Overtraining syndrome. How to recognize and what to do?

April 3, 2012

Signs of overtraining are found among those who strive to achieve results in record time. What does such a rush lead to?

Signs of overtraining are not limited to professional athletes who are forced to follow a rigid training schedule. Without proper rest, ordinary gym visitors who strive to quickly achieve the desired results also suffer. Unfortunately, such haste does not benefit anyone. Overtraining, or, as it is also called, “overtraining syndrome”

, leads to unpleasant consequences for the psychological and physical state of a person.

Subjective signs of overtraining

How to measure your pulse correctly

If you play sports, be sure to learn how to measure your pulse correctly and why to do it.

These signs may be invisible to others, but are acutely perceived by the person himself. Try not to confuse some of them with the symptoms of a developing cold or flu: - decreased emotionality, feeling tired, empty, lack of energy, - insomnia, - irritability, - symptoms of depression, - reluctance to go to exercise, - decreased appetite, - a feeling of “ache” in the body, - pain in muscles and joints, - sudden decrease in training performance, - increased number of injuries during exercise, - headache, - decreased immunity - increased frequency of colds.

State Budgetary Institution "Kuzbass Clinical Center for Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine"

MEMO FOR A SPORTS DOCTOR SYMPTOMS OF OVERTRAINING. RESTORATION OF PERFORMANCE

In sports practice, there is a pattern that the higher the level of an athlete, the more often he experiences symptoms of a “sports disease” that is quite common in the modern world - overexertion or overtraining syndrome.

Overexertion syndrome or overtraining is an imbalance between training and recovery

. This is the body's response to excessive training load, usually combined with preparation for or participation in major competitions, and insufficient time to recuperate.

There are additional factors that provoke this condition:

• emotional stress
• unfavorable psychological climate in the team
• frequent travel, flights crossing time zones, resulting in lack of sleep and nutrition
• intense training and participation in competitions, despite feeling tired.
• early start of training after illness.
• dietary features where the diet does not have enough calories, vitamins, and simple carbohydrates predominate in the food.
• a large number of injuries and frequent infectious diseases.
• hormonal changes caused by exhausting training negatively affect the athlete's immune system.
• disorders in the musculoskeletal system in the form of decreased elasticity of ligaments and muscle elasticity. The activity of antagonist muscles and, accordingly, coordination of movements are disrupted, defensive reactions and attention deteriorate, which explains the frequency of injuries.

How can you spot the symptoms of overtraining and differentiate them from normal feelings of fatigue?

These are the following symptoms:

• feeling of constant fatigue, often accompanied by sore muscles
• the need to exert more and more effort in training while simultaneously reducing athletic performance - this is what is characteristic of overexertion syndrome.
• sleep disturbances, difficulty falling asleep, frequent awakenings.
• disorders in the emotional sphere - apathy, lethargy, reluctance to train, sometimes, on the contrary, playfulness, a frivolous attitude towards training, there may be increased irritability.
• discomfort or pain in the heart area, rapid heartbeat at rest, possibly increased blood pressure. (In young athletes, on the contrary, heart rate and blood pressure may decrease).
• loss of appetite, the tongue becomes covered with a white coating, and when it sticks out of the mouth, its tremor (trembling) is detected
• Possible weight loss
• in female athletes, menstrual irregularities up to amenorrhea.

What should an athlete do?

1.Together with the coach, adjust the training process and preparation for competitions.

2. Contact a sports doctor to draw up a recovery program to prevent the pathological process from worsening.

3. It is important to identify symptoms of overtraining as early as possible, because the time required for complete recovery is longer than the time during which the athlete was in this state.

4. The most effective treatment is to change the training regimen, both by reducing their number and time.

5. Avoid long and intense exercises, technically complex ones and those aimed at endurance.

6. In severe cases of overtraining, classes are stopped for 1 - 3 weeks, active rest is prescribed with gradual involvement in a sports regime.

7. Classes should begin with general physical training, light load, and only in the process of improving the general condition of the athlete, move on to special training.

How to Avoid Overtraining

?

The athlete and coach should closely monitor the appearance of the first signs of this phenomenon. If an athlete is seriously involved in sports, it is advisable for him to keep records of training sessions, noting his well-being during and after the session. The diary should include any changes in body weight, appetite, note the duration of sleep, etc.

Pharmacological means of restoring performance and preventing overvoltage

1.Vitamins play an important role.

They are regulators of metabolism; with their help, biologically active substances are formed in the body - enzymes that participate in the chemical transformations of carbohydrates, fats and proteins.
In sports medicine, complex vitamin preparations with microelements are used - Vitrum, Centrum, Multitabs, Supradin

Alphabet
has proven itself well .

2.As practice shows, these products are best used with adaptogens of animal and plant origin, which increase performance and resistance to various adverse factors.

They can also be complex, such as Elton, Leveton and Safinor, and single preparations in the form of tinctures - ginseng, Leuzea, Schisandra, Rhodiola, Zamanika, Aralia, Eleutherococcus, 20-30 drops on an empty stomach 2 - 3 times a day. The same properties are found in the extract from the horns of deer, wapiti and deer - Pantocrine, 30-40 drops (or 1 - 2 tablets) 2 - 3 times a day, as well as beekeeping products - Apilak (royal jelly), honey with beebread.

3.Sometimes it is necessary to take nootropics to increase the level of energy metabolism of brain cells

– Cavinton, Nootropil, 2 caps. 2–3 times a day, for a course of 3 weeks.

4.Among the drugs with plastic and energetic effects, potassium Orotate, Riboxin 2 tablets 3 times a day, Mildronate 2 caps are prescribed. 3 times a day.

For the same purpose, the homeopathic drug Cralonin (Heel, Germany) is used, 10 drops 3 times a day on an empty stomach.

5.Sedatives

used in the afternoon - valerian extract 2 - 3 tablets at night, St. John's wort extract Negrustin 2 caps.
per day, Novo-Passit 1 - 2 tablets daily for a course of 2 - 3 weeks, Valerianaheel (Heel, Germany) 15 drops 2 - 3 times a day. To stimulate the immune system, a course of Echinacea compositum S (Heel, Germany) in the form of injections is indicated. The diet of an overtrained athlete
should be high in calories and contain large amounts of animal and vegetable protein. Additionally, the menu includes potassium-containing products - dried apricots and baked potatoes. A special place in the treatment of overexertion syndrome is occupied by physiotherapeutic means - therapeutic swimming, bathhouse, Charcot's shower and, of course, restorative massage.

Sports doctors, organizational and methodological room of the State Budgetary Institution of Health Care "KTs LFK and SM". 2012

Objective signs of overtraining

There are several ways to determine the presence of overtraining. One of them is monitoring the heart rate (HR)
over a certain period of time.
First way
.
Track your heart rate every morning. Any noticeable increase in this indicator compared to the norm may indicate that you are poorly recovering from exercise. There is also a more difficult test
. This is the so-called orthostatic heart rate test, which was invented by Heikki Rusko, a specialist from the Olympic Sports Institute in Finland. This test should be carried out over several days, preferably in the morning. 1. Lie down and rest comfortably for 10 minutes. 2. Measure your pulse and write it down in beats per minute. 3. Stand up. 4. After 15 seconds, measure your pulse again and record the reading. 5. Repeat the measurement after 90 and 120 seconds. A consistent decrease in heart rate between the second and fourth measurements indicates that you have had enough rest. If your heart rate increases by a significant amount (10 beats per minute or more) 120 seconds after you stand up, it may mean you have not recovered from exercise. In this case, you should reduce the intensity of your workout and take an extra day of rest.

Overtraining

General information and definitions

It may seem that the word “overtraining” does not need interpretation.
Indeed, what is there to explain if we are clearly talking about something excessive, most likely about stress or fatigue. However, medicine is an exact science (as far as this is possible with such a capricious and complex object of study as the human body); She avoids approximation and cacophony in definitions in every possible way, since this would quickly lead to “treating some symptoms with some pills.” Overload, overfatigue, overstrain and overtraining, despite the common prefix “over-”, are not at all equivalent in meaning. These are separate serious problems of serious sports medicine, especially that which deals with the so-called. sport of the highest achievements. When it comes to performance at the level of continental, world and Olympic records, every phenomenon, every pattern discovered and every term used to describe them takes on enormous significance. Most definitions come to us from English-speaking sports medicine. The domestic one is no less developed, in many respects it traditionally leads and holds its own opinion on a number of issues, but it is believed that the American R.T. McKenzie was the first to speak about overtraining in a journal article on therapeutic gymnastics (1923), and he immediately associated this condition with depletion of the central nervous system, defining it as “poisoning of the nervous system.”

However, priority is not fundamental here. Here is the text of Hippocrates that has survived to this day (with abbreviations):

“In those who devote themselves to gymnastic exercises, the extremely good appearance of the body becomes dangerous when it reaches its extreme limits, because, not being able to improve, it tends to the worse.”

Here's Galen:

“The athlete’s lifestyle is more conducive to illness than health.”

It is difficult to compare the loads in modern sports with the lifestyle of ancient athletes, but it is known that by the middle of the twentieth century, when the problem under consideration was already becoming globally acute, training loads were only 30-40% of the current ones.

In 1956, the World Congress on Sports Medicine was held in Moscow, where L. Prokop (Austria) proposed the concept of “sports disease”. Soviet experts always insisted on a clear distinction between the terms “training,” “overload,” “functional capacity,” etc. We have to admit that there are no unified, comprehensive, commonly used definitions in world medicine today.

However, specialists from different countries still understand each other. Fatigue, let's say, is a decrease in performance due to prolonged psychophysical stress, which requires the restoration of energy resources. Depletion is the lack of such resources. Overload is physical work of such intensity that requires internal energy expenditure “above the limit”, since it exceeds the capabilities of a given organism with its current training. In turn, fitness is the body’s ability to adapt and cope with loads of a certain level and nature without harm to itself. Overstrain is a condition that develops as a result of accumulated overload and usually passes after a relatively short period of rest.

When it comes to overtraining syndrome, the most successful attempts to define it tend to repeat a few key points. First of all, this is precisely a syndrome, i.e. pathological, painful condition, manifested by a holistic and interconnected set of individual symptoms; this set is more or less accurately reproduced in different patients, regardless of specific causes and individual characteristics.

In fact, by overtraining, sports doctors mean a lack of progress or a decrease in results in conditions where the intensity of training loads remains the same or increases. In addition, in all cases there is a mismatch, an imbalance between physical, neuroendocrine, mental processes and resources. Finally, there is disadaptation, a sharp decrease and disruption of adaptive mechanisms that previously allowed the body to perform habitual and/or increasing amounts of work.

From the outside, sometimes you can’t even tell that problems have begun: the athlete is trying his best, the training schedule is thought out to the smallest detail, the regime is not violated, the loads are moderate, quite feasible and increase smoothly, in compliance with all the canons of sports medicine. But previously, all this led to a gradual increase in muscle strength, speed, endurance, reaction speed and, in general, to improved results. And today, under the same conditions, the athlete feels unwell, loses interest in what is happening, and the performance is rapidly falling. Scolding and punishing him is just as pointless as persuading, encouraging, and motivating him. This is already a pathology. It needs to be diagnosed and treated.

How else can you control yourself?

1. Keep a training diary
, in which you record not only the speed, distance or weight taken, but also
notes about your well-being
and mood.
Keeping daily records will help you spot a decline in enthusiasm and performance. 2. Analyze your attitude towards classes. If you no longer experience positive emotions, and are replaced by irritability and fatigue, most likely you are giving yourself too much stress and do not have time to rest after it. 3. Consult with an instructor
or more experienced athletes. Sometimes it's only an objective look from the outside that allows you to notice that you're training too much.

This you need to know: pulse zones

There are five heart rate zones, which differ from each other in the result of training. Find out which ones improve your heart health, burn fat and train endurance.

Fighting overtraining

This means proper rest and balanced nutrition. It is better to completely eliminate heavy physical activity for 2-3 weeks, and after this time gradually return to it, as this would be done after an illness during the recovery period: starting with light loads, low-intensity training and light weights. Then slowly and carefully returning to your usual weights and routine. For a couple of weeks, you can replace heavy strength training with relaxing activities: stretching, yoga, swimming or regular walking outside.

It is necessary to add a multivitamin complex and healthy nutritional supplements such as Omega-3 to a complete diet. A prerequisite for the recovery period should be good sleep, at least 8-9 hours a day. You can add a relaxing massage or a change of scenery to the set of restorative procedures.

Overtraining is a problem that beginners usually face and very rarely professionals. Essentially, the reason lies in the overestimation of one’s own capabilities and the desire to get “everything at once and quickly.” Vodyanov’s phrase “either you eat little or you sleep little” has its justification, because this is precisely part of those important factors on which the success of training and constant progress in sports achievements are based.

The principle “you need to work hard in the gym so that your eyes go dark” has never helped anyone. You need to approach training wisely and consciously. You should always listen to your body and put your health at the forefront of the training process.

How to “treat” overtraining?

1. Take a time out
.
Reduce or temporarily stop training and allow yourself a few days of rest. After rest, do not rush to make up for lost time, trying to objectively assess your strength. 2. Alternate
types of physical activity.
Changing activities will allow overworked muscles to rest and return interest in activities. 3. Go for a massage
.
It will help you relax not only physically, but also psychologically. 4. Drink more fluids
. Do not forget that for normal functioning of the body a person needs at least one and a half liters of water per day.

What can lead to overtraining?

1. Too much training volume versus not enough recovery. Both of these conditions are necessary. There are those who exercise morning and evening 5 days a week and feel great. As a rule, this regime is typical for professional athletes. The entire rhythm of life of these people is adjusted to training, and not vice versa. In the first place is a regime with periods of complete rest and recovery of the body. Looking at this, amateurs are trying to repeat the entire training volume, but combining it with everyday routine, family concerns and daily work. As a result, you get only useless fuss, sleep 5 hours a day and constant stress. In such conditions, there can be no talk of rest or recovery. This is how we drive ourselves into overtraining, not calculating our strength and greatly overestimating our capabilities.
2. Repeating the same program day after day. “Why do I need a coach, I can do everything myself,” say beginners, downloading the program from the Internet and studying with it all year round. It even sounds tiring that you can monotonously repeat the same movements and exercises for at least several months. And progress in training in this case is seen only in a linear, periodic increase in weights. Such a “Groundhog Day” will tire anyone in a very short time.
3. Eat less and exercise more. Restoring your body isn't just about getting enough sleep, it's also about replenishing the nutrients lost during exercise. If you only spend them without regularly replenishing this “reserve”, the body will soon experience a noticeable failure.
4. Ignoring the disease. In fear of “losing muscles” and getting out of the routine, sports fans run to training with a runny nose, a fever, and even fresh injuries. As a result, the situation only gets worse, because it is physically impossible to work at full strength. By forcing themselves to train “through “I can’t”, fatigue and pain, people seem to be trying with all their might to make their condition even worse, the illness longer, the injury more serious. And in such conditions, overtraining is just a stone's throw away.

Symptoms of Overtraining

• Lack of training progress or regression
• Fatigue and loss of strength
• Depression, irritability and loss of motivation
• Tachycardia
• Decreased appetite
• Constant muscle pain
• Weakened immunity (symptoms of infectious diseases)
• No pumping during training

Very often, athletes do not experience any of the above symptoms of overtraining, although they do exist (so-called asymptomatic overtraining ). In this case, the athlete is in a state of training plateau, the results do not improve or worsen.

If you are experiencing signs of overtraining, you must immediately take immediate action to prevent this condition. You should be skeptical about the listed symptoms, since signs of overtraining can easily be confused with a large number of other pathological conditions, so only a doctor can make an accurate diagnosis.

How to avoid overtraining?

1.

Train according to a well-designed program. It should include no more than one session of maximum intensity per week, several cardio workouts, and stretching. Workouts should be divided into large muscle groups. The program should be changed every few weeks.

2.

Eat right: eat enough protein, complex carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals. The amount of calories consumed on training days should be increased by 1/4.

3.

Recover properly after training.

4.

For prevention, you can use herbal adaptogens, such as eleutherococcus or ginseng extract. This is not mandatory, but a completely safe way to play it safe and increase your performance during classes at a fitness club.

Causes

• Exercising too often

  at the limit of possibilities. You can exercise “to failure” no more than once a week, otherwise microtraumas accumulate in the muscles, and the nervous system is constantly exposed to stress and “burns out.”

• High stress levels

  in everyday life.

• Monotonous workouts

  for a long time. Lack of changes in the program will not only not bring you good results, but will also harm the body.

What does overtraining lead to?

In addition to the main signs described below, muscle strain is a lack of results. Muscles that experience frequent and high stress cannot recover efficiently, which means increasing their mass or losing weight through adipose tissue is impossible.

Despite the goals set, overtraining syndrome must be eradicated immediately and not delayed, otherwise you will get the opposite result. Being under constant stress due to overtraining, in those athletes who gain muscle, catabolism will predominate, which means muscle mass will decrease. The same applies to those who are losing weight, but due to stress, the body can, on the contrary, accumulate fat.

How to get rid of overtraining syndrome

If symptoms have already appeared and are felt for more than one day, but for quite a long time, measures should be taken.

First, you should take a break from training . Many people are afraid that as soon as they take a break for a week, all the results will disappear. This is not true, if the muscles are not filled with blood, as during strength training, then during rest it does not at all mean that their mass has decreased. Taking a break can only be beneficial.

If the syndrome is felt acutely, fatigue seems to knock you down, then it is better not to experience any stress at all until complete recovery, except for walks in the fresh air. After you feel a surge of strength, you should load up gradually. Train literally at half strength, alternating cardio with light strength training.

A course of general massage will help relieve stress from tired muscles and the nervous system. Massage is a well-known means of quick recovery and relaxation. In addition, massage techniques help relax tight muscles, further improving athletic performance. It’s not for nothing that teams of Olympic champions are always and everywhere accompanied by masseurs.

Another method of recovery is warming up the muscles - sauna and steam bath, but only if there are no inflammatory processes and problems with the cardiovascular system .

Treating Overtraining

It is important to quickly notice the symptoms, because the total time to recover from the condition depends on the duration of the course. It always takes more time to recover from overtraining than the duration of symptoms. Next, you need to independently determine how difficult the situation is. Sometimes the solution will be to completely give up the gym for several weeks, during which you need to reconsider the program and the entire training strategy.

An option would be to study materials on how to create your own training program, as well as search for split training programs, which will save time. After all, problems often lie in the program, when back exercises are performed in a row, and then the arms are loaded. This causes the biceps to work beyond its capacity and enter a state of overtraining.

As soon as the symptoms disappear, you need to return to training with light loads, making gradual progress. If it becomes clear that everything is now normal with the body, you can move on to the strength stage. But what to do if the symptoms are not too obvious and the situation is just beginning to develop?

Then you don’t have to give up training, you just need to increase the amount of rest. For example, if you previously visited the gym every day, then it makes sense to switch to a three-times-a-week schedule. Here, after each day of stress there will be a day of rest. And the intensity of exercises should be reconsidered in the direction of reducing working weights along with the number of approaches (read more about how to choose the number of approaches and repetitions in training).

Of course, in each case there is no need to ignore nutrition. In the process of overtraining, it will definitely need to be made high-calorie. To find out how many calories you need to consume, just multiply your own weight in kilograms by 30. You will get a number indicating the required amount of calories. You need to add 500, or maybe the whole 1000, to it to make the food high-calorie.

Of course, we continue to eat a diet created specifically for bodybuilders. That is, we include a lot of complex carbohydrates in the diet, sometimes feeding the body with simple compounds (often sweets). He does not forget about animal protein, consuming at least 1.6 grams per kilogram of personal weight.

Our website has a large section with nutrition programs compiled by professionals. A filter system, ratings, and the ability to edit to suit your needs! Go to the nutrition section and choose the program for yourself!

In a state of overtraining, you should not “hang out” in clubs at night; quality sleep, lasting at least 8 hours, is important here. Sometimes, depending on how you feel, you can even bring it up to 15 hours, because lack of sleep is worse than malnutrition.

Causes of overtraining

Strange as it may sound, in bodybuilding the main cause of “sports disease” is excessive enthusiasm.

Often, in order to achieve a goal faster, people force the load, increasingly increasing the intensity and weight of the weights, without taking into account recovery resources. As a result, the body cannot stand it and “breaks down”.

There is another important reason that is rarely paid attention to. These are everyday life stresses - family, work, children, poor environment and food quality.

Each stress alone does not pose a serious problem. But their totality, together with severe physical overload, easily provokes the onset of overtraining.

What is overtraining

Overtraining occurs in the process of excessive physical activity, which occurs for a long time, as a result of which the body becomes overstrained, weak, apathetic, does not have time to recover and cannot be fully loaded.

Lack of rest between workouts, and subsequently stressful situations, hormonal reasons can lead to general malaise, loss of vitality and motivation to train.

The primary cause of overtraining is physical overexertion, after which psychological symptoms may develop - nervousness, irritability, and insomnia.

How does overtraining manifest itself?

Symptoms may accumulate and appear gradually.

• At the first stage, you cannot distinguish illness from overwork.
• Then your performance will noticeably decrease, and fitness classes will cease to bring both results and pleasure.
• The third stage is regression in training and a state of neurosis: you begin to lose weight (muscle destruction occurs), you cannot train as before, you feel depressed, apathy and emotional instability.

This happens because overtraining of the body is directly related to overstrain of the nervous system.

Prevention

In modern bodybuilding there are many techniques to avoid overtraining.

Most of them are borrowed from Olympic sports and adapted to the characteristics of bodybuilding:

1. Load periodization within macro, meso, and microcycles
2. Regular monitoring of physical condition and health level (pulse, blood pressure, appetite, sleep quality, mood, etc.)
3. Taking specialized sports supplements that help correct physical condition - vitamin and mineral complexes, adaptogens and immunomodulators
4. Using methods to speed up recovery - quality sleep, balanced nutrition, baths, massage, physiotherapy