Dutch Lowey recently posted an article with eight tips on identifying overtraining. While there are a ton of articles on this topics, Lowey’s stand out due to the succinct nature of the list and the ease of diagnosis. He also provided some insight on how he approaches a client he believes may be overtraining. Here are a three of the eight tips Dutch provides:
“Your _____ has started bothering you when you do ____. (insert body part and specific movement) This can be an example of overtraining specific movements.”
“You are in a constant state of soreness, even after 2 days off where you only ran a little and did some interval work but it was short…”
“You are not hitting PR’s after extended training cycles and followed by recovery weeks.”
Among the comments on the article are some specific tips from Lowey on how he approaches an athlete that may be overtraining.
“As soon as they complain about performance (My deadlift wont go up or my mile time is getting slower…) i step in…Quite honestly, some people don’t want to be helped and for some its a lost cause. At the same time if you care about keeping this person around long term in the gym you have to exert your training thunder and lay down the law. You can’t control what people do outside the gym so you have to help them understand why what they are doing is wrong. Every situation is different here so you have to choose your approach carefully.”
Have you ever felt yourself falling into a state of overtraining? Is it something you’ve ever given much thought to? Feel free to sound off in the comments.
Dutch Lowey’s “Easy Ways To Tell You Are Over Training”
Creative Commons Image courtesy of normanack
