#82

No additional benefit from the standpoint of CVD protection, perhaps, but that’s not the only reason to exercise more than once a week.

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#83

Enlightening input, thank you - incredibly insightful indeed.
I have a different perspective on the notion that only professional athletes can overtrain. FWIW, I’m a small female and I was not talking about isolated strength training.

Intramuscular mechanisms of overtraining

A Narrative Review on Adipose Tissue and Overtraining: Shedding Light on the Interplay among Adipokines, Exercise and Overtraining

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#84

Sure, anyone can get into trouble with insufficient recovery. Technically “overtraining” refers to a longer term situation for healthy athletes who are pushing a bit too hard for too long. But for us regular people, we can get into trouble easily if we aren’t paying attention or have adopted a “no pain; no gain” mindset.

Under eating (to lose weight), under sleeping (to fit in my workouts), increasing exercise too quickly (to keep up with my new athletic friends), non-caloric/protein nutritional deficiencies, chronic illness (metabolic issues in particular), inflammaging (slowing down adaptation), etc.

HRV is a good guide for tracking where you are. It won’t tell you the “why” but it will tell you something is not working or ready yet.

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#85

Thanks Joseph, on my way out and still wanted to respond to your previous post. You are certainly right and I do keep an eye on HRV. However, for several reasons I’ve been wondering if it is a sufficiently sensitive biomarker - also for different types of sports, and whether it should not be combined with other markers.
Thanks for sharing your Podcasts here, on another note. They are incredibly informative with fantastic guests.

Unfortunately, an increasing HRV trend throughout training is not always a good thing and thus should not always be interpreted as such. In fact, several studies have reported increasing HRV trends in overtrained athletes predominately involved in endurance sports. For example, Le Meurr et al.13 showed decreased maximal incremental exercise performance and increased weekly HRV mean values in elite endurance athletes following a 3-week overload period, compared to a control group who saw no changes. Following a taper, performance supercompensation was observed along with a return of HRV toward baseline.
https://simplifaster.com/articles/interpreting-hrv-trends-athletes/

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#86

@Pat25 Thanks. Here is a great episode with Mr HRV, Marco Altini. He does not oversell the usefulness or under report the weaknesses of HRV. It’s worth a listen. I agree we should never rely on a single biomarker for anything.

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#87

Interesting take. Dr Attia was just saying that he worries about overtraining and that in fact he did overtrain.

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#88

A simple look at his physique shows he isn’t.

“I’m worried about overtraining” is just an excuse to be lazy.

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#89

I believe that it’s quite easy to train too much; this is my experience. Actually, ‘training too much’ is an imprecise term because what matters is overall stress, meaning that intensity is key. If I just do only weight training at the gym, it’s not very easy for me to overtrain. But since I enjoy cycling a lot, the situation is different for me. A few weeks of cycling with too high an intensity, and my resting heart rate noticeably increases, and my HRV (RMSSD) drops, as measured in the mornings. Also, insomnia returns every time I train too much. For context, I train six times a week, about 10-12 hours total. My goal is to gradually increase the hours, and monitoring HRV and resting heart rate helps me intervene early. I personally know someone whose career was ruined due to severe overtraining; his body never again tolerated high loads. Many top coaches have also warned about this. These are, of course, extreme examples, and warning signs do appear first, giving you time to react. The usual terminology seems to be that if you train too much, you enter the ‘overreaching’ zone, and if you ease off for a moment, everything returns to normal. However, if you stay in the overreaching zone for too long, true overtraining syndrome is possible, and that’s a serious condition.

Nowadays, overtraining syndrome is rare among professional athletes because coaching is so advanced, and they are closely monitored. Among amateurs, it is more common due to a lack of knowledge and monitoring. Also, a lack of progress can be due to poor recovery, and if you don’t recover and continue training on top of that, you won’t improve, and in the long run, overtraining is possible. Alan Couzens has written good material on the topic, which I recommend.

For the majority of people, overtraining is not a threat, unless they have significant stress from work or other factors.

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#90

Fantastic, thanks, that looks very interesting. Definitely on my list to listen to this weekend. :grinning: