Fitness
The Dangers Of Overtraining In The Weight Room
Overtraining in the weight room is a serious problem for many bodybuilders. If you really want to get the most out of your workout, then you should really consider how far your body can be pushed. While it might seem that more is always going to be better, there is a point at which your body starts to work against you.
Avoiding this is both a matter of limiting your exercise time and supplementing your healthy lifestyle with a high protein meal plan. Otherwise, you could be looking at numerous adverse effects during your workout regimen. Some signs of overtraining in the weight room include:
- Reduced physical performance
- Slower recovery time
- Increased heart rate during training
- Increased resting heart rate
- Chronic muscle or joint pain
- Overall fatigue
- Compromised immune system
- Decreased motivation
Obviously, these symptoms are going to become readily apparent, especially if you have not increased the load of your workout. If you start feeling a confluence of these symptoms, it might be time to pull back on the reins a little bit. The major reason why overtraining is such a big issue is that the body needs adequate rest in between periods of strenuous exercise.
Muscles, joints, and many bodily functions need to repair themselves entirely, or else you run the risk of incurring one of these issues. Obviously, nutrition plays an important role in the fight against overtraining, and a custom weekly meal plan can certainly help you along the way. On a microscopic level, the effects of overtraining can be caused by any of the following:
- Tiny muscle tears
- Persistent glycogen depletion
- Tendon and connective tissue damage
- Over-accumulation of lactic acid
- Depleted stores of creatine phosphate
All of these issues illustrate the effects that overtraining has on the body (albeit on a much smaller scale). Even so, it reveals that the body needs adequate rest and restoration. If these valuable nutrient stores are continually depleted and are not allowed to re-accumulate, then you’re always going to be working at a loss.
Of course, supplementing a high protein meal plan can help restore these depleted or damaged resources. If you’re not eating right, strenuous weight training can actually do a lot more damage than good.
One of the most important things to keep in mind is to never skip out on breakfast. Whether it’s just a protein bar or a few eggs, breakfast helps promote muscle gain and mitigate muscle loss. It’s also always important to make sure you’re never hungry.
That doesn’t mean you should continually eat high-protein foods every hour of every day, but try to make sure you’re eating once every 2 to 3 hours to stay in an anabolic state and promote adequate muscle building. In addition, be sure to eat a meal within about an hour of weight training. In fact, this should be your most substantive meal of the day. Having a custom weekly meal plan can certainly help you get the most out of your workout and will keep you from pushing your body too far.