Are YOU in Danger of Over-training?

February 24, 2012 by Rob ⁰

A blog post from London Bridge Osteopath Dellus West, Harmony Pain Relief & Injury Clinic and a Facebook thread from CrossFit Central London coach Jon Shelby pointing out Finnish Researcher Heikki Rusko’sn method of spotting over-training has inspired the following post.

Both Dell and Jon provide  some good insight into the nightmare of over-training.  Dell suggests monitoring Blood Pressure and Pulse Rate values every morning.   Shelby offers a test based on resting heart rate and heart rate recovery after a minor activity (standing up).  However, I want to touch upon the not so concrete variables.

Starting with a story: 

On May 2011 I competed in the South East American Regional CrossFit Competition. The three days of competition shaped up like this:

• Day 1, 2000m Row, 28 HSPU,
• Day 2, 80Chest 2 Bar Pullups, 80 KBS, 100 OHS
• Day 3, 9 muscle ups, Second place finish at a birth to the CrossFit Games Team Competition

The team ready for Regionals!

Before regionals, my max deadhang pull-up was 29KG and my Amanda time was 4min50 seconds. Post-regionals, max deadhang pull-up was 14kg, and my Amanda time was 12min with unbroken squat snatches. What happened?

Trying to solve the fatigue puzzle.

Furthmore, leading up to the CrossFit Games, not only did I want to get back the weird gymnastics strength that I lost following regionals, but i wanted to PR my lifts and my times so bad I was training hard. A lot.

After messing around with strategies, I settled on the 1 day on, 1 day off approach that Blair Morrison suggested/follows in his blog.  I didn’t keep to it religiously though since we had team training a few days a week so i ended up hitting workout after workout.

It was going really well and i kept PRing and getting better but I didn’t notice the signs of fatigue start to creep up.  About half of my training sessions were fueled by colada, i was only getting 4-5h of sleep 2 nights a week.  My grip was starting to go.  I was failing HSPU.  But, I was PRing bar movements. Clean and Jerks, Snatch, Backsquat PRs.  That was really just a mask for what was really happening.

July 2011, The 2011 CrossFit Games

A Quick Team Huddle Before a Games WOD.

I entered the games in a run down state.  24/7 my grip felt weak.  The whole week leading up I was worried about letting the team down because of that.  I didn’t tell anyone cause it wouldn’t make a difference.  When it came to game time, it was do or die.  I felt handicapped and it was my own fault.

What happened? Over-training happened.

So what are some of the causes and signs of over-training you can look out for?

Causes (besides training too much)

• No rest days – Your body needs rest to recover and get better!
• Too much volume in a session – I found later that i can do 3 or 4 a day as long as the sessions are under 45min long from warm up to cool down.
• Too much volume overall -> CrossFit Endurance + SealFit = faceplant into a grave, please stop this.
• External factors – chronically high levels of cortisol (the stress hormone) have been shown in almost every animal to correlate to illness and shorter life spans.  Solution: Move to a tropical island, sleep 9h a night, eat free range grass fed everything.  be happy.  no stress.