I see / hear people talk about overtraining quite a lot, but I don’t think that most people realize they are actually referring to overreaching. They are similar, so I can understand the confusion.. but what is overreaching and how does it differ from overtraining or general fatigue?

 

 

 

Overreaching is worse than being generally fatigued and most often is what people feel when they go a little ‘too hard’ at the gym, or are moving at a little too high of an intensity for too long while cross-country skiing. Overreaching can be simplified as a precursor or intermediary state before your body reaches the status of overtrained.

This means that overtraining is ultimately something that takes a lot of negligence to ones body and the warning signs that it is giving – this negligence can lead to some big ramifications down the road as well.

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How does this happen? Well, both will occur from a build-up of fatigue. Fatigue, in regards to training, will manifest when a full recovery was not achieved after an intense workout / training session. This resulting fatigue will slowly build up; especially with subsequent training also lacking a full recovery.

If you missed our short facebook post explaining fatigue, you check that out below for extra background information.

Fatigue can build up for a month or two before it actually results in overreaching. This will force you to take recovery more seriously in order to maintain your current work load, but will also likely result in a loss of performance as well as a stronger intensity of post-training soreness.

A build-up of fatigue CAN happen quicker; I will usually see this manifest quicker in individuals who make a dramatic increase in training volume or activity. An example of this could be: attempting to run a 10 kilometer run when you’ve never even ran 3 kilometers. Classic overreaching.

Overtraining will come in to play when you continuously ignore the signs of overreaching, and that underlying fatigue just continues building up. Remember that this happens over a greater period of time.

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If you want to put actual numbers on how long recovery time will take in overreaching versus overtraining, then I would classify them as:
→ Overreaching requires 2 days to 2 weeks of recovery time
→ Overtraining requires several weeks or even months of recovery time

If you are wondering about what this time would consider “making a recovery”, I would just say that returning to your normal level of effort or intensity of training pre-issue(s) is a good base line. Presumably you would want to continue afterwards on the path to whatever your goals were before this build-up of fatigue resulted in overreaching or overtraining.

 

This brings up an important question though.. how can you tell between general fatigue and overreaching in the first place? This can be a little bit tricky as symptoms will be virtually the same. However, with overreaching (and even more so with overtraining) the symptoms will just be more severe. Symptoms will have both psychological and physiological markers, with a bit of overlap as well.

 

Psychological markers:

— poor sleep habits

— depressed mood

— increased anxiety

— erratic / uncontrollable emotions

— decline in feelings of self-worth

— sensitive to criticism

Physiological markers:

— general body ache / mild soreness

— increased soft tissue tension

— muscle / joint pain

— constant feeling of being drained

— inability to relax

— heightened thirst (consistently more than usual)

— decreased appetite

— insomnia

— increased frequency of headaches

— lowered resistance to common illnesses

Having a couple of these present for you at all times may tell you that you are at risk of (or currently are) overreaching. The presence of more than a few of these should be enough to tell you to take it down a notch with your training, but some people will also assume that this is just a part of the training process. That kind of mindset can lead you into murky waters fairly quick.

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This is why we have so many people who get affected by overreaching, and later the more severe ramifications of overtraining. If you are wondering how bad these effects can actually be (aside from just more severe forms of everything I’ve already explained) well look no further then chronic conditions or diseases.

If you think that is a little bit blown out of proportion, then allow me to phrase it differently: a steady and constant build up of fatigue puts stress on your body. As fatigue turns to overreaching, and overreaching turns to overtraining this stress turns into a chronic condition. This follows the GAS Theory by Hans Selye – which you can read more about here.

Chronic stress can have major adverse reactions to your: brain function, nervous system, endocrine system, respiratory system, cardiovascular system, and even your reproductive system. For a more complete break down of how chronic stress affects those body systems checkout this fascinating article by the American Psychological Association.

 

Armed with this knowledge, you can see how simple it is for fatigue to spiral out of control. Knowing how to properly facilitate a true and full recovery of your body and tissues is something that should not be taken for granted. Next we will explore the different types of recovery (yes there are different types – I wish I could say that it was a simple topic).

 

This is the first of a few different posts dealing with RECOVERY that will be released over the next few days. This post will be updated right here with related links after each successive post is up!