I preach this principle, and believe that everyone should follow it, but by no means have I mastered it myself! The reason that I bring up listening to your body to avoid injuries is because I’m just getting over an injury to my lower back (lumbar region). Some common signs that your body needs a break from working out are: feeling generally tired, not sleeping well, having bad workouts, being sore for an extended period of time (DOMS), having no appetite, or just feeling off.
Let me explain what happened to me so you can relate. I spent the last few months having great workouts and improving consistently over time. One of my goals is to complete in the CrossFit games, and my times were getting closer and closer to the top guys on the CrossFit main site. Because of my improvement I was consistently excited for my next workout, but I started going through 3 day training cycles that would be great/ok/bad, and then bad/great/bad. The problem was that I keep having that 1 great training day in each cycle, so I’d tell myself that I was fine. Then everything exploded when I spent about 6 hours in the car on the way home from a snowboarding trip and attempted to complete a heavy deadlifting workout followed by a metabolic conditioning workout after the drive. Durning the metabolic conditioning workout my back tightened up and I had to stop the workout. I followed that up by not taking time off but avoiding doing any heavy deadlifting or squatting for the next week which was a terrible idea because my body needed straight time off! To compound this problem I was getting even less recovery by adding swimming into my program because of an upcoming Ironman training program. Exactly 1 week after my back tightening up from my deadlifting workout I attempted barbell squats, and on my 3rd set I felt a pop and a rush of heat to my lower back. At that point the pain set in! This was a dull aching pain that became more intense depending on the position of my back and legs. That was the point that I said “no more! I’m taking a week off”!
Just doing nothing for the next day made a huge difference in my overall recovery. My back still hurt but everything else was feeling great! It was at that point that I realized that I probably hadn’t taken a full day off for over a month! When you’re training for multiple things (ex CrossFit and ultra marathons) you do light running on your CrossFit days, and long running on your days off of CrossFit, so there’s not really any days off for your full body.
I’ve had this overtraining happen to me a few times, and that why it really pisses me off! I know how to identify it, but I still let it happen. One way to combat this is to have a good training partner that will let you know when your training intensity has dipped. I just started up with a training partner after about 3 years by myself, so now I have someone who knows what it looks like when I hit the wall. I would recommend that you find yourself a training partner (and let them know what to look for) or just keep good tabs on yourself. If you think you need a break take one! Usually everyone needs at least a week off every 6 months (and sometimes every 3 months)!
People don’t take the time to listen to the signs that they need to take some proper time to recover. I’ve seen guys who pummel themselves in the gym 4-7 days a week doing big compound movements, and these stresses place their bodies into extreme overtraining. It’s so important to learn how to recover properly. And there are things we can do on a daily basis to relax (that’s different from just taking time off), such as foam rolling, getting a massage, or using a power massager. Doing these small things that will help us relax will turn on our rest and relax (parasympathetic nervous system), which is exactly what we need more than we think.
If you have any questions or comments post them below and I’ll get right to them! Please “like” and share this post with your friends and followers!
