5 Ways to Prevent Overtraining

Have you ever found yourself in a situation as an athlete where the training process isn’t going exactly as planned and your progress is stagnating? Have you ever felt the fear that you will miss out on training, or that what you are doing won’t be enough, leading you to decide to train even more?

The Importance of Recovery

In situations where athletes decide to train even more—whether it means training too long in a single session, increasing training intensity, or piling up a large number of workouts within a short period—the balance between training volume and recovery becomes disrupted. For progress to occur, it is extremely important to pay attention to how much a person trains, but taking care of recovery is absolutely crucial. Recovery includes sleep, massages, adequate nutrition, vitamins, etc.

Sometimes coaches, and even athletes themselves, believe that they must train a lot because that is how they get better. Unfortunately, this is not always the best solution, and athletes suffer and fail to achieve the results they want. Certain coaches and athletes like to blindly follow a training plan or pile up workouts regardless of how tired the athlete feels, and regardless of the fact that performance quality suffers due to fatigue.

Overtraining

When athletes do not listen to their bodies and workouts are not adjusted to their needs, physical and psychological fatigue and burnout occur. This state an athlete experiences is called overtraining.

Overtraining symptoms

• • Chronic fatigue and lack of energy;

• • Poor mood;

• • Lack of motivation;

• • Sleep issues – insomnia or restless sleep;

• • Injuries;

• • Weakened immune system;

• • Loss of appetite;

• • Increased effort during exercise.

How to prevent overtraining?

1. 1. Listen to your body and monitor how you respond to your workouts.
   2. Communicate with your coach and regularly provide feedback about the training sessions you do.
   3. Take care of your recovery: 8-9 hours of sleep, a balanced diet, proper vitamin intake, massages, sauna…
   4. Remember that it is sometimes better to modify the training plan and do less than planned in order to recover better and be able to keep moving forward.
   5. REST!

It is important to keep in mind that during their sports careers, many young athletes deal with elementary or high school, university, and perhaps some other additional activities alongside training, all of which contribute to fatigue. Sometimes, due to studying and all the exams, athletes feel additional fatigue on top of what the training sessions themselves bring. It is essential to listen and recognize when a workout needs to be adjusted, and when you simply need to rest. Athletes and coaches themselves can get desperate if they see that they are very tired yet need to do something they are not capable of at that moment.

Do not feel guilty about this. Look out for what is best for you. Sometimes workouts need to be done despite feeling increased fatigue, and sometimes it is better to make minor adjustments to the workout or even completely simplify it. Modifying training as needed and listening to the athlete’s body is extremely important for quality work and progress.

Personal Experience

During my career as a multi-event athlete (heptathlete) who trained in 7 different disciplines, these were some examples of how my coach would modify my workouts when we felt I was overtired and couldn’t complete the training properly:

• Instead of a speed workout, I would do some lighter intervals where I could rest my CNS (Central Nervous System) a bit, which would facilitate the recovery of both the body and the CNS.
• Instead of a heavy javelin throwing session, I would do a lighter throw where I would focus more on technique rather than explosiveness and speed, which were not at the required level due to fatigue.
• Instead of long jumping from a full approach, I would do lower-intensity jumps from shorter approaches.
• Instead of a specific type of workout, I would do a light jog-off, drills, and easy core exercises.

A very important lesson I learned from my coach Hrvoje is that it is sometimes better to adjust a workout than to force it. Of course, this does not mean that workouts must be modified every single time you feel tired. A lot of times it’s a matter of our head, which we need to talk into cheering up the body and not allowing our thoughts to go in the wrong direction. Sometimes it is possible for fatigue to be present at the start of the warm-up, but as we warm up better, the situation improves, the fatigue decreases, and we are able to do what we planned—and sometimes even better than we thought we could.

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Remember, it is normal to feel fatigue, muscle soreness that lasts for a few days, and a drop in motivation. All of this is an integral part of the training process; you shouldn’t worry, just keep training normally. It will only make you stronger. If, however, you experience a prolonged period of lost motivation, constant fatigue and lack of energy, a weaker immune system, poor sleep, elevated resting heart rate, and a drop in form that drags on day after day, then you might suspect that you are overtrained. Reduce your training volume and check for better recovery options. A combination of reduced intensity and good recovery is the cure for overtraining.

Mental Training Blog guest: Lucija Cvitanović, mag. psych.