Overtraining: How It Affects Us And How To Avoid It

"Rest?! Who needs rest! I work through the pain!"

The first three months of my training I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was overwhelmed with variety and wanted to try a million workouts all at once. If there was something I wasn't so strong at, I'd fixate on it for a while and learn it until I was at least good enough at it to be able to incorporate it into a workout (you are now looking at the double under queen!). But eventually, it was getting to the point where I was doing more than one workout a day with no rest days in between. I'd do our gym's WOD in the morning, for example, and a few hours later decide to do Grace. Don't get me wrong, I was getting fit, but at the same time I was unknowingly breaking down.

In February/March I had completed the 300 workout and decided to go immediately into working on handstand push-ups. This is where everything went downhill. Something in my right shoulder went wonky, and when I stood up from the handstand position I was unable to lift my arm past my hips. All I thought was, "That's it, I'm done." Doing any kind of overhead work was out of the question, including pull-ups. I quickly realized that the last three months of overtraining and lack of proper rest were the culprits. I skimmed through my journal out of curiosity to see how many days I had trained in a row without rest: 44! I remember I had even written down "Rest Day" on the pages for the days they were required, but written below would be a workout that I had done, and the time/max load completed. I was super pissed at myself, to say the least, and now I had to suffer the consequences.

Even though I wasn't training as much, I'd still go in to the gym to cheer people on, or see what kinds of numbers people were putting up, but it frustrated me because I wanted to join in on the workouts so badly; sometimes I would even say, "Ah, to hell with it," and give the workout a go, but was quickly stopped by the shooting pains in my shoulders. At some points it was too upsetting for me to even be there to watch others.

It took a while to finally come to terms with the fact that I needed proper rest, and I think part of the reason why is because I was afraid of reverting back to my old unhealthy lifestyle, and also because I had worked so hard at getting to the point where I had reached - endurance-wise, intensity-wise, strength-wise, etc. I finally got used to resting more often and was on the road to recovery, because I learned to understand these important points:


How overtraining affects us:

• Lack of intensity - there is a difference between waking up fresh after a rest day and waking up after training five days straight and going in to hammer out another WOD. "Strong like bull" or not, your intensity is on its way down the shooter. Proper rest (three on, one off), along with sleep and dieting, will ensure that you get the full recovery that you need; and more likely than not, your times will be better and you will also be much stronger on heavy days.
• Injuries - your muscles need time to recover, and the best way to do that is, you guessed it, resting! Injuries occur when the body becomes weak; and when it's weak it lacks proper form on workouts, which is then followed by injuries. By taking proper rest you have less of a chance of running into any problems - simple as pie.
• Progress - CrossFit is all about smashing your old PRs, but a sign of an overtrainer is someone who isn't improving on their workouts. Refuel, re-energize, and most of all...rest! Believe it or not, doing nothing all day will help you improve on your workouts - even doing nothing for an entire week.

How to avoid it and still continue training:

• Bodyweight workouts - If you feel as though you can do some light work, bodyweight is a good option. Push-ups, sit-ups, and if knees aren't an issue, air squats are a great choice, as well as running and sprinting. Avoid using heavier weights as much as possible.
• Mark off your rest days ahead of time - Go through your journal (and for those who don't have one yet, get one!) and mark off every third day as a rest day. Treat it like a work schedule: would you go into work if you weren't scheduled? Didn't think so! So Don't train when you're scheduled to rest.
• Exercises that prevent injuries - Rotator cuff exercises are a great way to strengthen your shoulders; this link will explain a bit on rotator cuffs and show you three easy exercises you can do to help prevent rotator cuff injuries. This link will show you how to exercise your IT band.

If you haven't jumped on the 3:1 wagon yet, get on it now!