Finding the will and the strength to start a workout routine is extremely difficult.
And once you have decided and have mustered up the will to finally sweat out the fries and burgers you’ve gobbled up in one seating, the unexpected starts to happen: sore muscles and achy arms and legs that render impossible for you to lift even a book or a bag – signs that your body is adjusting to what you’re doing.
Fitness Plateau
Determination and consistency are the keys to battling laziness and fighting your way to achieving your goals. Once you make it a routine or a part of your lifestyle, your body will certainly crave for workouts or trips to the gym. You’ve felt unexplainably better and stronger … until at one point, you suddenly observe decreased performance or that you stopped seeing improvements – you may be hitting what is called “fitness plateau.”
Hitting this phase may mean you are overtraining, experts say. Hmm, is there such thing as excessive training? Apparently, as with the case in everything, too much is bad. The mindset that you need to work harder and more nonstop could be detrimental to your health, so always bear in mind that working out is as vital as the recovery.
Science behind Overtraining
Certified strength and conditioning specialist Rachel Cosgrove, exercising and training puts stress into our body, that’s why recovery is mandatory.
In rest do we grow stronger because it’s when the bodies repair and build muscles. So when you work out hard immediately after an injury, she said your body is not really fully recovering and you are not getting stronger either.
Signs You Are Overtraining
When you have conditioned yourself to push a little harder every day, it is harder to tell yourself to take it easy, even for a brief period, fearing that you may lose the momentum. However, if you’ve noticed that you’ve hit a plateau, then maybe it’s high time you reconsider – loads of work that do not equate with the progress may mean you are indeed overtraining.
There’s a chance that your emotions will get mixed up, too, as Rachel pointed out, because your body breaking down may result in changes in your mental health and hormone balance, which means even your sleeping patterns may suffer.
You suddenly catch every illness there is.
You may also notice that you are getting sickly than usual, which is because overtraining sacrifices your immune system. As a result, you end up being susceptible to viruses and exercising through an illness is not the answer – what is, is rest. In relation to this, it is also extremely important to observe if you have been aching more than the ordinary because as training causes inflammation, overdoing exercise means no recovery, which means more pain and injury.
