What are the symptoms of overtraining ???

[houseofpain]

People talk about being overtrained and putting your muscles into an almost constant catabolic state.

Why are the outward symptoms of being overtrained?

 

[pwr_machine]

Symptoms cover a wide range of both physical and mental processes. I've listed some below.

No energy, fatigue
Lack of desire
Pessimism
Mood swings
Depression
Headaches
Decrease in strength
Decrease in body mass
Infections (i.e. cold sores, colds)
Muscle soreness lasting longer than usual
Insomnia

 

[spatts]

The first sign is that you find yourself starting to leave out spaces when spelling your name. Then, you forget your gender and where you're from. Generally within a week or so, you will find yourself asking thought provoking questions between 3:55 and 3:57 pm on one day per week (usually just Wednesday, but that's strictly anecdotal). Other than that, doubling and trippling up on punctuation marks is the only other way to tell.

 

[spatts]

"Kill CasualBB."

"Make Pillsbury your woman."

ROTFLMFAO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[SofaGeorge]

For me it's the voices. They start out innocent enough... saying nice things... telling you they are your friends... but then it takes a dark turn... especially on leg day after 20 rep squats. Then they start telling you to kill.

The worst part is when the voices start to argue:

"5 x 5 is the best."

"Only DC training works."

"Kill CasualBB."

"Make Pillsbury your woman."

I try to ignore them. I usually find to that if I give myself an extra rest day the voices stop.

 

[makedah]

When I overtrained, I would go to bed dreading exercise the next day. And my performance just went south. I couldn't do half of what I did in the previous week.

 

[houseofpain]

I've noticed slight decreases in strength and in body volume not mass (weight hasn't changed, but muscles don't seem as pumped and vascularity has faded a little. So I'm wondering if overtraining is what's causing the slight decline in results.

I've dropped my 6 day on 1 day off workout to a 3 on 1 off schedule that isn't tied to the 7 day week now.

Before I was doing:

Day-1 Chest & Back
Day-2 Legs & Abs
Day-3 Biceps & Triceps
Day-4 Chest & Back
Day-5 Legs & Abs
Day-6 Biceps & Triceps
Day-7 OFF

The new schedule still gives me the ability to average hitting all muscle groups about twice a week but never without at least a 72 hour rest between (vs. 48 hour rest between like the old schedule).

Day-1 Chest & Back
Day-2 Legs & Abs
Day-3 Biceps & Triceps
Day-4 OFF
Day-5 Chest & Back
Day-6 Legs & Abs
Day-7 Biceps & Triceps
Day-8 OFF

Is this still too much if my forward progress begins again and my maximums are still climbing?

 

[The Red Dragon]

That's still quite a bit...I hope you're not deadlifting twice a week and squatting twice a week. Even if your muscles have adequate healing time you are putting strain on your CNS. Post your rep/set/exercises. If it works for you then by all means...that's what's most important. I'm assuming you're totally natural here, if you're 'assisted' then heh, the rules sorta change . In any case, good luck.

 

[houseofpain]

Right now my routine is:

Chest & Back
-
Wide grip Flat Bench 8-6-4-2-1 starting at 165 and ending at 225
(no rest between)
Wide grip pullups 8-8-6-6-4
-
Close grip Flat Bench 6-6-6-6-6 starting at 155 and ending at 135
(no rest between)
Close grip pullups or machine rows at 250 8-8-6-6-4

Legs & Abs
-
Hack Machine Squats 8-8-8-8-8 starting at 315 ending at 585
(no rest between)
Weighted Ab Crunches at 200 8-8-8-8-8
-
Seated leg press 8-8-8-8-8 all at 320 (full machine stack)
(no rest between)
Hanging Leg Raises 10-10-10-10-10

Biceps & Triceps
-
Straight bar curls 8-8-8-6-4 starting at 70 and ending at 110
(no rest between)
Tricep cable press downs 8-8-8-6-4 starting 70 ending at 90
-
Cross body dumbell curls 8-8-8-8-4 starting 40's ending 55's
(no rest between)
Weighted dips or dumbell kickbacks using 35's 10-10-10-10-10

All was going well until about a month ago and then I hit a plateau that I've had trouble breaking. So I'm thinking this new schedule with the extra day of rest will help me get though it.

Oh... and I'm lifting 'unassisted' right now

 

[The Red Dragon]

Got any injuries? Back/leg etc?