Are You Training Too Much?

When you are deep into a training regime, you can understand how addictive running and physical exercise can be. But with any addictive pastime, there are dangers of doing too much.

Burnout is common amongst runners who overtrain, and when this happens, it seriously impacts the regime and the day-today life of a runner. Overtraining is characterised by a number of symptoms including feeling run down, unable to complete workouts, constantly catching colds, being riddled with aches and pains, lacking motivation, declining in fitness or being stuck on a plateau.

If any of these symptoms sound all too familiar to you then it is possible you might jus be having an off day, but it is also possible that you are suffering from burnout or overtraining.

One of the biggest problems is that when these symptoms start to occur, people try and push themselves harder than before to make up for it instead of easing off. 

You don’t have to be an athlete to suffer from overtraining. Even if you only go to the gym for a couple of hours a week or only run four to five days a week, the problem can still have an affect on you. Elite athletes’ overall training volume is much higher than yours, but not only are they conditioned to a more challenging workout schedule, they also schedule in vital ‘down time’ into their programmes.

Athletes have a well-planned training, eating and resting diary to make sure their bodies are getting everything they need. Even with a team of professionals to help plan all these, it is still unlikely that they get through an entire year without any injury. Without coaches, physiotherapists and nutritionists on your side, not to mention battling with hangovers, full-time jobs and just life in general, we have much more stress to deal with than an athlete does.

The importance of not pushing yourself too hard when training for running events is paramount. Obviously, we all need to push ourselves in order to improve, but push too hard, and something is going to give.