Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Are you overtraining in your workouts?

Overtraining has been a hot topic in fitness world for the last couple of decades and there is a lot of confusion surrounding how much training is enough and how much is too much. In the SEAL Teams we had sayings like, Training is never over and Pain is good, extreme pain is extremely good.

Here are three schools of thought on overtraining:

1. It doesn't exist and the more training you do the better.

2. Everyone is overtraining and we all need to drastically reduce our training volume.

3. Some people (like myself) believe that it is an individual thing and we all react differently to training volume.

You can't simply look at someone's workout routine and tell if they are overtraining or not. It depends on the individual person. We all have different work capacities and some people can handle more workout volume than others and still make progress.

Another very often overlooked factor when it comes to overtraining is your lifestyle outside the gym. Do you have a stressful life or a physically demanding job? Do you get enough sleep?

The best way to know if you are overtraining with your workouts is to do a self-evaluation of yourself and your overall workout progress. I'll talk about that next.


But all you "CHARLIE MIKE" human racers -- here's a picture of my 83 year-young mom as my workout partner! Getting close friends and family involved is easy and makes working out more fun as you enjoy the journey towards "Perfect"tion.

Mojo Frog
aka Marcus Colburn

2 comments:

Joe G. said...

Mark –

Your Mom looks fantastic!

I printed your “23 secrets I used to cut 23 pounds of fat” and it’s sitting right here on my desk so that I can’t escape from it. You made an interesting point about metabolisms (plural, meaning different people have different make-ups). I am struggling with a lot of the 23 things, but luckily you started the article by saying “let one ... work for you,” THEN you went on to say “combine as many of these techniques as possible,” which is hard but I’m working on it. (As Coach Marty would say, that’s why they call it WORK). I’m trying to combine about 6 of your 23 suggestions, which I think I can succeed with, to lead me on to that glorious day when I say..

“Mirror, Mirror on the wall…..!”

Thanks again!

- Joe G.

Jim said...

Wow, fantastic! She doesn't look like 83 at all!

I wonder what I'll look like if I ever get that old~