Hopefully, you have set goals for working out, just as you have established goals for other areas of your life in which you hope to see progress. As a good performance-planner, your goals should be SMART: specific and small, measurable, attainable and actionable, realistic and relevant, and time-based.
When you evaluate the SMART goals in place for your workout program, are you seeing progress? Are you meeting your goals? For example, are you increasing muscle mass? Losing weight? Are your workouts resulting in reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol or A1C (diabetic risk) numbers? If you are not achieving your workout goals, it could be the result of overtraining.
Overtraining syndrome can counteract and even sabotage your workouts. Although it may surprise you, the root of overtraining is stress. Stress is one of the most underestimated contributors to poor health, and the relationship between stress and overtraining provides even more proof.
Stress is a natural occurrence that we cannot escape. In fact, not all stress is bad. Up to a certain level, stress supports healthy, even optimal, performance. But stress above a certain level, an overload of stress, can cause imbalance, breakdown and distress.
A number of lifestyle conditions and behaviors contribute to your level of stress, and working out is one of them.
You may be thinking, “But doesn’t working out help reduce stress?!” Well, working out is designed to benefit your body by breaking it down so that it rebuilds stronger. Breaking your body down during workouts is what it sounds like – a form of stress.
Like many things associated with health, working out in moderation is the key. Past a certain point, you may be overtraining.
