If you are a regular gym-goer, you must have heard about allowing your body to rest between workout sessions. So, what happens when you continue pushing your body’s limits at the gym without giving it adequate time to recover from the soreness. This phenomenon is what we term ‘overtraining.’
After a point in time, too much working out the muscles can hinder the expected growth and yield negative results instead of positive outcomes. This is particularly true when there is no interval in between the sessions. While it is relatively uncommon, it is still better to be aware of this event when you train at gyms near you.
It is important to recognize the symptoms of overtraining. Doing so will help you prevent its occurrence and avoid muscle injury.
The key signs of overtraining manifest themselves in a physical breakdown that isn’t easy to overlook. Some of the signs include
You may face such and other symptoms if you are exercising beyond your limits. You can ask yourself some questions. Is your over-exercising actually degrading your lifestyle? It is here that you need to understand the difference between exercising and burnout. So it would be best if you considered a few options so that your fruitful exercise session does not burn you out completely.
You need to stop and think about ways and means that help you redefine your recovery. You exercise because fitness is your goal, but contradictory results are bound to follow when you over-exercise. A different and better approach can help.
Here’s what you can do for better recovery and gains
1 – The self-analysis technique
The self–analysis technique involves two facets – recovery and exertion.
The perceived recovery rate is the body language that you carry when you enter into your exercise regimen at your fitness centre. It is all about how you feel before you take the plunge once again. It has to do with how tired you are, or you had a sound sleep, a good rest, etc. in other words, it’s how you rate your preparedness.
The rate of perceived exertion is about how exerted you feel when you are in the line of a gruelling session.
For instance, you may be in those weight lifting drills at one of the health clubs. So, you can estimate how well you recovered and how this weight lifting exertion is weighing you down right now. You can measure your exertion on a scale from one to ten. A ten means you cannot do it, and seven means you can go for some more lifts.
2 – An accurate estimation
Some fitness enthusiasts may want the figures to be more precise. So they can judge their preparedness in yet another way. You can measure your enthusiasm with the vertical jump by the vertical marking on the wall.
The perk is that you measure your own physical readiness. If your fitness centre has those vertical markings on the wall, make use of it. So, jump before you dive into those sessions. After a warming session, the jump above your usual mark shows that you are ready for the challenges.
Is there a need to say that lower marks call for you to have one of those resting days today and bounce back tomorrow?
3 – It’s in your hand
If you still have second thoughts on the other ideas, then there’s one more mechanism lined up for you to gauge your gym-preparedness. You can test your raring and daring to go psyche with the help of a dynamometer. It will give you the figures you want.
The secret is that the dynamometer lets you study your preparedness by checking on your hand strength. Try and squeeze the dynamometer if you want to know about your exercising enthusiasm.
And if the squeezing results are not up to the mark, its shows you are tired due to over-exercising.
So when you are working out at the Fitness Studio, take a break. Understand how you are feeling. Though you may be going about the works, as usual, the secret to normalcy lies in how you feel.
When you follow the above techniques, you can continue with the regimen as long as you pass those tests and feel good about the gruelling sessions. The methods help you know when to start when to continue, and where to stop so that the exercising gives you better outcomes without burning you out.
Search for gyms that actively assist you with your physical, mental, and emotional recovery and fitness. These gym studios can augment their workout training along with guidance on recovery from workout sessions.