Hi guys, I’m a little worried that I’m overtraining and actually going backwards. I’ve been training 6 days a week, in a 6 on/1 off style, incorporating weights and HIIT cardio based on an article by John Berardi, trying to cut down bodyfat from my current 180ish pounds at about 10% body fat:
Lately though, I’ve been feeling tired, like sleep isn’t leaving me refreshed, I’m achey, not looking forward to training anything like as much as I used to, I’m losing strength if anything (even though I’m trying to cut).
Would you say this routine, with 6 consecutive days of intense training and only 1 rest day every 7 days, could be responsible for my seemingly overtrained, burnt out state? Or is it a perfectly acceptable program, that I should be able to adhere to without issues?
I would say that your definitely not over trained, your probably over-reaching though with all that activity. Thats just speculation because Ive done stuff like this in the past, i would suggest take a week off apart from morning cardio at a low intensity if you want for a week or so and see how you feel. Maybe throw up what you’ve been eating though
What is you carb intake? What you describe is exactly what I feel like when I am low carbing/eating under maintenance and doing a bit too much training. When this happens I usually have a bowl of oatmeal with mixed berries and some banana and I feel better within 1/2 an hour.
Woking - To accurately determine if you are or arent over training, we need to know a few more things if you dont mind.
an Example of your calorie intake for 1 day or if it is different throughout the week then please state.
how Many hours of sleep you get each night.
From the looks of it, you are not over training anything. You are probably just breaking down your CNS and not replenishing your body enough with sleep/food. Even while you are trying to lose weight, you should not be skimping on the calories before weights workouts or after. Build the muscle and it will work for you while your not working out, you will burn more calories.
[quote]mokaloka99 wrote:
Woking - To accurately determine if you are or arent over training, we need to know a few more things if you dont mind.
an Example of your calorie intake for 1 day or if it is different throughout the week then please state.
how Many hours of sleep you get each night.
From the looks of it, you are not over training anything. You are probably just breaking down your CNS and not replenishing your body enough with sleep/food. Even while you are trying to lose weight, you should not be skimping on the calories before weights workouts or after. Build the muscle and it will work for you while your not working out, you will burn more calories.[/quote]
Thanks for the replies guys. At the moment I’m taking in around 2300-2400 calories a day, kept the same between cardio and weights days, at around 200g protein a day. Sleep is a variable thing- due to working an early shift and having a new girlfriend I only end up in bed at about 10.30-11pm and have to be up about 6-6.30 weekdays.
I know a lot of people here say there’s no such thing as over training (or ‘over-reaching’ or whatever but you’re beat up and tired) but I think there is. You may have reached it.
Though I do think that if you’re going to train hard you will have to eat more too. If you’re dropping your calories and training like a beast then you will end up feeling beat up and tired.
The answer then would be to increase calories and see if you didn’t feel better or not train so hard.
[quote]Nards wrote:
I know a lot of people here say there’s no such thing as over training (or ‘over-reaching’ or whatever but you’re beat up and tired) but I think there is. You may have reached it.
Though I do think that if you’re going to train hard you will have to eat more too. If you’re dropping your calories and training like a beast then you will end up feeling beat up and tired.
The answer then would be to increase calories and see if you didn’t feel better or not train so hard.[/quote]
over training only is supposed to happen to elite athletes that train 20+ hours a week and its a condition that takes a long time to go away, months sometimes. Over reaching is just doing too much and yeah feeling beat up but a week off will most likely cure over reaching because its not nearly as serious as over training.
How long are you doing HIIT for? longer than 20 minutes is not recommended by most. If i was you I would replace all the HIIT with steady state cardio for 45-60 minutes until I felt better, then I would work the HIIT back in at one workout per week at a time until you discover what you can recover from. Since you are probably overreaching, you will likely make significant improvements during the week with only steady state cardio.
For even better recovery you could move your HIIT to after your weight workouts (it’s only 20 extra minutes) and then do steady state on your non-weight training days. You are currently taxing you anaerobic and CNS systems heavily six days a week which is apparently too much for you right now.
Increase protein or add BCAAs and see if your state doesn’t improve. Stick with that for a good two weeks. If that doesnt work take 3 days off from all activities but keep protein intake high. Adding 50g of protein is a decent start.
also start taking a multi mineral supplement and try and get more sleep, ZMA, plus calcium manesium and c helps me sleep better as I’m a light sleeper.
good luck…
[quote]Nards wrote:
I know a lot of people here say there’s no such thing as over training (or ‘over-reaching’ or whatever but you’re beat up and tired) but I think there is. You may have reached it.
Though I do think that if you’re going to train hard you will have to eat more too. If you’re dropping your calories and training like a beast then you will end up feeling beat up and tired.
The answer then would be to increase calories and see if you didn’t feel better or not train so hard.[/quote]
over training only is supposed to happen to elite athletes that train 20+ hours a week and its a condition that takes a long time to go away, months sometimes. Over reaching is just doing too much and yeah feeling beat up but a week off will most likely cure over reaching because its not nearly as serious as over training.[/quote]
There are varying degrees of overtraining. To say that overreaching is something different makes no sense to me. It means the same thing. If you’re exceeding your recovery abilities than you are overtraining.