Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1142: Nine Signs You are Overtraining

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin discuss overtraining; what it is, how to identify if you are doing it and how to recover from it. Falling into the trap if some is good then more is better. (2:0...9) How do you define overtraining and if you are potentially doing it? (5:07) 9 Obvious Signs You are Overtraining: #1 - Frequent injury or chronic pain. (15:10) #2 – Extended muscle soreness. (18:48) #3 – Decreased performance. (25:35) #4 – Insomnia or changes in sleeping patterns. (28:57) #5 – Excessive fatigue. (32:50) #6 – Loss of appetite and cravings. (35:00) #7 – Getting sick very easily. (37:48) #8 – Mood changes, agitated or depressed. (41:27) #9 – Metabolic imbalances. (45:07) Taking Action: What to do if you have 4 or more of these signs? (49:25) Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!! **Code “RED50” at checkout** Overtraining Syndrome - NCBI Dose-Response Relationship Sore muscles…what does it mean? - Mind Pump Can Sleep Be Used as an Indicator of Overreaching and Overtraining in Athletes? Visit Felix Gray for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! When Exercising Less and Eating More Burns More Fat and Builds More Muscle Overtraining Is KILLING Your Gains! (How Much Is Too Much?) | Mind Pump TV Mind Pump Free Resources 

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Okay, so in this episode of MIND Pump, we tackled a problem or an issue that a lot of people run into. Over-training. Over-training is when you're working out too much, your body's ability to recover, get stronger, adapt, is compromised because you're just throwing too much at your body. And a lot of you who are listening right now are in this category and a lot of you don't even realize it.
Starting point is 00:00:38 You think you're just going to the gym. It's not just for athletes. Oh, yeah, you think you're going to the gym, you're busting your butt, you're sweating, and you're like, oh, everything's going great, but if you listen to this episode and really examine yourself, you may find that you're doing too much, and this is good news, because doing the right amount will get you faster and better results.
Starting point is 00:00:56 So we talk about all the signs that we've seen in our clients that tend to point to overtraining. There's nine of them, and we go from everything from chronic pain and injury, all the way to metabolic inembalances and issues with fat loss. So when you listen to this episode, we're gonna list all nine of these signs for you.
Starting point is 00:01:14 If you have three or more of these signs yourself, the odds that you're overtraining are probably quite high. Also, this month, our most popular workout program that we offer offer maps and a Bolic is 50% off. This is a phenomenal program for building strength, muscle, sculpting the body, and speeding up or boosting the metabolism. Here's how you get that 50% off discount. Go to mapsred.com and use the code red50, RED50, no space for the discount. Here's one I'm excited to talk about
Starting point is 00:01:50 because Anne, who runs our customer service on the back end, every once in a while she'll come to one of our meetings and she'll be like, hey, I'm getting a lot of questions around said topic and continuously. Here is one that I think is abused in our space. I also think that it's not talked about enough. I think that a lot of the people that have huge followings, lean on the beast mode, the all out,
Starting point is 00:02:22 there's no such thing as overtraining only under eating. And I think that message has been permeating the fitness industry for a very long time. And we know from training so many clients that this is not true. And in fact, you know, how do you define overtraining and then how do I know if I'm potentially doing that? Yeah, this is a good topic because we have a tendency to think this is not just with exercise, but we have a tendency to think that if something is good,
Starting point is 00:02:57 then more of it is better. More is always there. Yeah, and so if I have a goal, if I have a fitness goal, or I wanna get fit and healthy, that if some of it, if some exercises good for me, then why not do more of it? And why not do as much as I possibly can? If training intensely is gonna get my body to improve
Starting point is 00:03:17 and get stronger, then why not train more intensely? And then it also feeds into the whole, you know, martyorship that the pain and the struggle, it makes you deserving of the results and the progress. So the only way I'm gonna deserve being fit and healthy, the only way I'm gonna deserve losing this weight is if I pay a penance. If I beat myself up, and part of that is rooted in self hate, and part of that is rooted in in self hate and part
Starting point is 00:03:46 of that is rooted in somebody not liking themselves so much that they go to the gym to kind of punish themselves, which is a major driver that we see a lot of clients come in with. It is. And then the other part is what we just said is that people think that if some is good, more is better. This is not true for anything. There's there's nothing in the world that there isn't a limit in terms of where you stop getting benefit and you start getting detriment. And if you keep going down that road, it can get quite dangerous. There is a dose response relationship. And I think that just because you see some benefits
Starting point is 00:04:21 from training really, really hard doesn't mean it's the most optimal way either. So I think that's where people fall into this trap is, well, I sweat, I felt good, the scale went down a little bit, I must be doing things right. And that's not necessarily true. You could be seeing results, and you could even be seeing some positive results, but still be technically
Starting point is 00:04:45 overtraining. Yeah, because the problem is the unseen. The problem is I lost two pounds in the scale, but I don't realize that it could have lost four, or I gained one rep on this exercise, but I don't realize that I could have gained two or three reps. So that makes it difficult. And there's a bit of a discrepancy here between, you know, how we would define over training. Now there's over training syndrome. I think
Starting point is 00:05:09 that's what we should probably focus on. And this is where you've exceeded your body's ability to recover and adapt from the stimulus, the stimulus being exercise. Because remember, whenever you're working out, the reason why your body gets stronger, the reason why your body gains stamina or builds endurance, becomes more fit or leaner, is because your body is trying to adapt to a stimulus or a stress. So in the case of resistance training, when I work out with weights,
Starting point is 00:05:41 I'm stressing my body, I'm causing a little bit of damage. And so what my body does is it first that heals the damage or simultaneously it'll heal the damage, but then it also aims at to make myself stronger and more resilient so that the same insult doesn't cause the same amount of damage. So it's an adaptation process. Well, if you overcome your body's ability to adapt, if you overcome your body's ability to Adapt if you overcome your body's ability to not just adapt, but also to heal Then you get stuck in a really really bad cycle of Putting damage on top of damage without healing and then you get a lot of a lot of problems So I think we should talk about that. But also you did mention dose
Starting point is 00:06:22 dose What is it dose dose response relationship. So what this says is that going up with the dose, I get better and better results, but at some point I get diminishing returns. So at some point, not only do I not get better results, but now I just compound the negative effects. So if we look at like caffeine, for example,
Starting point is 00:06:44 up to a certain amount, I'm going to get more and more energized from it. But then after that amount and I keep taking more, I'm not going to get more energized. All I'm going to do is get the negative side effects, more and more of those anxiety, heart palpitations, nervousness and that kind of stuff. Not only that, there are also just pure results. And you allude to studies that support this. And there's plenty of studies that support this
Starting point is 00:07:07 and you talk about it a lot on our show. And that there is a sweet spot for optimal results. For example, like hitting a single muscle group in a week's time, it's gonna fall somewhere between that nine to 20 sets. Once you go beyond, and that's gonna be different for every person. So somebody's gonna see most optimal results
Starting point is 00:07:27 in that nine to 12 range, others may be on the upper, end of that of 15 to 20, which we would probably call those people, great responders, or great genetics, because they can handle the type of... Or just advance the experience, right? So, but once you go beyond that, the results of training that way could be detrimental.
Starting point is 00:07:47 Yeah, you don't get more results and you start to slow down. You actually start to become go negative. I mean, I think everyone in this room has experienced what that feels like. Now here's the thing with this. It's very individual. So what constitutes overtraining for one person could mean optimal training for another person and it could mean lower than optimal training
Starting point is 00:08:12 for another person. What determines what is overtraining for you is it's a multitude of factors. Your genetics, your experience, how experienced you are with exercise. Obviously, the more you work out, the more your body can handle. How effectively you recover. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:08:31 Your diet, if my diet's really good, then I can handle. My body can handle more stress, more stimulus, and recover from it, and actually respond really well. My sleep, my overall health, my mental state, the relationships around me. So all these things influence what would constitute overtraining for you. Now, it's very difficult to determine what is the perfect amount of training for you. And if you're doing a little more than that or a little under than that, that can be a difficult thing to kind of figure out. And that takes a little bit of time and energy and experience. But what constitutes overtraining syndrome,
Starting point is 00:09:09 where you're now overcoming your body's ability to adapt, overcoming your body's ability to heal and recover, well, that's a little bit more clear. And I think we should focus on that, because I think people get stuck there, and here's what happens. They get stuck in this overtraining syndrome phase, but because they're hard workers,
Starting point is 00:09:26 I see this a lot with people who identify with being hard workers. They're hard workers. I can push through anything. This is how they handle most things in their life. That they ignore a lot of the signs that we're about to talk about. And they keep pushing, keep pushing until it's just.
Starting point is 00:09:39 You see this a lot. Terrible. Your type A type clients. You see this a lot with your athletes. And a lot of your type A type clients, you see this a lot with your athletes. And a lot of this is, there is some value in having that sort of mental fortitude and being able to overcome obstacles. And that gets you a lot of success in the business world, it gets you a lot of success in school and a lot of other type of endeavors.
Starting point is 00:10:03 And so that is definitely a valuable trait. However, this is where we sort of get into that. Well, what actually is the right dose for you? And how do you figure that? When all you know is that working hard produces the desired results and everything else. Well, mental fortitude is a desirable trait somewhat, but I would say that a majority of people that listen to this podcast or a majority of the people that go to the gym aren't
Starting point is 00:10:34 going to the gym and pursue mental fortitude. They're in pursuit of changing their physique, becoming healthier, building a better body, building muscle, losing body fat. And for that, overtraining belongs nowhere in that. There's no, if those are your goals, and your main goal are those things, then pushing the boundaries of overtraining or flirting with those lines really belongs nowhere. Well, again, this is one of those things where I criticize CrossFit because of the crossover
Starting point is 00:11:12 and the muddying of the process of training because training itself is to then prepare you for this mental fortitude, this sporting outlet that you're expressing the ultimate version of your performance in. But the training itself, you need to recover. You need to build your body up to its best ability. And when you're convoluting it with all these different
Starting point is 00:11:39 different exercise signs and signals and just you're overwhelming the system in training, you're just gonna be spinning your tires. Yeah, two types of people that I see that fall pray to the overtraining problem. One, which is the more obvious one, is the hardcore fitness fanatic who doesn't know, who more is better.
Starting point is 00:11:58 They love it, they wanna go more, they wanna work out harder, they wanna push their bodies constantly to the limit and they're always dancing on that line of doing too much and doing the right amount. The other person that I see who falls prey to overtraining is the person who just gets started and it's overzealous. This is the person who's like, okay, finally,
Starting point is 00:12:17 I'm making the decision, I want to get in shape, I'm gonna just do it, I'm gonna go for it, I'm gonna go hard and I'm gonna go for it. And that person tends to have issues with overtraining because they're so excited that they're like, finally, I'm going to do this. Let's do as much as I possibly can because that's going to be better than doing less. I would add one more person to that. And that, and then I think this is actually the most common that I would see, which are chronic under eaters. I don't know how, in fact, I'm
Starting point is 00:12:44 right now. I'm on a three-way text with Katrina and one of our really good girlfriends, and she is exercise most of her life. She just had a baby a year ago, and she's getting back in shape right now, and one of the things that I do is at once a month I get on the phone with Katrina and we talk about where they're going, what they're doing this night, and the deal that I make with them is if you guys track and you can give me information, I can give you better direction. And so we were literally on the phone yesterday and she's telling me like, you know, Adam, I'm hitting my protein target.
Starting point is 00:13:20 So I'm eating really clean and balanced. I'm getting like 12 to 16,000 steps a day. I'm following Maps aesthetic right now, but I'm concerned because I'm only hitting about 1,300 calories. And this is really common. I used to get this a lot. And more common with my female clients that are trying to lose weight, but that would be a majority of my clients that I dealt with was somebody who was trying to lose body fat.
Starting point is 00:13:49 And they start to clean up their diet and they land somewhere around this 1,000 to 1,300 calorie range. And for somebody who is weight training consistently and is stepping 12 to 16,000 steps a day, that is grossly under eating. Now, she's seeing change in her body right now. And the message that I'm giving her right now, is they listen, we're going to be in a far better off position if I can get you to increase your calories and not the scale, not move,
Starting point is 00:14:21 then if we have two more weeks and you see the scale go down to their four pounds and you feel leaner, we're in a much better position on the first one than we are the latter. So I think there is a lot of people that are chronic under-eaters when they come in, and that's a great way to lead to overtraining. You are just not supplying the body
Starting point is 00:14:44 with enough nutrients to recover. You're just not supplying the body with enough nutrients to recover. You're barely giving what it needs. They're surviving. And overtraining is just overcoming your body's ability to adapt. So that could be, you're not getting enough sleep, it could be you're not eating enough food,
Starting point is 00:14:55 it could be you have too much stress in the rest of your life. There is any appropriate optimal dose when it comes to exercise, and your entire life, including your genetics, determines what that optimal dose is, and that includes nutrition as well. I think we should talk about some of the obvious signs that you're in that over training syndrome phase. One of the more common ones that I can think about
Starting point is 00:15:17 is just frequent injury or chronic pain. This is one that I think is most common for myself. Like I, we talk openly on the show that should be an obvious one. You know, even all the years experience that I have training myself and tons of other people, I still tend to overreach. And always to me, one of my first indicators
Starting point is 00:15:39 that I'm overreaching is I get achy joints. And I don't know if that's the old man in me because I've been lifting for a very long time or what or I like to lift heavy, but almost always when I know that I've been over training or pushing that boundary, I've get my hips ache, my low back starts to bother me a little bit, elbow shoulder.
Starting point is 00:16:01 You just start to notice this achiness that I didn't have. And so for me, this is probably one of the most common signs that I always know, like, it's time for me to back off a little bit or de-load. And I think it's tricky too, because you know, you could have somebody that hasn't been training for a long time. And then they get back into training. They're like, that wasn't even that much, you know, in this point. And you know, like, so my overtraining and, you know, I'm in this pain. And, you know, like, so, my overtraining and, you know, so there's that kind of a scenario where you have to kind of explain through that. But, yeah, definitely, if I've been consistently training, and then now I go to a point where I'm getting achy, you know,
Starting point is 00:16:37 pains in my joints, and I feel like this is just something that continuously nags me, and I'm consistent in my trains definitely a signal. Well, no, that's a good point, Justin, because don't judge what constitutes overtraining for you. I know a lot of times people will have this sign and many other signs that they're overtraining. And then they'll look at the work on, be like, but I'm not working out that much.
Starting point is 00:17:00 I used to be able to do so much more. There's no way I could be overtraining. You are. Yeah. You are overtraining. Don't judge it, but I hate to be able to do so much more. There's no way I could be over training. You are yeah You are over training. Don't judge it But I hate to tell you this if you're going to the gym and you're working out and your joints are hurting and your body feels stiff And you don't feel like you're you feel like your mobility is getting worse. You're doing too much Yep, that's it. You're doing too much back off a little bit now. There's also a combination of You could be doing the wrong exercises. You may need to focus on mobility type movements,
Starting point is 00:17:28 but at the end of the day, it means whatever you're doing is too much for your body. So this is one sign, and by the way, if when we go through some of these signs and we list them, if you have one of them, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're overtraining, but if you find that you have three or four or five of these signs, then you probably want
Starting point is 00:17:48 to pay attention because you're right, you could have some stiffness in your elbow and it was the first workout that you did. Well, and I think too, you'll get better at it as you come back. If you've been off and you come back in, there is the right dose to where you won't get those kind of that feedback.
Starting point is 00:18:04 Well, there's also crossover. So we're gonna go through all these different signs, but there some of these could be because of multiple things. For example, right now we're talking about frequent injury or chronic pain that you feel. Well, the chronic joint pain could also be because you eat too much high inflammatory foods. So you could have some achy joints
Starting point is 00:18:24 that is it's a combination of lifting a lot and then also high inflammatory foods. So you could have some achy joints, that is, it's a combination of lifting a lot and then also high inflammatory, but your body is just inflamed and it's trying to tell you that. But you're not hydrated. I mean, again, if you just have one of these signs, it doesn't necessarily mean you're over training. If you have, you know, three, four, five of these,
Starting point is 00:18:40 then the odds, the more of these signs that resonate with you, the more likely it is that you're overtraining. Another one is extended muscle soreness. So this is kind of like the first one that we just talked about, which was the chronic injury and joint stiffness and pain. Extended muscle soreness. Like if you find that your sore for,
Starting point is 00:19:01 typically it's what I tell clients, you should feel, if you feel sore at all, by the way, you shouldn't feel there is no like necessary amount of soreness by the way. Well, technically, okay, and I wish I remember what book or what certification or what I read. Technically soreness is a sign of overtrain. It's a sign that you little too much.
Starting point is 00:19:18 Right, so excessive is definitely overtrain. Yeah, it's okay, look, it's not, in other words, it's not necessary. So I think some people think when they work out that they have to feel sore or some sort of... Yeah, I'm gonna spell that right away. That's actually false. You don't have to feel any soreness.
Starting point is 00:19:34 Sometimes you'll feel some soreness the following day, but that doesn't mean you had a better workout and a lack of soreness doesn't mean you had a bad workout. But if you're sore and it lasts for two days or longer, probably did too much for sure. For me, when I workout really hard, I tend to feel either no soreness or a little bit of soreness
Starting point is 00:19:55 and it's not the kind of soreness that's evident all the time. It's not like I'm walking around like, oh my gosh, my chest is so sore. It's the kind of soreness that I gotta check for. Like I'll stretch a little bit and I'll be like, oh yeah, I guess I am a little bit sore. I can feel this.
Starting point is 00:20:08 I can tell it worked out. This is why I hate the leg day memes that are so hot. I can't walk for three days. Right. And I, well, and I used to do this, you know, so I'm guilty too. For many years in my training career, especially early on, this was like,
Starting point is 00:20:23 we wore this like a badge of honor. You know, could how sore could I get? And if I wasn't hobbling, then I didn't train hard enough. And that I must have did that for four or five years consistently in my career, seeking out that type of soreness, which was ridiculous. In fact, I tell clients that if I can progress you as far as your programming, adding volume or gaining strength and you never get sore, we are fucking hitting home runs.
Starting point is 00:20:55 We are hitting home runs. If you were adding weight to the bar, week over week or every other week, or you are adding sets and increasing your volume of training, and you are not getting sore. We are kicking ass. No, soreness is a great sign. Soreness is a terrible sign to dictate your progress,
Starting point is 00:21:12 unless it's too much, in which case you probably did too much. There's another myth around soreness too. Like if you feel a little bit sore, that means you shouldn't work that muscle out. Not necessarily true. Great point. Not necessarily true. You could feel a little bit of soreness and work that muscle again the next day and if
Starting point is 00:21:26 anything enhanced or speed up it's recovery. This was something that took me so long to learn. It's annoying. It annoys me to realize that I spent years focused on how much I hurt the day after my workout and using that as a gauge in terms of how good my workout was. I remember one workout in particular, I went to the gym with my cousin, this was when I was young,
Starting point is 00:21:49 I must have been 15 or 16, so it's the right, when I first started going to gyms, we went to the gym and this is before cell phones and a lot of stuff, so you had to tell your ride to pick you up at a particular time. So my dad's like,
Starting point is 00:22:00 what time you want me to pick you up and we're like three hours from now because we knew we would just have a great time. We went in the gym and we did everything. And when I say everything, I mean, literally everything. We went from- Reweight every machine. We went from machine to machine and did
Starting point is 00:22:15 as much as we could on every machine. Then we went in the freeweight area and did every single exercise we could remember from Arnold Schwarzenegger's encyclopedia bodybuilding. Then when we were done, we were done, like we were wasted, we went and got our protein shakes, drank those, sat on the curb, waited for my dad to pick me up, and I had to miss school the following two days. That's how sore I got from that workout.
Starting point is 00:22:37 And I thought I was going to build so much muscle. It actually took me back. I remember I went back to workout finally when I could and I was weaker. You know when this light bulb really went off for me was when I started reading the studies that talked about frequency. And when I started to learn how important frequency was in my training. And I started saying like, oh wow, I need to be hitting every muscle group at least two to three times a week. And I started thinking to myself and I tried this. But the first mistake I made was trying to mirror
Starting point is 00:23:10 the way I had been training for the previous five years of crushing myself in the gym. And then trying to do that two or three times on a muscle group, it was impossible. Doing back-to-back days in a row itself is like, oh my God. And that's so what I started to notice was I had to keep scaling back and scaling back.
Starting point is 00:23:26 And when I finally got to the place where I could train a muscle three times in a week, I was like, holy shit, I'm only doing like five sets on this muscle and this workout. This is crazy. I used to do 18 to 20 sets on a muscle and a workout. And in order for me to hit it effectively two or three days a week,
Starting point is 00:23:46 I had to dramatically reduce the amount of sets I did and the intensity that I did in your soreness that I went away. Way down. I had to get it, I had to back it way. Otherwise, what was happening was I would try and do that workout a second time in the week. And I was still so sore from the workout on Monday
Starting point is 00:24:05 that when I was sitting in the get on Wednesday, my performance was incredibly decreased. And I'm like, this can't be ideal. So I had to keep backing off the intensity and backing off the volume. And so finally I felt almost like, man, this isn't enough, I'm not doing enough, but then I was started to see the results
Starting point is 00:24:21 and I was stacking more weight on the bar. And that was like a huge light bulb moment. Took a long time, I bet. Oh, absolutely. I struggled back and forth for a long time. Yeah, so, soreness is a terrible, terrible indicator of how good a workout was. The only thing that soreness is good for
Starting point is 00:24:37 is to tell you that you did too much. And so the rule of thumb that I tell people is, okay, it's okay to be sore for a day, maybe two days every once in a while, but if you're sore for two days consistently or more than two days, you did too much. Or if you're sore to the touch, where you don't have to check to see if you're sore,
Starting point is 00:24:54 you just know, because you move, and that you're like, that muscle is fried. You did too much, scale back the volume, scale back the intensity, that's a very, very quick path towards, towards overtraining. And if it's extended muscle soreness, that means that your sore for longer and longer
Starting point is 00:25:11 as the weeks progress. This is a great sign of overtraining. It's like, I did my same workout that I always do, but it's taking me longer to feel better from the soreness this time than it did last week. And then the next week you're like, wow, I'm sore for even longer. And I'm not doing any more than I have been.
Starting point is 00:25:27 That's a sign that your body's ability to recover and adapt is severely being impaired and you may be overtraining. The next one is the most common and obvious one, in my opinion. And that's decreased performance. If you gotta ask yourself this, why am I working out in the first place?
Starting point is 00:25:44 Now, if you enjoy working out in the first place? Now, if you enjoy working out for the sake of working out, that's awesome. That's a great place to be. But you also work out because you want improvements in your performance and in your body. Well, if you're going to the gym and you're not only not getting stronger or not improving your stamina, but you're actually going backwards, you over-did it. You're over-training. And remember, in the context of your life, so you may have done the same thing that you normally do, but you didn't get good sleep, in which case it was over-training. Or maybe you did the
Starting point is 00:26:13 same thing, but you just didn't eat as well, in which case it was still over-training. But if I go to the gym, and if I notice that, let's say I'm normally doing a squat, and I'm using 300 pounds on my squat, and then the next time I come, I have to go down to 295. And the next time I go, it's 290, I got, okay, I'm going backwards. That's an obvious sign that I'm overtraining, obvious one.
Starting point is 00:26:35 I'd say for most people. Now you're gonna have weeks where you're not gonna, you're not gonna always consistently improve. But if you start to string together weeks of decreasing performance, you gotta take a step back. Yeah, I always get that even the subtle signs of when you're doing the same weight and it just feels like a grind
Starting point is 00:26:52 and it just feels like this should not feel this heavy. This used to be pretty easy for me to get up. I'm paying attention to that right away because that's something like either it is one of those factors like I haven't been eating real well. well I haven't been sleeping right I've been stressed out you know work all these other factors are contributing towards this and it's okay to kind of scale back a bit so that way you know your body can then you know work on recovering fully then coming back in and giving a better performance.
Starting point is 00:27:20 Yeah I remember as a when I first started working out, one of the clear signs that I was overdoing it would be my performance would kind of start to decline, but because I was so hard-headed and, you know, like I said earlier, hard working, I'm just going to keep pushing. I'm going to keep pushing. You know, I know I'm supposed to force my body. And I would keep going, keep going. And then we would have to go on a vacation, or I'd get sick or something would happen. And I'd have to miss, you know, five days of a workout,
Starting point is 00:27:47 or a full week of a workout. And I'd go back to working out after taking a week off and fully anticipating like, oh my God, I'm gonna be so happy. And you're stronger now. Stronger, yeah. I was stronger than I was before, and I'm like, wait a minute. There's a sign.
Starting point is 00:28:00 Yeah, what the heck's going on here? That's actually always a great way to test and see if that you might be overtrained. If you're that person, it tends to be the person. At this I think is more common with your fitness fanatics, right, too. Because you're training so much. And this is, I always tell my fitness fanatics
Starting point is 00:28:16 that I speak to on this topic that, you know, hey, take three days off the gym completely and then come back and then tell me how you feel. And if you come back stronger from taking three or more days off from the gym It's normally a good sign that you were over reaching and you to back off and I would say I probably fall in this Get this of all the ones that we're going to go over I would think that the decrease performance in the chronic pain Or like the two that I you noticed the most yeah, that probably happened still today to me like I'm so I'm always kind of pushing those boundaries Oh, joints are getting a little achy. Oh, wow
Starting point is 00:28:46 I had to back off 15 pounds off my squat like the example you gave so like that happens to me and and I always know that okay I need a D load or back off a little bit now the one that I notice most consistently that I notice before all the other ones is Insomnia or or changes in my sleeping patterns. I noticed this one right away. Like if I'm working out real hard and pushing myself and I know I'm on that line of overdoing it or doing the right amount, if I'm sleeping and I'm waking up in the middle of night
Starting point is 00:29:18 or it's hard for me to get to sleep or wake up really, really groggy, that's for me the first sign. Like I know, okay, something I'm doing too much, and it's always that insomnia. By the way, that one's clinical. That one they'll show in studies, time and time again,
Starting point is 00:29:34 and all athletes, cyclists, runners, weight lifters, they'll notice that being one of the first signs. They'll monitor their sleep, and their sleep will just start to get crappy, and they'll be like, that's the first sign that you're overdoing it. I don't even think it needs to be insomnia too. I think that's the extreme version of that, right? I think just a couple nights in a row of poor sleep will, it will really affect your performance and is a sign of overtraining,
Starting point is 00:30:01 right? If you, I just had this the other day, or last couple weeks ago, where I had like two or three days in a row of just bad sleep, and then on my programming, I'm supposed to be going after a heavy squat, and I just know, like that's one that I now have learned to be able to be like before I go into the gym and find out the hard way by putting my, a bunch of weight on the mat. I can adjust on the fly.
Starting point is 00:30:25 Exactly, I already know. I know that, you know, maybe I can get away with like one bad night of sleep, but back to back, or multiple days in a row of bad sleep, and then thinking that I'm gonna go in the gym and perform at my best, absolutely not having it. And then in fact, I'm so, I think I'm so in a place that I'm flirting with that line, that's actually when I'll switch
Starting point is 00:30:46 completely what I was supposed to do in the gym. I'm supposed to have you squat, I'm supposed to do, okay, it looks like I'm actually doing mobility work, maybe some infrared sauna, maybe I'm gonna meditate, and I'm gonna work inward. So that's when I know that I'm, because I think sleep is, now, especially getting older, I think when you were 20, you think you're invincible
Starting point is 00:31:06 and you'll never have a problem with this. But now as I've gotten older, that sleep is so precious and it makes such a difference on how my lifting is that I don't even waste my time going after a hard workout after multiple days of bad sleep. I know that this is a day that I'm gonna work inward. And the poor sleep is likely the result of just a high stress response in the body.
Starting point is 00:31:28 You know, if cortisol, remember cortisol is that energy hormone, a lot of people think, oh cortisol stress hormone makes you feel bad. Cortisol gives you a lot of energy. Sometimes you'll lack sleep, but you'll get up and you'll still be wired and be like, no, I feel great. It's because your cortisol is kind of chronically elevated. Now you go down that path and it turns into bad things,
Starting point is 00:31:47 but I think that maybe why people have issues with sleeping when they're over-training. It's just the higher levels of cortisol. So you get this kind of nervous, well, you wanna enter in the morning, right? And then like to taper off towards the night. Yes, this is also one of the things that makes it challenging for somebody
Starting point is 00:32:03 who's a late night trainer. So if you're training at 7, 8, 9 o'clock at night and you kind of throw off your circadian rhythm, this is something that could be causing you to be off your sleeping pattern because you have this hardcore workout at 9 o'clock at night. You're adrenaline through the roof, cortisol getting spiked. You can't stop. This is why I can't train past 6 o'clock. If I train beyond 6 o'clock, it wires me so much that I can't go to bed beyond or before two o'clock
Starting point is 00:32:28 Well sleep such a humongous factor in recovery and so now if you're interrupting that process Yeah, now you have to like account for that and it's gonna You're gonna compensate on all kinds of other ends of that. Yeah, it actually makes it worse, right? Yeah, you can't sleep very well, which then makes your ability to recover Even imperative a more well and this and this to me feeds into the next one it worse, right? You can't sleep very well, which then makes your ability to recover even in parody even more. Well, and this, and this, to me, feeds into the next one, which is excessive fatigue. And that, in paradoxically, because people think, what would you mean you can't sleep and you have excessive fatigue? All right, here's what it looks like. You're dead tired. You go to sleep,
Starting point is 00:32:59 but your sleep is crap. And then during the day, you can't stay awake. It compiles. Yeah, you can't stay awake. You're in a meeting or you're at school or whatever you're working and you're just like fighting it with your eyes, you're drinking lots of coffee. You just don't have that zest and that energy. That's that combination of poor sleep and then excessive fatigue. And I've been through this. A and two of point, I'm glad you touched on the coffee thing because using a drug also can mask some of these natural signs. Oh, I'm glad you touched on the coffee thing because using a drug also can
Starting point is 00:33:25 mask some of these natural signs. Oh, totally. So, you know, we have that in anabolic state. Right. We have these natural signs that our body is trying to tell us that, hey, you need sleep, you need recovery, hey, you're overtraining. But then we've now trained ourselves to have four cups of coffee, our red bull, our rock star, or whatever, and your pre-workout, and it's now masking
Starting point is 00:33:50 that your body's natural signs that are trying to tell you, hey, you probably need a day off, or hey, you probably need to back off on the intensity of your training, but instead, you're taking all these drugs to totally mask that, you have a idea. God, I'm so glad you went there. Not just that, but the painkillers, the insets.
Starting point is 00:34:09 So here I am working out on bust of my butt. I'm really trying to get to my goal. Oh, I got this kind of stiffness. I got my joints or bother me. All right, let's take some ibuprofen. Let's take some ibuprofen. Oh man, my sleep is kind of crap. All right, I'll take some melatonin
Starting point is 00:34:22 and I'll take some herbs that help me sleep or maybe I'll have some cannabis or some wine or whatever. Now during the day, I'll crap on fatigue. Now I'm gonna have caffeine. So what you're doing is you're completely masking all the symptoms of overtraining with all these substances and it's just gonna make it worse. I know I have no many clients who come
Starting point is 00:34:41 to make it worse for your results. You may be able to get by, right? By doing all these things, but certainly, if you're wondering why you're on a hard plateau and you're not seeing results or why for some reason your body's not responding the way you wanted to respond based off of all these other good things you think you're doing, that could be exactly why. Totally. Now here's another paradoxical symptom of overtraining. Loss of appetite and cravings. And yes, they can both happen at the same time.
Starting point is 00:35:08 This is somebody who's, you know, their appetite is low. They're trying to eat their normal amount for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They just find themselves not wanting to eat much. This is a sign of overtraining. And then they also have cravings for junk foods. Now, there's a few different explanations that are popular in terms of why this tends to happen.
Starting point is 00:35:28 One explanation is that, you know, the fact that sugary foods are highly palatable foods, just give you, they make you feel better. So because your body's feeling crappy, your body is craving for things to make you kind of feel better in the moment. And so these hyper palatable type of foods, the ones you have cravings for, help you do that. Some people also say that a boost serotonin. So it's another way for your body to make you feel good in the moment.
Starting point is 00:35:53 But both of those are real important because you can have both or you can have one or the other. Sometimes people just how they have is cravings. So because they're overtraining and they're finding themselves eating more and more of the kinds of foods that they probably shouldn't, especially when it comes to their goals. They're eating more of the, and this is what I tend to see with my clients.
Starting point is 00:36:11 Just the hyper-palpable stuff. The breads, the pastas, the sugary type foods, you know, spoonfuls of peanut butter, you know, that's another one, candy, that's another one. Just foods that you don't really, shouldn't really be a part of a kind of healthy, you know, that's another one candy. That's another one. Just foods that you know that don't really shouldn't really be be a part of a kind of healthy You know program, but now all of a sudden I just want to eat a crap load of them And I've even heard people try to explain it and say oh, it's because I'm burning more calories Yeah, because I'm burning more calories my body needs all these extra calories Okay, there's a little bit of truth to that but mostly when when you have these cravings, and we all know what cravings are feel like, a craving is different than regular hunger,
Starting point is 00:36:47 a craving is almost insatiable, and when you eat the food that you crave, you can't get in your face fast enough. Those, again, by themselves don't necessarily mean you're over-training, but in combination with some of the other ones that we said, oh yeah, that's a good sign. For me personally, when I'm over-training, I get the loss of appetite. I don't know about you guys. I start to find that I just don't want to eat as much.
Starting point is 00:37:08 I just don't, don't want to eat as much. I find this to, this goes hand in hand with the chronic under-eater. Like you're chronically under-eating, you're training super hard, and then you just crave like this, you want. Your body's dying for- For a bunch of cookies.
Starting point is 00:37:22 Right, sugar, yeah. Your body's just craving that glucose because you're deprived of it and yet you keep pushing the body like that. And I would lean more towards like you alluded to, Sal, which is, you know, you're getting that, the pleasure response or the endorphin rush that you're getting from eating those types of foods. And because you're suppressing it so much
Starting point is 00:37:41 by training so hard and not eating very much, that the body's desiring those things. That's swinging of the pendulum. Right. Yeah. How about this one? Adam, I've heard you talk about this, especially when you were competing in the last weeks, leading up to a competition. I've experienced this as well, not through competition, but just through overdoing it. Or all of a sudden, I just get sick, really easy. Like, I'm just in a room and there's someone with a cold across the room. And you just run down and susceptible. We were just talking, I was talking about this yesterday
Starting point is 00:38:10 about my mom, so I was supposed to have two different family members come up and visit me this weekend and they were all sick. And my sister was just like, you know, mom is always sick. And I'm like, well, she kind of burns the cannibal both ends and she doesn't eat well. And, you know, we forget that your immune system
Starting point is 00:38:29 is another system of the body and all the systems are affected by each other. So if you're hammering another system, the fact that you think that it's not going to affect the other system is ridiculous. And if you already, and I think in my family, we have, because I used to be like this, I used to catch every cold,
Starting point is 00:38:49 and it's this especially when I had a very poor diet, when I was young, when I was younger, I could get away eating whatever I wanted, or I thought I could get away with eating whatever I wanted, but I was sick a lot of the time. And looking back now, I think a lot of that has to do with one, I think my family already has kind of a weaker immune system, and then on top of that, I think a lot of that has to do with one. I think my family already has kind of a weaker immune system. And then on top of that, I wasn't,
Starting point is 00:39:08 I was eating poorly and then training hard all the time. And I just used to get sick all the fucking time. I rarely ever get sick now. And so that absolutely is a common one that I've seen. Somebody who is, you're beating up your other systems and you it's now affecting your immune system. And so you're susceptible to picking up a cold really easily because you're vulnerable.
Starting point is 00:39:33 Now, you know, people think, oh, I thought exercise was supposed to boost and strengthen the immune system. It is, it is as your body adapts and becomes healthier and stronger. The problem is you're overcoming your body's ability to adapt and get stronger. So it's constantly in this repair mode and your body when it's got limited resources and if it's constantly repairing and repairing and repairing when it's time
Starting point is 00:39:57 to fight off a foreign invader, it's not going to have as many resources to do so. It's not going to have the same strength to do so. So you just become vulnerable to illnesses. Now this could, I mean, you could go all the way down the line of chronic illness. So we're talking about like getting sick, like colds and stuff like that, but if you're a chronic overtrainer, your rate of chronic illness goes up as well.
Starting point is 00:40:22 So you could develop, you're more likely to develop autoimmune issues. You're more likely to develop issues with inflammation of the heart and heart disease type illnesses. Cancer may even be something that you increase your risk of through chronic and constant overtraining. And remember this, too much overtraining is just too much stress on the body.
Starting point is 00:40:42 So sometimes people are like, well, it's hard for them to understand that and I thought working out was good for me. But then I'll say to them, hey, do you think too much stress on your body is good or bad for you? They're like, oh, it's bad. Too much stress. I can't sleep.
Starting point is 00:40:54 I get sick easily. You know, I don't feel healthy. Same thing. Too much working out is too much stress. It's too much stress on the body. It's no different than if you're going through an extremely stressful time in your life, like you lost your job or going through a divorce or whatever, that's tons of stress on your body.
Starting point is 00:41:11 Well, too much working out is also too much stress. So if you're listening right now and it's hard for you to kind of comprehend what's happening, you know, you think, oh, yeah, too much muscle soreness and joint pain, that makes sense, but the other ones don't make sense because I thought exercise, it's just too much stress. It's no different than anything else, which brings me to another one. Mood changes, agitation,
Starting point is 00:41:29 depression, boy, these are common ones. If you've ever been around an athlete that's training at an extremely high level, like be around a bunch of football players during double days. You do not want to be around. Yeah, what was that like Justin when you guys were doing your double day? Yeah, Everybody was so on edge. Anything you did, you'd get a reaction out of somebody if they didn't agree or didn't like it. So yeah, everybody's walking on egg shells, everybody's trying to stick to themselves.
Starting point is 00:41:55 Basically, we all had to isolate each other because yeah, it was just one of those environments where everybody was just at this really heightened state. You know when you're at a really high high level, like the slightest thing will just set you off. Well, you're in fight or flight 24, 7. It's just like why during competition days, you do not want to be around me the last two weeks, especially the last seven days.
Starting point is 00:42:18 I mean, I had to take work off. I remember that. Yeah, you just, you just know you take those seven days off because you didn't do both jokes. Yeah, just to, I'm just a pill to be around. And that's because I'm stressing the body from, I'm under eating, I'm over training, I'm not getting good enough adequate sleep. I mean, you're stressing the body in so many other areas
Starting point is 00:42:38 that you know it's not ideal and healthy. And which is, I used to communicate that to my audience when I was going through competition is that, okay, when I'm competing, I'm gonna try and do this as healthy as possible for as long as possible. But at one point, it becomes a sport. At one point, it is no longer I'm doing things
Starting point is 00:42:55 that are just because my body looks ripped and shredded and what somebody else may think is an example or exemplifies health. It's not true whatsoever. In fact, it's really, really unhealthy. We used to call those people on stage, walking dead men or walking dead women. That's, you're on that very fine line of damn,
Starting point is 00:43:13 you're killing yourself because you have such low body fat percentage, you're feeding the body so little food, so little water, it's so much training. It's not healthy. And you just pissed off. Yeah, and you're just angry at the world. Well, you have, look, if you think about this,
Starting point is 00:43:26 like think about when you're snappy at home, maybe you're spoused, you're girlfriend, you're boyfriend, think about when you're, when you're snappy. It's usually not because of what they said. It's usually because they said something or did something, and it was on top of a bunch of other stuff that happened during the day. It's like you have this, this bucket that you could fill with stress,
Starting point is 00:43:46 but at some point it'll overflow. Well, if your bucket is constantly at the top and barely overflowing, it doesn't take much. It doesn't take much. You wake up in the morning and your kid wakes up and then they're not super happy to see you or they make a little comment and boom, you snap. You know, or everybody's irritating. And this is a bad one because then you start to see you or they make a little comment and boom, you snap. Yeah. You know, or everybody's irritating.
Starting point is 00:44:05 And this is a bad one because then you start to see the world through these kind of, you know, angry lenses and everything seems annoying to you and irritable to you. You know, this is a great sign. Like if you're working out, let me tell you something right now. If you're working out right, you should have a better mood. Yeah. If you're doing it the right way, yeah, if it's the appropriate amount of exercise, you should have the opposite of all the stuff that we're talking about, by the way,
Starting point is 00:44:26 the opposite. So we talked about like excessive fatigue, you should have more energy. We talked about weird appetite, either no appetite or craving, it should have a healthier appetite. We talked about frequent sickness. It should be that you're not getting sick as often. Like all the things that we're talking about, the right amount of exercise for your body will do the opposite of all of these things, including moodiness, depression, agitation, irritability. If you do it right and you're doing the right amount, you'll find that you have a higher tolerance for irritable, irritating things.
Starting point is 00:44:58 People should be commenting and saying, wow, you're in a better mood. They should not be like, man, since you start working out, you become an asshole. That's probably not a good sign right there. And I would say the last one, and probably one of the hardest for people to overcome is metabolic imbalances. And this was something that, I was when the body just doesn't want to respond anymore.
Starting point is 00:45:20 This is the, if this is the, I'm eating 1200 calories a day. I'm training five to seven days a week. I'm stepping 15 to 20,000 steps and your body is not losing body fat. It's just hit a wall. Yeah, you know you're eating good calories as far as what you're eating. You know you're trying hard
Starting point is 00:45:40 because you're exercising three, four, five, plus times a week. And it's just not adding up. You're not seeing results. And I remember this as a trainer when I first started to see this and not knowing what's going on like this can't be right. My client says, you know, she's eating a chicken salad twice a day and she's going this. And we're training.
Starting point is 00:46:01 She's seeing me three times a week like she can't be not losing weight. This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible. Doesn't make sense. What about the law of throw dynamics? I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it.
Starting point is 00:46:11 But this is where this is somebody who is chronically under eight for an extended period of time. And the metabolism has now adapted to an extremely low caloric maintenance. And you've sent it that signal because you're pushing it one way really hard, you're under feeding it another way, and all it's trying, it doesn't know better, it's just trying to adapt and survive,
Starting point is 00:46:32 and it's now adapted and survived to this extremely low caloric imbalance and can handle all the stress that you keep pushing on it. It's adapted, it's got good at that, but that's not what you want when you're somebody who's wanting to see change in your physique. And this is a tough one. Yeah, it's a hard one because people then just want
Starting point is 00:46:50 to push harder and harder. And it seems counterintuitive that backing off will get their body to respond again. But think of it this way. For all intents and purposes, body fat on your body is an insurance policy. It's stored to energy. When you're walking around with body fat on your body is an insurance policy. It's stored to energy. When you're walking around with body fat on your body,
Starting point is 00:47:07 you're walking around with your own food. It's like your body has food stored like a camel with its hump or whatever. So your body, if you're under a lot of stress, do you think your body's gonna want more insurance or less insurance? It's gonna want more, right? If you're putting too much stress on your body,
Starting point is 00:47:26 your body's gonna be like, oh boy, because you gotta keep in mind for most of human history, one of the number one primary sources of chronic stress for humans was lack of food, or inability to find food. So your body is like, okay, chronic stress, which is too much exercise here. Remember, it could be from a lot of different ways,
Starting point is 00:47:42 areas, in this case, it's over training. Too much stress. We need to hold on to body fat. Let's hold on to this body fat because probably not enough food around us. Then on top of it, you're under feeding yourself and you're actually reinforcing that signal. So now your body's really trying to hold on to body fat. So you get in this really crappy position where you're working out like crazy. You're not eating much and nothing's happening. Very, very frustrating, and it does seem counterintuitive
Starting point is 00:48:07 that reducing your intensity, getting more rest, would get your body to burn more body fat, but in this particular case, that's exactly what happens. And it always used to shock my clients. I'd have clients who would come into me, come and see me, and they would be chronic over trainers. And I'd say, okay, here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna take three of those days a week
Starting point is 00:48:25 that you're doing those crazy running runs that you're doing. And I'm gonna have you do a relaxing Yin yoga class. I'm also gonna have you prioritize your sleep for a little while. I'll be like, oh my God, what about the calorie burn? I'm not burning as much calories. Am I getting to gain all this much body fat?
Starting point is 00:48:37 But like, no, you're not. And here's what would happen. For a little while, the weight would stay the same, which would blow them away, because they would expect to gain weight. But then all of a sudden, their body would start burning body fat again. What's going on?
Starting point is 00:48:47 I'm burning less calories theoretically. I shouldn't be burning more body fat. It's like, well, no, not necessarily. Your body's adapting now. It doesn't feel as stressed. And now it feels like it's metabolism can speed up a little bit without being afraid. And now you're burning body fat. So we just named a bunch.
Starting point is 00:49:02 We named, I think we named nine. Signs as signals that your body's over training. Again, like I said earlier, the opposite of all the things that we listed should happen to you with the appropriate amount of training. If you have one of these signs, it may or may not mean you're over training. If you have, you know, three, four, five or more of these signs,
Starting point is 00:49:21 the odds that you're over training are pretty high. But I think we should talk about now, let's say somebody's listening and they're like, okay, well, five of those were me. What do I do now? What do I do now? I think I'm over training. What's the first step? Number one, prioritize sleep.
Starting point is 00:49:37 Number one, I think that has to be, and what we mean by prioritize sleep is set a routine just like you prioritize getting ready for work every single day or get ready to take a test or get ready for something that you do at work, think about the same way with sleep. And this was something that was hard for me. It was something that most my clients I had never had. Like it's so crazy we have all these routines
Starting point is 00:50:02 that we do for so many other aspects of our life But one of the most important things that we know from all the research and you've probably heard is sleep Sleeps extremely important, but yet very few people have like very rigid routines that they go through there Hey, this time I have dinner. I go from my walk for an hour afterwards. I read for a little bit I you know sit by a fire, candlelight, I turn off all the blue light, I don't stare at my TV past a certain time. You know, a lot of people just don't put a lot of effort into preparing their brain, preparing their body for a good night's rest.
Starting point is 00:50:40 And that has got to be the first place that I take anybody who is potentially overtraining as we have to address that first. Yeah, it's, we expect to just, you know, turn off the bright lights, put our head on the pillow, boom, fall into good sleep. Doesn't work that way, your brain starts to receive the signals that the sun has gone down by the, by the, how bright the room is
Starting point is 00:51:02 or whatever that you're in. So turn the lights down. I do this about an hour or two before bed, or I turn them off, and I go by either candle light, or I use those. I try and mirror the sun. So what depends on what time of the year it is, that the sun sometimes goes down at six.
Starting point is 00:51:14 Certain things down. Yeah, I mean, if the sun is down outside, I start bringing down the lights, or that's, you know, we work with a company that has blue blockers. I throw my blue blockers on. I mean, that's, I just, I keep it in my living room where I'm at normally at 5, 6, 7, 8 PM at night.
Starting point is 00:51:31 When that sun goes down, I reach for those because I know it's inevitable. I'm probably going to still look at my phone one or two more times. I'm probably going to watch one of our favorite Netflix shows or whatever. At least I'm blocking out all that high blue light that my body is getting, that's telling my brain it's still in the middle of the day. I want to start settling it down by doing that. Totally. The next thing I would say is reduce the intensity of your workouts.
Starting point is 00:51:55 I think that's more important than reducing the frequency of your workouts if you had to pick one. So that's the first place I would go. Go do your workout like you normally have scheduled, but workout way easier. So instead of going to the gym and beating yourself up, maybe go to the gym and practice all the exercises, or instead of doing your fast five mile run,
Starting point is 00:52:16 do a slow jog or walk for five miles. Reduce the intensity of everything that you're doing and allow your body, the ability to start to catch up and start to recover and adapt. Seek that feeling you were talking about. This was, and I remember when I finally figured this out because you're right, you will leave the gym feeling good. You should.
Starting point is 00:52:39 And for many, many years, I did not feel, leave the gym feeling good. What I thought was good was my body was hammered. It was exhausted. I was drenched in sweat. I was hobbling. Like that means it was a good session. That's wrong. Like a good session, I walk out and I feel aired up. I feel energetic.
Starting point is 00:53:00 I feel like I could have done another 10 sets in there. You don't need to go until you can't go anymore, go and feel good. Feel that you're the rest of your day should feel very, very good from lifting. Totally. The third thing would be to reduce the frequency of your workouts. So if you're doing the first two and you're still feeling over trained, then I would start cutting back on how many days a week. And that's most likely somebody who's five, six, seven days a week.
Starting point is 00:53:27 This is less likely somebody who's only trained. For your gym heroes. Yeah, this is less likely somebody who's training only two or three a week. Totally. Totally. And then add a recovery recuperative element to your routine. So what would that be? Mindfulness meditation would be one. Stretching.
Starting point is 00:53:48 Mobility practice. Yeah, light stretching and mobility. It would be, sauna use or cold, hot contrast, showers would be another one. Now these recovery, recuperative type elements can help, but they're not, they're not cures, because I know people who are like, oh, I'm overtraining, you know what I should do?
Starting point is 00:54:07 I should just add some sauna. Yeah. They don't change anything else, right? There's not gonna add some sauna. No, they don't make that big of a difference, but they can make somewhat of a difference. I tend to do this with clients who are training six days a week and then I tell them, okay,
Starting point is 00:54:21 I want you to only work out four days a week because you're doing too much. They're like, but I gotta do something those other two days and like, well, that's okay. Why don't you do some stretching, mobility work and stuff. And then I think too, yeah, we do have to look into the nutrition.
Starting point is 00:54:32 We have to look at like making sure that you have adequate calories, adequate, and maybe adjusting your macronutrients so you have a little more facile, more protein, something that's a little more restorative to help aid in the recovery process, like going forward. Totally, too low of calories or too low of carbohydrates, proteins are fats. Definitely too low of proteins and fats. But sometimes too low of carbs also can impair your body's ability to adapt. I mean, if you're too low on proteins and fats,
Starting point is 00:54:59 almost any type of exercise will be too much. But for some people, even carbohydrates, going too low of carbs for too long, even though the workouts are the same, everything's the same, they start to notice that their body just isn't feeling as good and they're not recovering as much. That would be a very close number one to me, Justin. It's sleep I would put out there, but because I think chronic under-eating
Starting point is 00:55:21 is the number one factor, it's very common, you brought that up. I could, I just went through this whole list of clients in my head knowing exactly that was a major factor. It was just chronically eating in a deficit. Pretty much consistently, I don't even know times like some of my clients would just stay in that deficit pretty much the whole year.
Starting point is 00:55:44 And just think that they had to do that no times like some of my clients would just stay in that deficit pretty much the whole year. Yeah. And just think that they had to do that to maintain this certain body and get any progress going forward, which in fact, you know, had the opposite effect. Yeah. Now, for some of you who are like deep into overtraining and you're having an epiphany right now, you're having an aha moment, you're like, wow, okay, I'm, this is, I'm doing way, way too much. Try taking a week off, literally. Try taking a complete week off of exercise, focus on your sleep and your rest, and these are for the people where the overtraining symptoms are severe.
Starting point is 00:56:15 It seems like hormone imbalances. You may be a woman, you may have lost your period or you have really infrequent or irregular periods. You may be a guy, your libido is completely gone. Energy is totally shot. Feels like you have no testosterone. These people may benefit from taking just a week off, getting more rest, eating healthy, doing recuperative things for the body.
Starting point is 00:56:38 Then when you go back to the gym, then you can implement some of the stuff that we're talking about. A good recommendation, this is a shameless plug, but I mean, this is MAPS Santa Bolog. We refer to that as a great program for someone who's trying to build their metabolism. And in that program is an option to only train two days a week. So my recommendation for somebody who's having that aha moment that your time bar and I'll say I would be to take time off, take time off, and then start with MAPS Santa Bolog
Starting point is 00:57:03 and start two days a week and see how you feel from there before you build up to three and then follow the programming. And this is also the benefits of following solid programming because somebody has taken somebody who knows what the fuck they're doing as doing. They're doing has looked at the the organization of the exercises of what you're doing every single day, the total volume that's included in it, and that's thought out and mapped out for you.
Starting point is 00:57:28 It is a much bigger factor than people realize. Like, it seems simple and easy. You know, it seems simple that you could just rip this off the internet and grab anybody's ideas in terms of like, oh, this is a fun, good, cool workout or whatever, but to really hone it in on specifically what's gonna benefit you the most and individualize it. Like you need a professional really to draw that up for you.
Starting point is 00:57:52 Yeah, MAPS and Obolic is a phenomenal program. It's appropriate training, level, and intensity and exercise organization for most people. Most people listening right now, MAPS and, it will keep you in that optimal range of training, frequency, and in terms of progress. For most of the people listening right now,
Starting point is 00:58:13 and the good news is it's half off actually this month. And being in the episode, I'll give you the code for that. And with that, go to minepumpfree.com, check out all of our guides. They're all absolutely free. We have guides on training, fat loss, muscle building. We even have guides for personal training. Oh, we have a testosterone guide for men who want to learn about raising their testosterone levels naturally. You can also
Starting point is 00:58:33 find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media dot com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.
Starting point is 00:59:10 With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family.
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