In recent posts, I have shared how my back issues have flared up. After taking a little time to reflect, I felt terrible all around. It was then that I started to wonder if I was overtrained.
I was noticing increasingly that I was not feeling recovered from one training session to the next. I wondered if that was because I had been focusing on hypertrophy and was adapting. Meanwhile, it kept getting worse, not better.
My motivation was at an all-time low. I am usually chomping at the bit to train but wanted to be in the gym less and less. That's not normal. The same was going on with my runs. I found myself stopping for breaks which I never did in the past.
It's the summer and I am on vacation. It's supposed to be my happy time. However, little by little I was feeling a general malaise set in.
Let's talk about sleep. I was needing more than usual and what I was getting was restless. Then when I'd wake up, I'd feel achier than when I went to bed. No Bueno.
Here's one I wasn't used to, a lower libido. Granted I'm in my 50's, but this has never been an issue. What can I say, I have a good appetite for many things in life. I think when I realized this, it was the final nail in the overtraining coffin for me.
With all the tell-tale signs of overtraining, what was I going to do? At first, I thought about deloading but realized I was far past that point. That left me with the horrifying concept of taking time off. Yikes.
The most irrational thought is that you will lose all of your gains in just one week, which is exactly what I thought would happen. Luckily I was feeling so awful that I knew taking time off was my only option.
Actually, I knew I'd need to take a more active approach than just taking time off if I wanted to feel better in a week's time. That's when I decided I would spend as much time on my recovery as I would normally spend on training.
Between running and lifting, I spend at least an hour a day training so that's what I aimed for. I stretched lightly at least 20 minutes a day and foam rolled another 20. I also got in the hot tub, a cold shower, an ice bath, or a combination thereof daily.
In addition to the above, I took Aleve regularly which is not something I like to do. I know inflammation has to play out, but I needed relief and I wanted it fast. I was also using lidocaine roll-on and would lay with heat or ice packs on my back and shoulders when watching tv.
I was surprised that three days into my training vacation I wasn't feeling much better. Perhaps it was going to take more than a week. However, as the week went on, my body started responding. Then by the weekend I actually felt good. Hallelujah!
One more thing, I was also sleeping more. Years ago I would feel refreshed after seven hours a night. Then as I got into my late forties or early fifties I was needing eight hours. During my training vacation, there were many nights when I was sleeping nine hours.
If you are reading here on Elitefts you train hard. You push yourself beyond your limits. When we do this, we need to hit the reset once in a while. The sobering truth as well is, that as we get older we need this reset more often. Don't worry though, I'm here to tell you I didn't lose all my 37 training years of gains in one week.
