Overtraining?

[Tyler Schmitz]

For months I have lived with a feeling of fatigue, lack of motivation, cloudiness, etc. I have dealt with it and continued to train because I felt that I couldn't rest and progress. I have followed Coach Sommer's GB WOD program for a little more than a year now. I saw great progressions at first but then they began to dwindle and plateau. Before doing this program, I was an avid Crossfitter and before that, intense bodybuilder. Not once during my entire 4-5 years of bodybuilding, crossfitting, and Gymnastic Strength Training™ have a taken off more than 3-4 days at a time! I guess it is because a sense of OCD about training and would not allow myself to take off long. This terrible feeling I've felt, I've blamed on my diet and always change it according to how I feel. At first, adding more carbohydrates helped a little but still feel down. I've lived with this for maybe a year now and have continued to train ignoring my symptoms. From what I've read about overtraining, it seems that this might be plausible for my case. I really want to feel great and hyperactive about training and getting stronger like I used to feel years ago. In spite of this, I think it would be best for me to take 2-3 weeks off of all training and activity to allow my body to recover from such long term overtraining if that's what it needs. After, I will continue back to the GB program schedule and see how I perform and feel. If anyone has any comments, insight, or recommendations on the subject, please share.

[Joshua Naterman]

Interesting. You may find that cutting back to half volume for a while or even 25% of volume will help you out a lot, but if you're feeling that crappy a short layoff like you are considering will probably be good for you. You can expect to come back with a lower work capacity but that will come back quickly, strength shouldn't go down much and will also come back quickly.

Try to be as low stress as you can, and get some soft tissue work done during your time off if you can!

I am wondering if you have been pushing fairly hard each workout or if you scale things based on how you feel. For example, sometimes I just don't feel good enough to do muscle ups so I will just do a few negatives and not a whole lot of volume, and then the next time I come around to them I seem to feel great!

Backing off on the volume every third week is something that Charles Poliquin has a lot of his athletes do, and that may help you as well. Keep the intensity where you usually keep it, like go ahead and do straddle FL pulls if that's what you do, but do 3 instead of six. Maybe even slightly under half if you are feeling a bit more work down... the practice is the most important thing, you won't lose anything by taking an easy weak and doing low volume. I do this somewhat intuitively, and I think it is fair to say that I am taking between every second and every fourth week as pretty low volume. I feel better and I am definitely making good progress so it seems like that is a good idea for me at any rate.

I think it's also important to eat what seems like a good idea to eat when the feeling just won't go away. Keep your diet clean generally, but if you are craving meat with a sugary sauce you may be needing something in that. I have noticed many times that when I feel the need to eat something outside of my normally clean diet that the indulgence helps. I ignore momentary cravings but if it seems like I need cake for a few days straight I'm going to eat cake. That isn't the healthiest example, but I often have great workouts after I give my body what it feels like it needs. Of course I have gone overboard too, but only a few times. I have no idea if this is purely psychosomatic or if there is something genuinely physiological at work, but it happens and what I do works for me.

I don't know if any of that will help, but that's what I think.

I also thing that when you start back, just do one or two rounds of the WODs. Ease back into the volume, you don't need four rounds all the time. I know that some will take issue with that statement, and perhaps rightly so, but you have to realize that four sets of everything can be a lot. Many times that isn't necessary. Sometimes it is, and sometimes more than that is necessary, but when any athlete starts to get stronger and more capable they will find that they are simply going to have to tailor their workout to what works for them in terms of volume and frequency, and they also have to realize that what works is going to only work for a few weeks at a time. You really have to either use extremely careful timing on everything or go through short periods each of overtraining (used for growth stimulation) and lower volume training (used for actually allowing growth to happen).

You may also be due for something of a change of pace as far as exercise selection goes for 4-8 weeks, just to de-train the movement patterns that you commonly use. There is such a thing as doing too much of one thing.

[Tyler Schmitz]

Thanks for the recommendation slizzardman. Since I've felt this feeling of overtraining, I have lessened the intensity of WODs like you say, not intentionally but just naturally from de-motivation. I've noticed that the longest time I spend off of training, the stronger and better I feel when I come back; however, as mentioned previously, this time has only reached a maximum of 4 days with mostly only 3 or 2 at a time. Nievely and stubbornly, I have never took more time off than that. As you say, once I come back from 2-3 wks, whichever I feel best after, I will be more intelligent about training such as taking an easy week every 3rd week or decreasing the volume of sets and reps. It's funny that I've always known to do recovery methods such as these and I preach them;however, I never actually considered them for myself! lol :| Thanks sir

[pogo69]

I am wondering if you have been pushing fairly hard each workout or if you scale things based on how you feel. For example, sometimes I just don't feel good enough to do muscle ups so I will just do a few negatives and not a whole lot of volume, and then the next time I come around to them I seem to feel great!

Backing off on the volume every third week is something that Charles Poliquin has a lot of his athletes do, and that may help you as well. Keep the intensity where you usually keep it, like go ahead and do straddle FL pulls if that's what you do, but do 3 instead of six. Maybe even slightly under half if you are feeling a bit more work down... the practice is the most important thing, you won't lose anything by taking an easy weak and doing low volume. I do this somewhat intuitively, and I think it is fair to say that I am taking between every second and every fourth week as pretty low volume. I feel better and I am definitely making good progress so it seems like that is a good idea for me at any rate.

I've been allowing myself to do this lately, too. I'm only relatively new to committing myself to the WODs and regular FSP SSCs (I think somewhere between 6-8 weeks? **), but I'm listening to my body when it tells me to back off.

I'm a former crossfitter (a while back now); back in the day I had developed some reasonable baseline bodyweight strength, but was never committed to it like my current schedule requires. I had been on 5/3/1 for about 6 months and while I got a lot stronger (for me, anyway) I don't think it imposes nearly as much of a CNS load on your body as a FSP + WOD + whatever does.

My "symptoms" are varying combinations of joint aches (mostly wrists, elbows and shoulders in that order), feeling "worn out" and general malaise.

Some days, I'll skip the WOD, others I'll reduce volume and for one week, a few weeks ago, I took the entire week off.

In all of this, I believe that overtraining and underrecovery and two sides of the same coin. It is likely I could sustain a higher volume of work at greater intensity, if my recovery was better. I'm no longer as young as I once was (41) and I have to remind myself sometimes that I have decades of lethargy to overcome. The biggest factor, however, for me, is sleep. I don't get much (~6 hrs on a good night) and what there is, is rarely of great quality. I get by, but again, the underrecovery from poor sleep needs to be taken into account.

If you:

• 
  [*:2g8tp7mu]have got your diet dialled in;
  [*:2g8tp7mu]are drinking plenty of water;
  [*:2g8tp7mu]are sleeping adequately;
  [*:2g8tp7mu]have eliminated "stress" from your life as much as possible;
  [*:2g8tp7mu]use recovery techniques such as contrast showers and/or massage and/or stretching;

then the only thing left to "balance" the equation is to reduce volume and/or intensity.

** edit - damn, I'm in my 10th week!! admittedly with a week's break in the middle, but... how times flies.

[JL]

This is easy. Here is the official Bulgarian protocol:

Lifter is feeling tired -----> Take more Dianabol

Lifter is not making progress ------> Take more Dianabol, and do more squats.

That is all there is to it. LOL

Seriously, I would simply back off on the volume for a while. Pretty much like Slizz wrote. And, in a wierd way, you could always try doing more volume. Sometimes that is the answer, even though it may not feel like it.

[Longshanks]

I've had a lot of problems with overtraining in the past and you've probably been very lucky not to get an injury. Another option is to cut your volume back once every 3-4 workouts to half volume, or less. I find this helps me a lot because I work a lot of out of hours work at a hospital and simply don't get the sleep needed to recover all the time.

[Coach Sommer]

It is not only the sets and reps which affect the intensity of a workout, correct FBE selection is critical as well. Exercise selection should not be based on what you are able to perform individually, but what you are able to reasonably perform over the course of the ENTIRE workout.

In addition, reducing the intensity (easier FBE selection) or reducing the total volume to 50% (but maintaining the same level of intensity) every fourth week will greatly aid recovery.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Tyler Schmitz]

Thanks for all the info guys. Pogo69, I get the same feeling you get. I don't think it's from the GB program, but instead from the accumulation of years of persistent training without significant recovery. I'm going to take 2-3 weeks completely off of any activity and see how I feel after that. I have noticed that every time I take a little time off such as the wknd from the WODs, I am stronger at exercises, sometimes even performing moves that I can't usually do such as a press to handstand. Wierd. But after, my strength returns to the norm. After the break, I will definitely reduce intensity or volume every 3rd or 4th week like you guys say and essentially just listen to my body more instead of giving in to my egotistical and stubborn persistence (which is usually a good thing for most ppl). In fact, I think during the break I'll only work on stretching out my shoulder girdle since it has an appreviated ROM from my years of weightlifting. I will update this post after my break to write the results of my layoff.

[Joshua Naterman]

Yes, I have been doing much better since I scaled back to doing advanced tuck FL pulls and such. Even though I can do full lay it just drains me a lot more and bothers my shoulder. Since scaling back I have noticed that I am almost back to a full lay XR FL again these days!

I haven't deadlifted for a while, but the time off has been great for working on my pike stretch. It's hard to get more flexible when I'm deadlifting all the time. I hope that your shoulder flexibility and mobility improves during your time off! Some lacrosse ball date nights with a good trigger point book will probably help too!