EUGENIZATION.

A client of mine recently had a sit-down with her doctor; seems the doctor was alarmed at her recent hypertension (high blood pressure) and elevated heart rate and wanted to do more bloodwork.  While I’m no doctor, one thing became apparent to me after talking to this client for a minute or two - she was probably overtraining.

Strength training, Muay Thai, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and horseback riding are tough when you’re 46 and have an active lifestyle.  But it’s even tougher when you have an extremely high-stress job and get little to no sleep.  And what my client failed to understand is that, as stress-releasing and beneficial as exercise is, exercise is a stressor.  It weakens you, and it is in the repair of your body that you actually get stronger/faster/more enduring-er.

Recovery (or restoration, as it’s sometimes called) is that process by which muscles get larger, stronger, and more enduring.

Recovery is when the magic happens.  Without recovery, being repeatedly broken down during exercise, your body just gets weaker and weaker.

In a simplistic view, the basic model of recovery and restoration is as follows:

1. You exercise, and it’s worthwhile.  In other words, it’s hard enough to cause microtrauma to muscle fibers.  You’ve eaten into your energy reserves a bit and you are now weaker than you were before.
2. Your body responds to the microtrauma by rebuilding the damaged tissue through a complex hormonal response.  Additionally, it works to replenish used energy stores.  This all takes time.
3. Your body restores you to pre-exercise levels.  But it doesn’t stop there - it adds a little more.  Kind of like the industrious homeowner who reinforces her home’s walls after major storm damage, your body makes itself stronger than its previous baseline level “just in case.”  Most American sport scientists call this period supercompensation.
4. Alas, good things don’t last forever, and after a short while this compensatory response goes away and your body’s strength and ability drifts back to baseline (if the exercise stimulus is not repeated).

Follow?  If you’re a visual person, here’s a pretty “standard” graph of supercompensation.

Now, what does this imply?

1) If you want to make progress, you mustn’t let too much time pass between workouts.  Ideally, you’ll want to time your workouts to take advantage of the “peaks“, so that your baseline level of fitness/strength/lean body weight increases.  For most people (non-athletes), a strength training workout every 2-3 days would fit the bill (that comes out to 2-3 times per week, for those of you who like planning weekly).

2) Similarly, training too often is detrimental to progress, as you reintroduce the exercise stimulus (i.e., weaken your body) before supercompensation has occurred (i.e., before you’ve recovered).  Too frequent training (or too intense a training load) can lead to overreaching, and overtraining - and your progress grinds to a halt.

Got it?  Don’t overdo it.  If you start to exhibit signs of overtraining, back off.  The general rule is 2 weeks of no training activity if in full-blown overtraining, reduced or no training activity for a couple of days if overreaching, but (*trainer cliche alert*) listen to your body.

Full disclosure note:  Olympic-level judoka were studied for effects of overtraining on athletes, but researchers were unable to produce any of the relative changes in blood markers that typically accompany overtraining, no matter how hard they worked the athletes.  It was later concluded that this was because the athletes were chronically overtrained (hence no relative change in blood markers) and yet, were still able to perform at near-maximum output.  Translation: Unless you’re an elite-level athlete (with the robustness and recovery ability to go along with it), don’t follow elite level training programs.