It is an easy thing to happen. You find yourself eyes deep in training, just clicking along and all of the sudden you realize you’re exhausted. Your paces have slowed down. You might even find yourself feeling under the weather. There are many signs of overtraining and not giving your body enough recovery. You can prevent overtraining if you’re careful. Not to worry, if you find yourself falling into the trap, you can fix it also.
If you constantly find yourself with sore muscles, you could be overtraining. When your muscles seem to be persistently fatigued and your legs just seem heavy, that is not a good sign. If you never take a day off, your muscles lack time to recovery. It is important to give your body the time that it needs. To reduce the risk of injury, consider trying our Blaze calf sleeves or Ignite arm sleeves.
What if it isn’t just your muscles; rather, you just feel fatigued in general? If you are getting adequate sleep and are fueling properly, yet are just feeling tired all the time, it might be overtraining. That is, of course, assuming you are not sick or overworking yourself in some other way. When you are sick, you need to rest and give your body time to recover. Continuing to train through sickness could actually end with you falling way further behind than if you had just taken a day or two off.
"If you have a sickness that won’t go away, even though you feel like you’re doing everything right, that could be a sign that you are doing too much."
Experiencing irritability is another sign that you may be overtraining. We don’t mean when someone does something to warrant that feeling… this is when you recognize that you are just a little bit cranky all the time lately. Sometimes fatigue that comes with overworking your body can just make you a little bit edgy.
There are overuse injuries runners are prone to. These include shin splints, plantar fasciitis and stress fractures. When you pile on mileage too fast or continue to pound pavement through an injury, you make yourself vulnerable to this type of problem. Listening to your body is important to help alleviate this type of concern.
"Yet another sign of overtraining is that you are seeing a performance decline."
If suddenly you can’t keep paces you have normally been able to easily maintain, you might be overdoing it. This same thing can happen in regards to other types of workouts such as weight training or anything really.
As a runner, if you see a performance decline, you may need some rest days. You also may just need to incorporate some easy running days into your workout regiment. Many runners neglect to implement days where they are taking it easy. If you are unsure if slowing it down is wise, look at workout schedules for elite runners. Even the elites take some easy days!
Overtraining running symptoms are often very specific. In particular, you may see the overuse injuries mentioned above as well as the performance decline. It is important that you do not show hesitation in remedying this when it rears its ugly head!
