Over training is something that has been an issue of mine for many years. Playing basketball growing up I had an obsession of wanting to get better. So I would kill myself everyday in the gym for months as a time. Anybody who has me on Instagram and scroll through my old posts can see how obsessively I trained. With this being the case I found my body hurting 24/7. It was not until later in my collegiate career that I realized recovery was a major component when training. When your not allowing yourself to recover this can typically lead to injuries. If you are wondering if you are over training your body here some signs to look out for.
#1 Decreased Performance
One major sign of over training is a lack of improved performance despite increasing your training intensity. Some examples of this would be having a decrease in speed, strength, and endurance and also having slower reaction times are all common signs that you are over training your body.
#2 Excessive Fatigue
It is alright at times to feel sore from the gym or to be aching in pain because you worked out a certain muscle group the previous day. But fatigue eventually will accumulate in your body when you never allow your body to fully recover from previous workout. The key is when you feel your body start to ache excessively it is time to get the proper treatment and rest.
#3 Agitation and moodiness
Over training significantly affects your stress hormones which can cause a hormonal imbalance which then can cause you to have mood swings, and the inability to concentrate.
#4 Restless sleep
Sleep is the place where your body ordinarily has the best time to rest and recover. But the overproduction of stress hormones caused by over training may not allow you to completely relax which makes your sleep less effective.
#5 Nagging injuries
This personally affects me because when I was over training I would notice that if one part of my body was injured and I didn't take the precautionary steps to fix it when I took a day or week off and thought it would be better it would flare right back up. So over training can cause injures that are very hard to get rid of.
#6 Physiological stress and or depression
Some people that live for the punishing workouts or training for competitions have a difficult time taking off from training. I know for me if the team trainer made me stay out of the gym for specific amount of days for me to recover from an injury I would get depressed because I couldn't workout. Working out to me is a place where I can let out anything that has been bothering me for the past days or weeks and let out all of my frustrations. But when you realize that your body needs rest in order to get you to the next level that you want to be at, it is something you will implement in your training.