The ache of the last training session still lingering in your muscles you methodically go through your warm up. You’re convinced once the blood starts pumping and you start to sweat your body will be ready for today’s session. As you train things feel harder than they should, things that were easy last week are a struggle now. You’re not hitting the personal bests you want despite pushing yourself harder than ever before, in fact you’re barely able to beat what you did last week despite feeling like you’re putting more effort in.
Training should be tough but there’s a big difference between pushing yourself to a new goal and pushing yourself through overtraining to an injury. At Richmond Osteopaths we see many athletes suffering from the effects of overtraining injuries. Tendon sprains, impingements, back pain and tiredness all caused from training too hard.
Overtraining can cause a number of subjective symptoms like fatigue and loss of appetite but here at Richmond Osteopaths we like to have scientifically proven , measurable markers of overtraining. Here’s how to tell you’re overtraining, the signs:
- Blood pressure and heart rate are higher than normal when at rest (Baumert M, 2006)
- Grip strength goes down (Bachero-Mena B, 2017)
- Urine pH goes down (becomes more acidic) (Palacios G, 2015)
Why do these markers indicate overtraining?
- We use a blood pressure measuring kit to determine how much your heart rate and blood pressure has increased from the normal resting amount. As you begin to slip into overtraining demand on the heart increases which leads to the increased values.
- We use a sensitive grip strength equipment to track the power of your muscular contractions , even in an aerobic sport like running , this will decrease when overtraining occurs.
- As the body struggles to repair itself and deal with various metabolic processes, such as clearing lactic acid, the body’s acidity will increase and this will be reflected when we do a litmus test for urine pH.
If you have any of the symptoms mentioned above or are just curious about how far you are pushing your body come in for an assessment . We can tailor specific treatment programs to monitor you as you train, keeping your body healthy and helping you to win.