This week, I help people work out less and more at the same time.
I've been very motivated in the gym lately. I've been lifting six days a week and running outside every day. But I found that I'm not making much progress. I feel tired but I've never worked this hard before. What's going on?
-- Matan Chorev, class of 2005
Chances are that you're OVERtraining. This has been a serious topic of discussion among strength and conditioning specialists recently. Some of the sporting situations you see on TV, such as coaches yelling "No pain, no gain!" and "The more you workout, the better you'll be at game time", are flawed.
After a certain amount of training, an individual's body can no longer handle the training stimulus and their performance either plateaus or declines. This change in performance is a result of a mistake in the training program. To fix your situation, I would recommend making some changes in your workout routine: Mainly, do less!
People underestimate the importance of rest in their workout. Allowing your body to recover from an intense lift or run is just as important as the lift or run itself. If you're not giving your body enough time to rest before applying another training stimulus, you'll eventually overtrain. So set aside some lazy time to recover.
As a rule for lifting, try to schedule each session for no longer than one hour. After an hour, the resistance exercise that you do will have very little, if any, benefit. If you notice that your desire to lift has decreased or that your lifting performances have decreased, chances are good that you've anaerobically overtrained.
As for aerobic exercise, there is no limit; however, you know your own limits best. If you notice that your performance has decreased, your body fat percentage has decreased beyond normal levels, or you experience increased muscle soreness or an altered resting heart rate, chances are that you've aerobically overtrained yourself.
Although you don't want to do too little in the gym, you also don't want to do too much. Play around with your workout for a bit and find the amount of exercise that works for you.
It's been over a year since I've worked out and I'm anxious to get back into it. How should I go about it?
-- Vanessa Agosti, class of 2005
I'm glad I've motivated someone to get back into working out.
First, start off slow. If it's been a full year, chances are that you're rather out of shape and you won't be able to immediately repeat what you did last year. If you're into running or aerobic exercise, start off with a low intensity, low volume stage. Break a sweat and keep that heart rate up for at least 20 minutes, but don't overdo it in the beginning. You don't want to hurt yourself.
If you're getting back into lifting, start off slow; go through a low intensity, low resistance stage to get back into the swing of things.
Within a week or two, you'll notice a solid improvement in what you can do. From there, start slowly increasing your training volume or intensity. When you feel as though you're making more improvements, kick it up another notch. Just make sure that you listen to your body and stop when it's necessary.
On a final note, if it has been a while since you've hit the gym, try the Tufts Personalized Performance Program. It's a new program that's encouraging everyone in the Tufts community to get in shape. Send an e-mail to Francis.Otting@tufts.edu and ask to be paired with a personal trainer. You'll get five sessions, all free of charge, in which you work one-on-one with a trainer to achieve your fitness goals. It's a great opportunity to get back into exercise.
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