Are you overtraining?
There is no doubt that a CrossFit work out is intense. This intensity is the very thing that can accelerate you to higher levels of fitness by increasing your output. However, we need to manage that output with adequate amounts of recovery in order to find an effect dose of training. Sleep, diet, stress, and the frequency of your training will all have an impact on the quality of your recovery. Ultimately it is the recovery that allows you to most effectively adapt to your training. If your recovery isn’t matching your output, you may be running the risk of overtraining.
Overtraining is a condition that manifests in a number of symptoms. The following is a list of things to watch for as signs of overtraining.
1- Joint pain
Joint pain is related to inflammation within or around any particular joint. This can be caused by factors including poor diet, poor technique and over use. While training can be a great way to help rehabilitate joint pain, too much training can worsen the problem. If you are experiencing joint pain during your CrossFit work outs, please consult with a coach. The pain may be remedied with an analysis of particular techniques or perhaps a referral to a professional who can direct your recovery more specifically. A nagging pain is your body letting you know that something needs to be adjusted with your training. Don’t dismiss joint pain and fight through it. Talk to your coach and we can help direct you towards better recovery.
2- Loss of motivation
If you’ve felt like your work outs have been lack lustre, or your finding it hard to get yourself to the gym, this may be a sigh of overtraining. When your stress-recovery ratio is out of whack your body does a good job giving you signs. The tough part is listening to those signs. In this case you may decide to take a couple extra days off during the week to soak up some more recovery. Heck you may even need to take the whole week off. If your in a sate of overtraining and your worried about losing fitness by taking a week off, think again. Remember the recovery from the stress that makes you stronger and fitter.
3-Sleep disturbance
When you train intensely, all the systems of your body are demanded to kick into overdrive. In recovery, these systems relax and other systems activate to rebuild and prepare for the next bout. If your recovery systems aren’t completing their job this can leave you feeling restless and excitable during sleep. Poor sleep amplifies poor recovery and this too can lead to overtraining.
4- Performance decrease
Tracking your daily performance can tell you a lot about your progress. The whole point of training is to see an improvement in your performance markers. If these things take a general dip and continue to worsen, it could be a sign of overtraining.
The remedy to overtraining is simple, get better recovery. Better recovery comes from better diet, better sleep and sometimes taking a break. Taking a break might just be the best thing to accelerate your fitness to the next level. Be aware of the signs o overtraining and make sure to take appropriate action. Overtraining isn’t something you can just grit your teeth and train through. Ask a coach if you think you are feeling symptoms of overtraining. If you’ve experienced any of this personally, please share in comments. Often times people can connect much better with a personal story from a peer than from our ramblings on the website.
People who misunderstand CrossFit commonly view pictures like these as Overtraining. Those who have experienced an effectively coached CrossFit program, and therefore properly understand CrossFit, easily recognize pictures like these as Recovery, a key component to avoid Overtraining.
This is a topic that I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately. There has been some interesting articles on Mark’s Daily Apple about it as well. Overtraining is definitely a problem for me. I’ve had many of the issues that you talk about – ongoing injuries that just never seem to heal, sleep issues, loss of motivation, and sometimes feeling so awful and fatigued for the entire day after a tough WOD that I sometimes wonder if I can make it up the stairs to go to bed at night.
I have started to try to take rest and recovery more seriously. I find it easier to do this not knowing what the WOD will be, as I often would go on a planned rest day because there was going to be a WOD that I really wanted to do…and the same the day after…and the day after that…etc.
The problem really boils down to…I love CrossFit!
I miss it if I haven’t gone for more than a day and start to feel lazy, sluggish and antsy. Maybe having some ‘active recovery’ days with less weight or effort would help? It’s definitely an issue I struggle with as ultimately, the solution rests with me just taking more recovery time – something I find it difficult to do, but am working toward. Maybe we should rename it CrackFit!
Sorry – I have to grammar police myself as I re-read this (where is that edit button when you need it?) – There HAVE been some interesting articles….:)
I can’t say that rest and recovery have ever been an issue for me. I’ve always been one to listen to my body and respect what it’s saying. Whether I need to take a full rest day, rest-week or even just an ‘active recovery’ day as Sandra put, whatever my body tells me, that’s what I’ll do. I get some jokes and cracks at me sometimes about how can I make such gains and PR’s when I never workout or whether or not I’m ‘juicin’ but now you know why.
I think this article has explained it perfectly. If my knees or shoulders are buggin me then I don’t mess with them. You may see me working out still but I’m staying within what my body says is okay. I’ve had days where I wanted to go hard but my legs just said NO. I’ve had other days were I wasn’t sure if my shoulder could take it, but once I got warm and started going through the workout, it was fine and I performed very well. I always have a plan of what I WANT to do in my head before every workout, however, if my body is telling me something different, that’s what I’ll do. It may mean I don’t get that PR when I wanted to but it also means I will get a PR when I wasn’t expecting it!
Most of us are here to improve our life through fitness, not hinder it. If working out is causing problems like joint pain, then we need to change something. It’s so easy to scale, modify or even substitue movements in workouts so that we can help speed up recovery not slow it down. As a few posts ago said: Speak Up! We’re here for you. Let us help you avoid overtraining and achieve the goals you desire.
Sandra-I actually work out less, with greater results than I used to, kinda like Chad mentioned. I used to pretty much always go 5x/week, now it’s 4x, and sometimes 3x week. I feel better, recover better, and I’ve shifted from “I have to hit the PR/I suck at pullups-f$%$%ck!/can’t believe that person was faster or lifted heavier than me” BS, and just work out each time as hard as I can, and I do 100% of my best each day. I love crossfit too, Sandra, but there’s so much more to enjoy in life re. activity than just crossfit. I love walking my dogs twice each day and just getting out in the fresh air and sunshine. How about a yoga class? Hike? Swim? Gardening? I think of moving my body each day, it’s just not always crossfit.
I many crossfitters have a mindset that it’s all or nothing, and if it’s not a PR, it’s failure (and therefore, are overtrained). I completely disagree! I would much rather look great, sleep well, have lots of energy, listen to my body and avoid injury, and use crossfit to perform better in life. That still sticks with me when one of the coaches talked about that at the Level 1 Cert last year at Lineage…crossfit is to help you perform better OUTSIDE of the box, not just so you PR.
Peter-here’s the email for Dennis Fitzgerald at Meteor Lakes Bison:
d.fitzgerald@xplornet.com
I’ll bring in some of the product sheets he gave us that we photocopy and give to our patients at our office-just let me know, and I’ll drop them off for you or anyone else.
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Hi buddy would it be ok if we used some info from here to use on one of my websites? cheers mate