Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 172: *NINE* Signs You Are OVERTRAINING (+ NINE solutions)

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

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Welcome into another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast, guys. In today's discussion, we're going to be reviewing overtraining. So overtraining and just training in general in a way that makes recovery challenging or training in such a way that the stressors of the training leak into the other areas of your life and start showing up in ways that are detrimental. I do think that overtraining exists on a spectrum and that occasionally overreaching or pushing your limits is a really good idea with regards to long-term progress, but consistently doing more work than you can recover from is a generally bad idea that will oftentimes result in substantially less return on investment. I'll often say things like,

you only make the gains you can recover from. And I find that that reigns true for pretty much everybody, regardless of whether they're a complete novice, okay, or they're very advanced. And so we'll start off today with a little bit of an analogy that I've gotten from a few fitness professionals, but the best version of this analogy came from Mike Isvertel. Then I'm going to go over nine signs that you can keep an eye out for that might give you some insights into whether or not your training or just general stress is too high to elicit adaptation. Before we do that, though, I want to tell you about one of our amazing partners, LMNT. LMNT

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before I have anything like coffee or anything with caffeine so I can be sure that I'm spending my time getting hydrated. So many people start their day off with a ton of caffeine, which doesn't do a whole hell of a lot to helping you reach your goals. What it does do is it dehydrates the crap out of you. Timing your caffeine can be valuable, but starting your day off first thing in the morning with real hydration and a good amount of electrolyte minerals is a phenomenal way to make sure you perform your best. And if you're like me and you oftentimes train early and fasted and you just don't like to have a meal, having electrolytes will help you get a great pump. If you take the sauna seriously and you're somebody like myself who uses the sauna multiple times a week, that's another amazing time to use an electrolyte supplement to replenish

these electrolytes lost through sweat. So if you want to take your performance to the next level and you want a sports drink that isn't loaded with a bunch of crap, you can head over to drink element.com slash coach Danny. Again, drink the letter L, the letter M, the letter N, the letter T, element.com slash coach Danny. And you'll get all eight of Element's most popular flavors shipped directly to you for free. All you got to do is cover the shipping, try them out. And if you like them and you buy them, I'll get credit for it. No codes, no nothing. All you got to do, try the samples. And if you like them the way I like them and you want to get some, you'll be helping out the show. So let's go ahead, guys, and start this off with an analogy. This is from Dr. Misk Isretel of Renaissance Periodization. He is one of the best minds, in my opinion, in the evidence-based

fitness space. He's a PhD, but he's also a professional bodybuilder, and he opinion, in the evidence-based fitness space. He's a PhD, but he's also a professional bodybuilder, and he's been in the game for a really long time. And I heard this analogy a while back, and I really, really like it, with regards to training stimulus and suntans. It's a good analogy. And so what we're going to talk about here is the various ways in which what we're going to talk about here is the various ways in which straining stimulus can affect the body and the intensity of that stimulus and where we might be. And so a good analogy to compare this to is a suntan. And you can think about it like this. If you've never been out in the sun before and you go outside in a very, very hot sun, you will have a small window in which point you can develop a tan, let's say it's 10 to 15 minutes, and anything beyond that window could result in

a burn. So the sun is the stressor, the tan is the adaptation, and if you overshoot the stressor beyond the point at which you can recover or adapt, you get burnt. Depending on the amplitude of the signal, the sun. So let's say you're in Greenland where the sun is out all day, but it's not very strong. You could be out much longer without getting burnt or tan. But let's say you're on the equator where the sun is much stronger, you have a much lower bandwidth. And so the variation there between Greenland and say the equator might be something like light training and extremely challenging training taken closer to failure. So there's different amplitudes of sunlight and there's different

times. A 15 minute light workout is very different from a 15 minute workout where every set is taken to failure. In fact, a two-hour easy light workout with bands might have less amplitude than a 30-minute resistance training workout taken to failure. But at the end of the day, our goal is to get a tan, not a sunburn. And so the same thing is true with weightlifting. Our goal is to expose our body to enough stress in the form of loading our tissue and taking that tissue through a full range of motion relatively close to failure, depending on our ultimate goal, right? The set should be challenging, progressive, and hard, whether it's one reps or 20 reps. And the majority

of your training should be done with good technique through a full range of motion that will stress the muscle tissue, and that will help you maintain it, build it, develop its strength, et cetera. And so those stressors elicit the adaptation of muscle growth. Initially, you're stressing the tissue and damaging it. And then when you leave the gym and you begin to replenish your body with protein, carbohydrates, sleep, and water, your cellular mechanisms that are responsible for repair will turn on. They will take the raw products and they will help you build. And so in addition to making sure that training stimulus is right where you want it, and in this analogy, the sun, for example, is just enough that you get a tan, you can use things like a suntan oil or a suntan lotion that might act like a supplement.

It won't replace the sun. You still need that. That's the training element, right? But the tanning oil might speed things along. So things like creatine that will help you with increasing your output and your recovery. Things like electrolytes and hydration that will make sure you have enough fuel to perform. Things like protein powder that will help you supplement with enough raw product, raw amino acids to actually build muscle. So there's ways in which you can enhance your response to the signal, right, by using something like a supplement. But at the end of the day, it really comes down to, are you doing a training volume that is challenging enough to elicit change, but not so challenging that you can't recover? enough to elicit change, but not so challenging that you can't recover. Things like supplements can speed this along, but ultimately your ability to recover is going to be driven by two or three major factors. The first of which is your nutrition. Is your nutrition on point?

Are you getting enough calories? Are you getting enough protein? Are you getting enough carbs? Are you getting the right amount of fat? And for those of you who are dieting or in a calorie deficit, it's going to be easier to overtrain and overdo it because you have less raw product to enhance recovery. Let's talk about the next big piece. That would be sleep. So sleeping is critical. Are you getting enough sleep to actually allow for tissue to recover? If you're getting five hours a night, you're going to get substantially less time to recover than if you're getting nine hours a night. And so that will affect this equation too. And then the last piece is the allostatic load or just cumulative stress load in your life.

Are you a single mother of three who's taking graduate courses after working three shifts and picking kids up to and from school, bringing them to and from wherever they need to be? Or are you somebody who has the luxury of having a little bit more freedom? Depending on those additional outside stressors, right? Your ability to recover might be compromised or it might be enhanced. It really just depends on where you're at. So you take all these things into account. Can I train hard without training too hard? Can I get the right raw product from my nutrition? Can I get enough sleep? And is my stress in check? And then maybe can I use supplements to fill in the gaps and speed this along? Those are kind of the things that go into this stress adaptation

equation, if you will. And a lot of people are way, way, way off, and they're not exactly sure what they should be looking out for to make sure if they're overdoing it. So if you're feeling like you're overdoing it and you're experiencing any of the signs we're about to go through, like I said, you can look at the equation. You can either dial back the training, dial up the nutrition, dial up the sleep, dial down the stress. Maybe you put a little suntan lotion on if you want things to speed up in the form of adding some supplements. You get the point. But what are some things that we can look at here to gauge whether or not we are overtraining?

The good news is I do think that for most of you, you're probably not. I don't think most people train that hard. But there are a number of you that train pretty darn hard and push it very, very often. And I want to make sure that you have all the tools you need to make educated and informed decisions about your training. So the first and easiest thing you can do, and you can check this every single morning, is to assess your morning heart rate. If you have something like a whoop strap or a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, you might even be able to assess your HRV or heart rate variability, but a simple gauge of your resting heart rate in the morning can be a really good indicator of how you're recovering and your stress. If you take

a baseline heart rate measurement for about a week, and let's say your resting heart rate upon waking is 50 beats per minute, and you start training really, really hard, and you notice that your heart rate goes up to 60, 65, 70 beats per minute upon waking, you're getting some insight into your nervous system. You're getting some insight into whether or not you're able to get into that fully parasympathetic recovery state, or if you have a little bit of elevated sympathetic tone, which is oftentimes indicative of additional or an empathetic tone, which is oftentimes indicative of additional or an insurmountable amount of stress. And so the easiest and fastest way you can do this is to simply count the number of pulses that you can feel using your radial pulse, the pulse down at the base of your wrist, or again, you can put your palm, or not your palm, but you can put two fingers up towards your neck

and try to assess the pulse there and just count the beats for 10 seconds and then multiply that number by six. That will give you your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Very simple. And if you notice, oh my gosh, I got six beats in 10 seconds, but then I got nine beats in 10 seconds. You went from 60 to 90. These are rough and rudimentary, of course. Certainly easier ways to do this. And like I said, many of you have wearables that will do this for you. This is a great, easy check-in assessment that you can use to gauge how you are recovering and how restful your sleep is as well. So that's one sign that you might be overtraining is a skewed HRV in the

morning or an elevated resting heart rate. Number two is an unusual amount of soreness or a deep, intense soreness that is atypical of your conventional training. So for most of us, we will get the most sore when we train close to failure, when we train with movements that target tissues in the lengthened position, with long eccentrics or long lengthening portions where muscle damage can occur more quickly, and most commonly when we incorporate novel movements that we have not done before in which different muscle fibers contract in, let's call it, less efficient ways. So if you've done something a million times, you're very efficient at it, your body is very efficient at it. If you're not so good at something or you've never done it before, your body might not be as efficient and you might

run into a situation where you use muscle fibers in a way that's like, you know, you're going to kind of be more aligned to do a little bit more damage because you can't fire them as, let's call it, efficiently as you might like. And so if all of a sudden out of nowhere, you're feeling extreme soreness or enhanced soreness, and you haven't incorporated any new movements, you haven't incorporated any tempo-specific training or eccentric-focused training, you're just interestingly sore in a way that's kind of not normal for you, that's a really good indicator that the stressor is beyond your body's ability to recover. Now, you always want to take a look at your nutrition, right? Of course. And you can say, hey, maybe I didn't get enough

protein or maybe I didn't get enough sleep. But for these examples, we're going to assume those things are pretty standard. So you want to be on the lookout for excessive soreness that's kind of above and beyond what you're used to. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story

or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. The third indicator of overtraining, and I do think it's important to bring up that this might also just be driven by poor exercise selection and generally poor ability to kind of stick with

programming, sure. But if you're not making progress at all, you're never getting any stronger. You might be at a point in which you're not necessarily overtraining, but you're right up on that threshold. You're doing enough volume and enough work that you're getting a good workout, but you're doing too much to recover and make progress. And so that's pretty common. If you find that you're stagnant, if it's not an issue of inefficient programming, like maybe you just have a sucky routine that's really repetitive and non-progressive and you do the same thing every time. But if you have a progressive routine or you're following a program or you're looking to add more weight to the bar and you just can't, you might need some additional recovery.

Now, here's the next piece. This is number four, and it kind of goes above and beyond this, and that's if your progress actually starts to go backwards. So this is a much greater indicator, especially if you're on a program. If out of nowhere on a program, you all of a sudden start to go backwards on your lifts, You're incapable of doing certain things on your lifts. You're not hitting the numbers you used to hit. You're not hitting the volume markers you used to hit. This is a really good indicator that your body has too much stress to the point where your progress is actually going backwards. Of all of the things on this list, I would say this is the one that I see the most, these decreases in performance. Now, for women, we'll talk a little bit more about some female

specific considerations towards the end, but for women, you do want to be aware of where you were at in your menstrual cycle. If you menstruate and you're at that point in your life, you will probably be stronger when you're in the around day five to around day 17. So the middle to late follicular phase into the earliest portion of the luteal phase, right? So first five to seven days are oftentimes when you're menstruating. And then you have a really good hormone profile that you should be able to train pretty darn hard in. You'll be able to metabolize carbohydrate well. You get to that ovulation window where testosterone is elevated before you kind of get into that luteal phase, which of course, if you're not pregnant, you're going to go into the luteal phase where you shed the corpus luteum. And you generally won't train as well during those days because that's when

hormones start to change, PMS occurs, and then you get ready for your next menstruation. But if you're in a training window that let's say is between days five and 17, and you're seeing decreases, right? If you were like, oh man, all my lifts went down. Well, are you at the end of your luteal phase? Because that's pretty normal. But if it's during that prime training window and you're training really, really hard, but all your lifts are going backwards, you might have something to pay attention to here. And so always keep an eye on your progress. Okay. This is an interesting one, and I think it has a lot to do with overcoming

external stressors. And that is an increasing reliance on supplements and stimulants to be able to complete sessions or feel energized throughout the day. This can often be driven by not necessarily overtraining, but under sleeping and under recovering. And I've said this before, most people don't have an overtraining problem. They have an under recovery problem. And so for a lot of folks, you'll see sleep deprivation, elevated amounts of stress, substantial number of things on their plate, leading to a need for or a reliance on things like caffeine or stimulants. And needing more and more stimulants to get through training sessions, needing more and more stimulants to get throughout your day is pretty indicative of poor sleep,

poor recovery, poor recuperation. It's not necessarily an indicator that you're overtraining, although training can affect your sleep. In fact, one of the many symptoms of overtraining syndrome is interrupted or irregular sleep patterns. But if you are not getting enough sleep, training really, really hard, super stressed at work to the point where you need sub stimulants, high levels of stimulants and increasing levels of stimulants to get through your day. That's a good idea that you're in what I call the recovery trap. You're just not quite recovering from it all. And you're relying on band-aids to get you through it. So keep an eye

out for that. Here's an interesting one. Um, and it kind of includes what we talked about recently with sleep. This is number six. And that is not getting enough sleep, noticeable irritability, mood swings, or getting sick more often. Immunocompromisation to a certain degree. I see these things a lot, particularly with people who are deeper into deficits, of course. But if you're not getting adequate sleep, you're constantly irritable or moody, you're getting sick more often, not recovering well, your joints are hurting. These are things that are also indicative of not recovering well. And poor recovery is part of the overtraining experience, right? You can't really overtrain unless you under-recover, if you train like an absolute fricking maniac, totally insane balls to the wall, but you recover like a boss, you'll probably be

okay. So these are things to watch out for that are indicative of poor recovery. If your sleep patterns are disrupted, you have a hard time falling asleep or sleeping through the night, you're irritable or your mood is adjusting or swinging more frequently than it otherwise would, or you're constantly coming down with little bugs and colds, it could be indicative of the fact that the stress has kind of compromised your body's ability to run some of its more basic systems at a high level. So these are things you might also want to pay attention to. Moving into things that might be a little bit more cognitive, This is number seven, and that is you are beginning to lack focus and cognitive capabilities inside and outside of the gym. If you get to the gym and you're just generally burnt out and not wanting to train and you feel the psychological drag of

going through the motions and slogging through it, that's oftentimes a really good indicator of burnout, which is I think a component of overtraining, which is you've lost the psychology component. You're not that into it anymore because you've done it too much and you need a little break. There's nothing that will make you fall in love with training like taking a week off. I have found people that have been training for six to 10 years without taking more than three days off in a row ever. And while I think you can absolutely program and periodize your scheduling so that you rarely have any periods where you have to take extended periods away from the gym, I do think that taking a little bit of time away to just fall in love with it again, right? Absence makes the heart

grow fonder, as they say. That can be a really, really valuable and helpful tool. But again, if you're noticing you have less focus, less drive, less energy, and less desire to be in the gym, that can be a really good sign that you're either overtraining or under-recovering. So if your appetite is fluctuating wildly and you go from periods of having no hunger to periods of having extreme hunger or your appetite isn't regular in a way that it's been for a while, like you're noticing just some changes, these are good keys or cues, I should say, that something is a little bit off physiologically. Again, it can have quite a bit to do with stress hormones like cortisol and whatnot, sure, but just paying attention to your appetite trends and tendencies is another good thing to focus on. And getting into number nine, guys, the last one is menstrual cycle irregularity or disruption. If you have a pretty

consistent menstrual cycle and you can kind of gauge about when you're going to start your period, about when your period will stop, and you start exercising rigorously or intensely or modifying your diet rigorously or intensely, again, both of those things are part of this equation, this recovery equation, your physiology will change. And for women, you can pay very close attention to these cycles because they're tied very closely to your health and your recovery. And if you're not recovering while you're not healthy, you're not taking good care of yourself, you think your body's really going to want to reproduce. And often in many situations, it won't. And for men, this can often show up in the form of erectile dysfunction

or full-blown impotence. Bodybuilders who get stage level lean will almost always lose their libido and even their ability to get an erection because their hormones tank so much, particularly those who are natural and not using exogenous steroids. But usually you'll see the libido tank when they get to the hardest portion of their cut where they have the least raw materials and food to recover from sometimes the most grueling and intense workouts. So that can be a really big challenge. But for women, this usually shows up in the form of menstrual cycle irregularity or dysregulation. So having periods that are moving around and not as easily tracked as they were before, or even losing your period altogether are really good signs that you're overdoing it.

So just to review guys, the nine symptoms that you might be overtraining or under-recovering are elevated morning heart rate or HRV being off in the morning, soreness that is not consistent with your typical soreness, a little bit more than you're used to, takes a really long time to make progress or you're not making progress at all, progress actually starts to go backwards, That's a really big one. That's a big red flag. Increased reliance on supplements and stimulants to recover and get through workouts that were otherwise not so challenging. Not getting enough sleep, being more irritable or seeing mood fluctuations, a lack of focus, cognitive drive, and desire to be in the gym, erratic appetite and appetite changes, and menstrual cycle irregularities or disruption. So pay attention to all that stuff, guys, because we're in this game to make progress. Training is fun, it's enjoyable, but you want to make sure that you're making progress. And one of the best ways to do that is to make sure that you're recovering well, not overdoing it. The

harder your training inputs, the more you need on the recovery input. You need to match those things. So make sure you're taking good care of yourself. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode. If you have not yet, you could really help the show grow by pushing it up the charts by leaving a five-star rating and review on either iTunes or Spotify. It would mean the world to me if you took a minute or two to do that. And you can always check out corecoachingmethod.com. It's the home of me and my coaching team. If you're somebody who's struggling with overtraining and you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of your time spent in the gym, following a program that is built around your lifestyle and your

ability to recover is going to be a lot better than following something that's just random that you got from the internet. So feel free to reach out to us at corecoachingmethod.com. Go to the coaching tab and hit apply. If you'd like to hand off your programming and nutrition to somebody who's going to make sure you're not overdoing it and you're making progress. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you on the next one.