A common thought process of "More Is Better" is often the guidelines many work upon, however in reality its more a case of “Less Is Better” !
There appears to be an increasing number of people “over training” in order to reach that body beautiful goal (whatever that may be!!) - and within this many also adopt the approach of a very calorie restrictive diet, thus ensuring your body is probably a catabolic mess!
I always get a blank and bewildered look when I tell people you need to rest more, in order to drop weight / aid fat loss, or in fact grow and become stronger, fitter etc, depending on what particular goals yo have.
There are a lot of ways you can induce a state of over training and as a result you will undoubtably experience some very negative effects.
There are some very noticeable signs of over training, tiredness, lack of motivation, picking up injuries, and a drop in physical performance to name a few, these can be quite visible signs, but there are a couple of others I’d like you to consider and ponder upon, think of these three points;
Point 1.
You’ll probably not think of this initially but you’ll most certainly identify with this, its one of the biggest factors with over training, overloading your CNS!
If your CNS is absolutely shot due to overtraining you will not recruit muscle fibres during your workout, when you recruit muscle fibre this in turn leads to hypertrophy. (I know many will have heard the term hypertrophy and possibly don’t know what it means - in short Muscle hypertrophy is a term for the growth and increase of the size of muscle cells).
Think of those days in the gym, you’re maybe feeling a little tired, weak and you simply cannot get any engagement from your muscles, they simply don’t fire for you. This is possibly down to your CNS being over worked, and if its over worked (like mentioned above) they simply won’t respond to the workload you’re putting upon them.
Point 2.
I know from my own experience when I over train (lets say on my push - so bench press, shoulder press, push ups, burpees, dips etc etc ) I can really feel this in my shoulders ! My ligaments / tendons become inflamed and this ultimately slows me down.
I’m sure many have had these niggly “connective tissue” problems, possibly leading to elbow, shoulder joint pain - and once they set in it can be a long road to recovery, these tissues do not repair anywhere near as quickly as muscle. When these “connective tissues” become inflamed you cannot train to the same degree of intensity, thus your progress will grind to a halt and possibly go in reverse!
Point 3.
Its safe to say the majority of us go to the gym for progress, and in that progress can take its guise in many forms - strength, weight gain, fat loss, increased fitness / conditioning, no matter way you look at it our individual journeys all cover different forms of “progress”.
For optimal progress our bodies require optimal recovery - simple!! No matter how clean and on point your diet is, no matter how much protein you consume your muscles require sufficient time to recover in order for you to do it all again.
Its not just the major muscle groups, like I mentioned above, connective tissue, and even the our smaller stabilisers - EVERYTHING needs the time to recover.
And here is something I want you to think about, because we all know one, or five !
For those who train 7 days a week, and thats a loose term - train 7 days a week, I’d actually question - just how hard are you actually training! In my opinion nobody should be training 7 days a week, like seriously get out and explore life a bit more, who wants to be stuck in the gym 7 days in a row, don’t be a fitness w@nk£r !!
If you train hard enough - then YOU WILL need your rest.
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