Signs You Need to Slow Down Your Workout

Are you a believer in pushing yourself to the limit when working out to achieve your fitness goals? Whatever your workout goals are, whether it’s losing or adding weight or improving your cardiovascular health, you need to manage your body well during exercise to ensure you don’t risk harming your body.

A chiropractor can assess you and help you improve your workout routine to guarantee the best results while protecting your body from burnout. And in case you’re asking can my chiropractor help me lose a few pounds?

Yes, your chiropractor can help you lose weight in up to 12 weeks. But to achieve your weight loss goals, you ought to be informed of overtraining syndrome and signs you need to look out to know whether you need to slow down your workout and ensure you’re doing it right.

What is Overtraining Syndrome?

Often, you tend to push yourself to the limit hoping to achieve your fitness goals. Ironically, we end up experience overtraining syndrome. This is a situation where you work out too much without giving your body adequate time to recover. The condition occurs after an extended period of intense physical activity with little to no rest.

When you indulge in an intense workout with no time to rest and recover, your body gets overwhelmed by stress. Eventually, your routine backfires; if you’re looking to lose weight, you may add fat instead. Also, the body may become weak and adversely affects your overall health.

The best way to deal with this situation is by getting adequate rest. While at it, eat healthily and hydrate sufficiently. You may also find it more beneficial to consult a workout specialist to help you adjust your workout plan.

But how do you know that you have an overtraining syndrome? Let’s discuss the signs that suggest you need to slow down your workout.

Sign 1: Overuse Injuries

If you over-train, your body is likely to experience overuse injury. These injuries come in the form of carpal, tendinitis, epicondylitis, etc.

Overuse injuries are common among athletes who are overexerting themselves. They usually occur because your body is exposed to unexpected forces. To prevent these injuries, avoid doing too much exercise too soon. Ideally, you should increase your workout activity gradually by not exceeding 10% of your activity in a week.

Sign 2: Not Getting Restful Sleep

Are you having issues with your sleeping patterns? Do you have insomnia, even after a long tiring day? Or do you still wake up tired after having enough sleep? Well, that’s another tell-tale sign of excess workout.

When you over-train, your body interprets that as stress and releases cortisol in response to acute stress. Consequently, the hormone interferes with sleep, making it hard to sleep. Other times, the body may get tired from over-training and respond by inducing too much sleep. In such cases, you may wake up after several hours while still tired.

Sign 3: Mood Changes

Sometimes you may experience mood changes such as anxiety, depression, and being easily irritable, and wonder what could be the reason. Well, emotional distress is one way your body may scream for a break from physical overload.

When your body is physically stressed, it releases stress hormones similar to those released when you’re under emotional stress. These hormones are the reason you lose cool and become unusually short-tempered and stressed.

Besides cutting down your workout time, you can manage stress resulting from physical overload by checking your diet. Ensure you drink lots of water and avoid foods with processed sugars and caffeine. Also, engage in fun, relaxing activities like taking an art class and going for a nature walk can help.

Sign 4: Workout Makes You Exhausted Rather Than Energized

Your workout sessions should leave you full of energy and ready to face the world. A good exercise session raises endorphin levels in the body, which increases your body energy levels, leaving you revitalized.

However, if you feel exhausted after a workout, then you might be experiencing burnout. Too much training may make you feel sluggish and urge you to sleep just after the exercise.

Sign 5: Drop in Performance

As you train, you’re more likely to experience a performance improvement. However, continued work out with no rest can take a toll on your body and affect your performance negatively. Rather than gaining, you’ll start to experience loss of muscle and energy.

A drop in performance levels is always evident in endurance-based activities like running. To avoid overload, you’re advised to focus on quality in your workout plan instead of quantity. A little rest can also go a long way in helping you to improve your performance levels.

Sign 6: Lack of Interest in Exercise

For the most part, working out is an enjoyable activity. A moment meant to boost your feel-good hormones, endorphins. So whenever training starts to feel like a tiring must-do activity, and you’re no longer interested or motivated to partake in it, then that could be your body signaling burnout. You must, therefore, respond accordingly and grant your body the much-needed break.

Lack of motivation in exercise is prevalent in weightlifting activities, where you require lots of power, sprinting, and speed. These exercises drain your energy, and as such, you need to restore your energy by having some rest.

Sign 7: Getting Sick Frequently

Regular exercise improves fitness and helps boost your body's immune system. It also enables the body to work effectively in fighting infections and improve blood flow.

Ironically, over-exercising can make your body weak. Too much exercise weakens the immune system, making you susceptible to diseases and illnesses. Besides falling sick frequently, it takes longer to recover from these diseases.

Sign 8: Sore Muscles

Joint and muscle soreness is another sign you need to regress your workout. While it’s normal to experience slight muscle soreness some hours after working out, delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) that extends to several days is usually a sign you’re pushing too hard.

In such cases, you need to give your body a break. Having rest days and including cross-training in your workout plan should allow your body to recover. If the muscle pain persists and impedes your normal day-to-day functioning, you are better at seeking the help of a professional chiropractor.

Sign 9: Being Out of Breath

I’m certain, at some point while exercising, you may have run short of breath. When you find yourself panting more than you should during exercise, then that means you’re pushing yourself too hard. Always take some time off to catch your breath and recover. Your body should catch up within 60 seconds or more, depending on your fitness levels.

Sometimes running short of breath may be accompanied by other symptoms like high fever, wheezing, or swelling. This is usually an indication of a more severe problem like a heart attack. Therefore, you should immediately seek medical attention if you experience other additional symptoms.

Sign 10: Hitting a Plateau

Have you been exercising hard, making so much progress, improved strength, speed, and overall performance, and then suddenly you hit a plateau?

If that’s the case, you’re probably suffering from overtraining syndrome.

Indeed, hitting a plateau is one way your body responds to overworking. At that point, there is no need to push harder because you’ll be putting too much effort just to hurt your body.

Instead, you’d want to take a break and look into your training schedule and squeeze some free time to allow your body to recover.

Final Thoughts

There’s never a one-size-fits-all measure for too much workout. We all have different degrees of body resilience for exercise. And that’s why you need to learn to listen to your body to get the most out of your workout. It’s normal to experience a certain level of acceptable exercise-induced soreness, but you need to know when to stop pushing too hard.

If you experience anything from overuse injuries, sore muscles, a drop in performance, and mood changes to hitting a plateau when working out, then that could be your body asking you to stop. Listen to it and give your body the rest it needs.

 

Signs You Need to Slow Down Your Workout to Best Current Sports News

Top of This Page