While the world is more sedentary than ever, some people have gotten the jump on it and thrown themselves fully into fitness. This can be great for the body and mind. However, fitness is a careful balancing act that can spell trouble if pushed too far in either direction.
One such direction is overtraining, which is a type of syndrome caused by excessive working out with not enough recovery or replenishment in the form of good food or sleep. Here are 10 signs of overtraining. (For more general reasons for not feeling great, here are 28 warning signs you are in bad health.)
To compile a list of 10 signs of overtraining, 24/7 Tempo consulted a range of health, lifestyle, and fitness websites including Ace Fitness and Runner’s World. From there, we selected the most common symptoms of overtraining. After that, we consulted medical and scientific sites like the Hospital for Special Surgery, WebMD, and the Mayo Clinic Health System to additional information.
Excessive Fatigue
One of the biggest signs of overtraining is a feeling of excessive fatigue. While feeling tired or sore after a workout is a common, if not encouraged, occurrence, there is a big difference between post-workout soreness and feeling completely exhausted. It should raise alarm bells if you are too tired to move for long periods after a workout.
If you are working out at an extended pace, practically every day with little rest in between, you are due for this symptom of overtraining. When you feel excessive fatigue, chances are your body hasn’t had a chance to fully recover after its last workout. What’s more, a chronic state of negative energy can lead to something called low energy availability. This is when the body is forced to rely on energy supplies from your fat or muscles to maintain itself.
Insomnia or Restless Sleep
Another surefire sign of overtraining is insomnia or restless sleep. Working out increases the production of stress hormones like cortisol, which is sure to interact with your ability to get restful sleep. What’s worse, the act of sleep is the greatest recovery tool your body has to protect itself.
When you’re pushing it to put on more muscle or get more fit too excessively, the subsequent stress hormones will interfere with sleep. While this may encourage you to sleep even more, chances are, it will only make your sleep quality worse. This is because your body is trying to signal to you that you are not getting enough recovery in between workouts. (For other bad sleep causes, here is a list of health problems that cause bad sleep.)
Decreased Performance
Let’s say that you are hitting the gym a couple of times a week with the express purpose of developing strength or putting on muscle. While that’s all well and good, if you find yourself unable to lift levels of weight that you previously did with ease, you are probably overtraining.
While much of gym and fitness culture encourages intensity for your workouts, a surefire sign that you’re pushing it too hard is if you find yourself “losing ground” in terms of progress. When the body is overexerted it will put up a protest in the form of clawing back your strength thresholds.
Irritability and Agitation
Another sign you are overtraining is irritability and agitation. We aren’t talking about road rage, either. Training in general has a noticeable effect on the stress hormones your body produces in the form of cortisol and epinephrine. When training too hard, these hormones spike and can cause irritability and an overall feeling of unease.
Any type of weight training or fitness, if done too intensely without rest, will cause cortisol and epinephrine levels to rise. This causes things like mood swings, anger, and irritability. What’s more, increased stress hormone production will also affect your ability to concentrate.
Weight Gain
Another warning sign of overtraining is gaining weight. While this may seem counterintuitive, serious overtraining can and will cause weight gain. Again, the stress hormones the body produces in response to muscular stress can have noticeable effects on your body and state of mind.
When you overtrain, it not only increases cortisol levels but also causes testosterone levels to plummet. When testosterone levels fall your body will lose muscle tissue and gain weight, especially in the form of lower belly fat. By keeping training at a moderate level, you can avoid the one thing most fitness-minded people are actively working against — gaining weight.
Reduced Appetite and Weight Loss
When you overtrain, strange things can happen to your body that seems to run counter to the goals of most fitness. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, overtraining can cause weight gain. However, it can also cause weight loss and a reduced appetite. Once again, the culprit is your stress hormones.
When you work out too hard with not enough breaks in between, the fluctuating stress hormones can have a profound effect on how hungry you feel, the feeling of satiety from eating, and in turn, weight loss. This is a compounding effect, too, as to recover and repair itself the body needs good food to replenish its energy stores.
Loss of Motivation
Let’s say you hit the gym five days a week, giving yourself the weekends to rest and recover. Now let’s say you keep that schedule for months on end until you find yourself getting to the gym and just going through the motions. This is a warning sign that you’re probably overtraining.
The body will send out signals in various ways to warn you that you are pushing it too hard. One such warning is a loss of motivation to keep working out. If fitness was something you previously enjoyed but now find yourself dreading, it could be that you aren’t giving your body enough rest or physical variation.
Odd Aches and Pains
Another sign of overtraining is odd aches and pains. If you are intending to put on muscles, then in a sense, you should aspire to have some muscle soreness. However, this type of soreness should be felt the next day and not immediately after a workout or for days on end.
While bodybuilders hope to achieve some muscle soreness as it’s a sign that the muscle is being forced to grow, when those aches and pains persist for long periods it’s a sign that you are either pushing yourself too hard or working out incorrectly. Both circumstances will delay progress and hinder the body’s ability to recover.
Workouts Feeling More Challenging
Another sign of overtraining is when your normal workouts feel more challenging than usual. As mentioned above, a loss of motivation can be a sign of overtraining but so can feeling inordinately challenged during your physical activity. When you overwork your body, the weight or activity it could previously handle will feel even harder to accomplish.
When overtrained, the body will try to preserve itself by reducing your ability to, say, lift the same weight it did before that caused the initial overtraining. What’s more, a good sign of overtraining combined with more challenging workouts is your heart rate. If you have a higher heart rate while working out which translates into a higher resting heart rate throughout the day, you are overtraining.
Lowered Libido
Another tell-tale sign of overtraining is a loss of libido. Working out usually promotes better blood circulation which can increase sex drive. However, too much training can cause your libido to tank. This is because excessive physical activity reduces the levels of anabolic hormones in your body, which reduces libido.
Some people get into working out and go all the way too quickly. This includes a spartan-level restriction of diet and calories combined with heavy workouts. However, your body needs energy to work out, and a lack of calories, especially in the form of carbohydrates is a surefire way to reduce your libido. (For other seemingly good activities that cause problems, explore ‘harmless habits’ that are actually aging you faster than you can imagine.)