Flash back Friday!! Below is a repost from back in May by Dr. Warren on Overtraining. I think it warrants reposting as we approach the end of the year, thinking about how we can finish out the year strong & thinking of goals for 2016.
Programming for a group of 155 athletes is by far one of the most difficult tasks we have. Our athletes vary by age, gender, fitness level, athletic background/exposure, goals, and the list continues! So given that difficult task, know that our goal is to program for the majority of our athletes and scale up or down from there. Our goal is to minimize the risk of injury for our athletes and increase the benefits of training!
Some athletes may think our programming is too easy, while others find it difficult! But we truly believe if you follow the programming, scaling appropriately (up or down), and working on specific skills or weaknesses here and there during open gym, before or after class, as desired, you’ll continue to see great improvements in your overall fitness!
The general CrossFit prescription is 3 days on, 1 day off. We know this isn’t always possible for people’s schedules – some people workout Mon-Fri, some come every other day or MWF & once on the weekend, etc. Just know that if/when you’re training several days in a row (3+), your recovery and output may be somewhat decreased in the later days of training.
Of course, if you have certain training goals, want to compete, etc. talk to your coaches!! We’re happy to help you tweak our general programming to better support your training goals! We’re here to serve you!
Here’s to happy & healthy training!
Stop Overtraining
In my opinion the “functional fitness craze” has done more for exercise and physical activity than anything in my lifetime. This has resulted in droves of individuals whom were not very fit or healthy becoming much more active. A byproduct of this craze has arisen an epidemic of Overtraining. The drivers behind overtraining are two-fold in my opinion:
- The very natural thought that if a little bit is good then more must certainly be better.
- The extreme lack of coaches with any concept of periodization
You may ask yourself what is Periodization? The rest of this article is an attempt to give a very simple explanation of periodization and why you should be doing it and why your trainer/coach should know what it is. In full disclosure I could not even begin to scratch the surface of all different periodization schemes.
Periodization is the systemic planning of training. This could be training for a football or basketball game, running a 5K, CrossFit, general exercise, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, gymnastics, and much more. Periodization has been around for many decades and many very smart people have developed different periodization schemes for different sport/activities.
There are 3 Stages in Periodization
- Alarm Stage- Initial shock to your system
- Resistance Stage- Adaptation and Progress
- Exhaustion Stage- Failure/Regression
The goal of any good program should be to increase the amount of time in the resistance stage and minimize the time in the exhaustion stage.
How many of you have made so much progress and continues to put in tons of work only to then hit a wall and not been able to improve your:
Squat? Deadlift? Snatch? Pull Ups? 5K Time?
If this sounds familiar to you then you are most likely OVERTRAINING and in the exhaustion stage of periodization. It is not abnormal to see some folks hang out in this exhaustion stage for 3, 6 ,12 months. They often think that the answer is to push harder and train more. The unfortunate reality is that the increased effort and training almost always leads into decreased recovery/performance and increased injury rate. The irony is that often these folks are forced to take time off due to injury and when they return they actually make much more progress because their bodies are able to have a “reset” period.
In the world of group fitness/functional fitness, it is very hard to keep all of our members in the alarm and or resistance stage even with well thought out programming. I encourage every individual to talk to your coaches to learn more about periodization and how to maximize your overall fitness/performance while decreasing your chances of entering the exhaustion stage and becoming stagnant.
Dr. Warren
