2852: The Overtraining Signs Fitness Fanatics Always Miss

0:00Justin Andrews:If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal Di Stefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

0:13Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, we got six signs, six weird signs that you're overtraining. By the way, we have a free seven-day overtraining rescue guide. It's free. every single day for the next seven days. There's stuff in there that helps you, guide you to amplifying and accelerating recovery so you can hit the gym again the following week feeling fresh and strong. You can find it at mindpumpfree.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Keon. They have some very high, high quality supplements. They have well-sourced creatine.

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1:34Adam Schafer:All right, real quick.

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1:50Adam Schafer:Over-training, it gets in the way. No gains, no progress. You're doing too much. And everybody knows some of the common signs of over-training, But there's some weird signs of overtraining that a lot of people miss. In fact, some of these signs come before you hit those hard plateaus, before you start to go backwards in your progress. So today we're going to talk about the six weird signs you're overtraining.

2:12Sal Di Stefano:Let's get weird. Do you think it's common that you would see just one of these, or do they almost always come in like pairs or threes? Do you find that?

2:22Adam Schafer:Typically it's more than one, but some of these happen before the other ones. Like there's one, I'll cover the first one. It's actually a very common sign of going too hard that people just don't realize. They just don't realize that this oftentimes means they need to back off. And by the way, overtraining can be defined as doing more than is necessary for what you're looking to achieve. And if you continue down this path, then it starts to get real obvious. So overtraining is just doing too much. Okay. but oftentimes people don't realize they're over-trained until the signs get so loud that they are faced with the reality of like, I think I'm burnt out.

3:04Justin Andrews:Your body just wants to shut down, stop you. That's right.

3:06Adam Schafer:So the first one is broken sleep. So this looks different than insomnia. So insomnia, although this could be classified as insomnia, insomnia, people typically think of that as like, I can't fall asleep or I'm just having really bad times.

3:22Justin Andrews:So this is like when you're waking up multiple times in the middle of the night?

3:26Adam Schafer:Yes, it's like restless. I've experienced this. It's like you go to bed, you're tired, you're exhausted. You go to bed and then you wake up at like 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. 3.33 every night, dude. I don't know. For you too? It's creepy. Oh, you get the weird number one? It's weird. And you're lying in bed and you just feel like I can't, like what's going on? I can't go back to sleep. I remember when Mike Matthews communicated this to me. he was talking about how he just thought he had crappy sleep for the longest time. Couldn't figure it out. Couldn't figure it out. Cut his volume down considerably. And lo and behold, he was able to get a really, really good sleep.

4:05Adam Schafer:And this is a, this is a common early sign. And the reason why this one can be difficult to identify is because number one, it's common, but number two, you tend to fall asleep. Okay. So it's not like you don't fall asleep. It's just, you wake up. And for some reason, and this has to do with things like hormones and i was just going to ask you would you attribute

4:25Sal Di Stefano:this more to just the body being inflamed and over trained and sore and trying to recover or cortisol levels being off like what would you attribute the main reason for this probably

4:37Adam Schafer:hormonal so uh so melatonin production starts to drop off uh cortisol spikes too early yeah like

4:45Sal Di Stefano:inverted where it's high at night versus well that's when you're over that's when you're really

4:49Adam Schafer:pushing over training. Okay. But early over training, uh, you might, you might have, uh, higher spikes of cortisol just to get you moving. And it might happen earlier.

4:58Justin Andrews:I wonder too, because initially I bet after like a good hard training session, you have great sleep knocks you out. So there might be that association initially. And then the more frequently you do that now, you know, you're getting this like interrupted sleep. I wonder if they think it's something else.

5:15Adam Schafer:Yeah, no. And, you know, again, this is like a really, because bad, poor sleep or broken sleep can mean a lot of different things. But for hard training athletes or people who are really consistent with their workouts, if you normally don't have issues with sleep, if you normally sleep pretty well, and then, and you know, you've been kind of training consistently, like you've been doing well in terms of not skipping. And then suddenly this becomes an issue um again uh it's not hard to parse this out it's like all right well i'm gonna take i'm gonna do a deload week and see what happens we had a caller remember we had a caller once who couldn't figure this out and it turned out to be that he was just working out too much

5:53Sal Di Stefano:it's not hard to parse out and figure out if that's if that's the reason but it i think it's it's not the first place people look because there tends to be uh the spectrum and at both ends equates to poor sleep.

6:07Adam Schafer:Oh, not active.

6:09Sal Di Stefano:So not active, right? Which I've talked and communicated about. I've definitely figured out if I'm below a certain step account and I don't work out, impact sleep. If I get a great workout, get a certain amount of steps, great sleep. But then the other end of that spectrum is overtraining and pushing too hard too much will also disrupt sleep. And so I think a lot of people have probably made that correlation of, oh, I sleep better when I work out. And so they assume that any workout at any time is going to be a positive impact on sleep, when in reality, you could be tipping over on the other end of the spectrum.

6:46Adam Schafer:Again, if you're someone who's consistent, like you don't miss your workouts, you've been doing it for a while, and then this suddenly starts to become an issue, and you're trying to fix it with supplements and sleep routines and what's going on? Why am I waking up at 3 o 'clock in the morning every day and it's tough to go back to sleep. Like, what's going on? It's an easy, again, just cut your volume and your intensity down for a week or two. And if that was the case, you'll sleep better. You'll know right out the gates. Next up, increased cravings, especially for hyper palatable, like comfort producing foods.

7:24Adam Schafer:This one I noticed for myself. If I start pushing it too hard too often, I want more sweets and I want more - Especially at nighttime.

7:32Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, dude. savory snacks i mean i've definitely connected this to bad sleep so again this is me asking you about like do you think they come in pairs and it's like i definitely if i'm over trained and that causes bad sleep and then the bad sleep thing causes the cravings like crazy independent of just over training and not bad sleep i don't know if i've noticed the the correlation to so this looks

7:55Adam Schafer:different than appetite because good strength training will typically spike your appetite a little bit. So if you're lifting weights and you're doing a good job and your body's like, I want to, it wants to build muscle and strength. An increase in appetite is actually a good sign. When my clients would tell me that they're hungrier, then I knew, and I would look at a combination of things. If their strength was also going up. Feeling more anabolic. Yeah. Then I'm like, okay, we're moving the right direction. This looks more like cravings. Totally.

8:22Sal Di Stefano:And there's an easy way to tell the difference. It's like, when I when my metabolism is ramping up and I'm building muscle and I have an increased appetite my you know ground beef and rice sounds great yeah you know but when I'm poor sleep and dragging ass and cravings are bad that doesn't sound like fast food yeah I want something yeah I want something

8:44Justin Andrews:greasy yeah so what the gas station all of a sudden like Reese's sounds good

8:49Adam Schafer:why yeah totally totally uh next up irritability um if you're finding yourself short and irritable if your partner is letting you know that you might be a little short and irritable um look by the way you'll see this with so you know who over trains relatively frequently are um hard training athletes in season it's actually common for hard training athletes to be uh pushing it a little too hard and um especially as you get deep into the season especially if competition starts ramping up and you notice you're just you're just not in a good mood you're just pissed off uh and it's because you're just you're you're not training you're redlining yeah you're red that's right you're redlining and you're just not feeling good um low libido is another one this one's actually quite common uh where you're just you're just not in the mood yeah you know and not wanting to engage in that way.

9:47Adam Schafer:Good exercise will almost always, or appropriate, I should say, exercise will almost always increase libido.

9:53Sal Di Stefano:Now, so far, the ones that we've covered so far, I know we have more, but do you think there's an order at which these normally reveal themselves? Or do you think it's just totally dependent upon the individual? Like someone might not notice one or the other, or do you think it's pretty common? It's like, this tends to be the first thing that most people notice, than some of these things. Because when I look at this, I think the broken sleep is one of the first things to notice. It is. And then a lot of times broken sleep to me leads to increased cravings, right? And then the increased cravings, broken sleep, a lot of times leads to irritability, right?

10:29Sal Di Stefano:And the combination of all those a lot of times messes with the libido. And so I feel like there seems to be. Now, well, some people may not perceive it in that order because they're not aware of what broken bad sleep looks like. And so maybe they notice it. And maybe a lot of people aren't in touch enough with appetite and cravings and the difference of that or paying attention to. So they might see it as irritability or low libido as some of the signs. And I think this is why this gets away from a lot of people is just the lack of connection that they have to all these signs. And it's not until kind of all of them are hitting on them that they realize like, man, something is wrong.

11:07Sal Di Stefano:I've got this, this, this, and this, and now.

11:10Justin Andrews:Excuse me. I think these were like the less obvious ones, right? Because otherwise you would have put like excessive soreness or fatigue and achiness, which is kind of like the first indicators. But then, yeah, sleep, I would say, would be the first real like off schedule type of things to notice.

11:29Adam Schafer:Yeah, the thing about fatigue is interesting because initially with broken sleep, you might not even notice too much fatigue. You might actually feel more wired. You get that adrenaline done. Sure. Yeah. So you just kind of go about your day feeling wired, which some people can mistake in as energy. Or maybe they'll just ramp up their stimulant intake. Caffeine goes up. Keep going. Keep doing the workouts. And they keep waking up again at 3 a.m., which leads to all these other ones. Low libido comes a little later. And that's just, you know, low libido is a sign of a lot of things not going so well.

12:04Justin Andrews:It's like you're tipping into unhealthy ranges.

12:07Adam Schafer:Oh, yeah. I mean, you guys know you guys have been hard training seasons where you're pushing it. Libido suffers. It's not like you're feeling great when you're pre-contest or when you're training your absolute limit. Libido goes out the window. Next is low mood. So low mood is like kind of lack of motivation. So this could feel like typically you're consistent, you're motivated for your workouts, but you know and maybe you're so consistent that you'll do them no matter what but you just don't look forward to them like you normally did or halfway through you're like man i got more of

12:43Justin Andrews:yeah your excitement levels have decreased like substantially yeah totally takes it out of you

12:48Sal Di Stefano:something you didn't put on this because it's not like one of those things you feel this would be something that you have to go get measured but i think is connected to the two of these libido and uh you know low or irritable mood uh is low testosterone yeah and so if you've been if you've been beating your body up poor sleep for a long time i can't tell you how many times i've had a client that before we we uh resorted to going to hrt we fixed a lot of this stuff and automatically testosterone levels come up testosterone testosterone levels come up all of a sudden mood gets better you're less irritable you're more motivated to go to the gym you know like a lot of these things libido goes up a lot of times and so sometimes the uh low test levels which is part of it is part of this and connected to these and it's obviously unless you've got the blood work to go do that or see that you may not know that too by the way low to this a man and woman's testosterone

13:42Adam Schafer:will drop so women need testosterone just like men do they just have less of it but it's just as important for women as it is uh for men um women will also have something called estrogen dominance when they're overtrained. So their ratio of estrogen to progesterone and testosterone changes. Yeah, and it throws off. And you just end up not feeling it. It definitely will throw your hormones off. Side note, by the way, sometimes people will not fix any of these issues and will go on hormone replacement therapy, which really kicks the can down the road.