced it to 5 days, then 4 days, and so on. The body got a “shock” initially to cause it to respond but then was allowed to recover and catch up as time went along. I had some of my best gains I have gotten doing this tapered method, I would be doing this now but my work schedule is so chaotic it is hard to stick to a rigid schedule.
Otherwise I just try to listen to my body. Right now I train martial arts, do HIIT style workouts, and sometimes TRX with a weight vest. If I get a small strain or a joint is tweaked during Jujitsu training, I skip the next HIIT or TRX workout I had planned to let it recover. If it goes away fast enough I resume my workout schedule for the week, but if I still feel something is tweaked a bit I hold off and just wait till the next week to try to resume my workouts. It is not worth it to “push through” it, you can cause big damage which might take you out of your training for long periods if you do.
I’ve really come to appreciate the importance of my diet now that I’m working out more. I see a lot of people trying to cut calories and increase their workout intensity at the same time, which is a recipe for disaster.