With Parkour, Freerunning, and other related exercise, over training can be an extremely difficult bridge to cross, purely because the nature of Parkour is so appealing! Who could ask for more then an intense jam amongst friends in a well set out environment (or a challenging and relatively bear environment for that matter)? You start your session off with your headphones in your ear, warming up, getting your muscles prepared for what is going to be the most intense series of personal goals and challenges that you will need to overcome. You have butterflies jamming in the pit stomach, and as you begin your session you swiftly run through all the meditations and visualizations that you have spent the last few days in, preparing for what is about to unfold before you.
You have been living for this, every second of every moment of every day since the last jam. All your goals that you have set over the past few days lay before you, waiting to be achieved, all the obstacles and boundaries that you have created to overcome, are waiting in for you to happen to them. Your mind is one with your body and all your senses, at least to the best of your body’s capability, because you are over trained! And what do you do? Put your shoes back in your bag and head off home to watch another episode of Top Gear? No, you ignore the symptoms and continue with the jam. And this will go on for as long as it takes for you to either come down with a serious bout of flu, or an injury.
The best way to overcome any obstacle that we may encounter in life is to understand your obstacle. You need to know the texture of it’s surface, the gradient of its slope, the stability of its structure, and only after you have all these facts, can you devise a method of overcoming it. Knowledge in all forms is power, and this article serves to equip every reader with enough knowledge, to ensure that you never slip into the dreaded cycle of over training.
Over training is a particular state that your body falls into when you are not allowing yourself an adequate amount of rest for the amount of training you do. In other words it is too much work and not enough recovery. During training your muscles break down and get weaker. It is then during the resting period that follows, that your body begins to rebuild itself to a point where it was stronger then before the training session. A good metaphor would be a building that is broken down by an earth quake. Now in order to build the building again, stronger then before so that the next earthquake doesn’t break it down as easily, the builders will need adequate time to work on the project before the next earthquake strikes. In this case and luckily for you, you have got control over the frequency and intensity of these earthquakes.
Symptoms of overtraining are physical, and psychological, with the psychological symptoms much more distinct and easier for an athlete to identify. Mood swings, depression, sleepless nights, irritability, insecurity, defiance, hallucination, negative feelings or loss of enjoyment towards your sport, and mental fatigue are some of the psychological symptoms that athletes experience. Physiological symptoms are an increase in your resting heart rate, flu-like symptoms, aches and pains, injuries, headaches, joint stiffness, and generally low energy levels. You may also notice that during your training sessions you feel a disruption in the flow of your movements, an increase in your mistakes, reduced strength, power, endurance, and speed, and an increase in the time needed to recover. The chances are that if you have experienced more the one or two of these symptoms, then you should seriously consider the possibility that you may be over trained. Try to identify any other factors that may contribute to these symptoms so as to rule out any other possibilities and be sure about your diagnosis. If the conclusion is that you have been experiencing some or all of these symptoms, and there are no other possible causes for them, then you need to take the first step onto the path of recovery before you harm your body any further.
Training in an over trained state, no matter how tempting, is an extremely risky task especially when it comes to Freerunning and Parkour, as the two arts require acute mental awareness and require the athlete to constantly be alert. Apart from this, performance is hampered dramatically during an over trained state which when paired up with a sloppy mental status, is a disaster waiting to happen.
As a Traceur, thinking back, I have spent weeks and perhaps even months in an over trained state. When I think back over all the injuries that my body has endured, and I pin them onto the respective movements responsible, surprisingly the simple precision jump is the main culprit. This is because although this movement appears inferior and simple, it requires as much if not more skill and focus then any of the other movements we practice. Temporary laps in concentration can spell disaster in capital letters for you!
So the negative side affects of over training are not just the symptoms of overtraining, but also the increased risk of something bad happening to you as a result of those symptoms. Traceurs and Freerunners need to ensure that their bodies and minds are in top shape at every session in order to progress and train safely at each session.
Treating an over trained body
Rest, rest and more rest is the only way to treat an over trained body. The problem is that when a lot of athletes think of rest they don’t see the word as synonymous with “strengthening”. When your body is resting it is growing stronger! The exact antidote to an over trained state is different for different people, and it will vary depending on how long you have been over trained for. A person who has been over trained for a few weeks (2-5) should be ok taking 7 to 10 days off training, and then slowly getting back into a routine that is light and that involves at least one days rest between sessions. Slowly building this back up over the next couple of months will give your body the rest and gradual strengthening it needs to get itself back into top gear again.
In worse cases, it can take several months for a person to fully recover. Despite this, one must always remember that the longer you live in denial, the worse it will get and the longer the recovery process. It is always better to under train then to over train. By simply following these guidelines, you will be able to nurse yourself back to full strength:
- Ensure that you are getting at least 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night to allow your body to re-build and recover. Remember your body grows mostly at night so the closer you can get to 9 ours sleep the better!
- Ensure that you are consuming at least 2 grams of protein per kilogram that you weigh so that your muscles are able to rebuild adequately.
- Be sure to keep hydrated constantly by taking in no less then 2 litres of water per day.
Increase you carbohydrate intake to around 65% of your daily calorie intake to ensure that you body has enough energy resources to take what it needs from. - Ensure that in addition to you servings of fruit a vegetables, you take a good multivitamin.
- Lastly, and most importantly, make sure that you are not stressed out at work, or at home! Recovering from a state of overtraining is as much of a psychological matter as it is a physiological matter, which is why I recommend light yoga classes or simple meditation techniques that can be practiced daily.
After following these guidelines for 7 to 10 days of rest, slowly get back into well balanced routine, training one day on followed by one day off, while increasing you workload slightly and constantly. Remember for next time that prevention is better then cure and so in the long run it is always better to under train then to over train!
No comments:
Post a Comment