Back on the Horse

Well, it is the Olympics and I am sure everybody is fully engrossed in the spirit of athleticism at this point.  We expect greatness from these athletes - after all, they have been training for these events for how many years??? They are experts in their field, and thus we expect nothing short of pure gold from them!

But those kinds of expectations are unreasonable.  Even just having those expectations can be enough to set someone up for failure, due to no other factor than the sheer psychological pressure alone.  For the rest of us, when it comes to just our regular lives (and the goals and ambitions we set ourselves upon), I feel like we can sometimes sabotage ourselves in like fashion by putting unreasonable pressure on getting results, even when it's with the best of intentions.  As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with them!

Now, I'm not saying we're going to hell, of course (although dietary cheats are considered a grave sin in my life at this point!).  But what I am saying, is that life can be like a pommel horse sometimes and not all of us will land gracefully each go around.  July was a bit of an "off month" for me; it started and ended just like this video:

But even though I am only 6 months into diet and training, I feel like in 6 years it will be just the same:  moments of highs, moments of lows, and in the end, just a merry-go-round of getting up and 'back on the horse' until I see the success I want.  After all, I do expect gold of myself.  I just need to be prepared to peel my face of the mat each time I fall in the process.

When it comes to falling off of the horse, there is strategy even in that.  Very often, when we find ourselves losing our grip, there are a couple options at our disposal to mitigate the damage (or at least to save a little face).  For me, when I saw myself falling face-first into a stress-induced cold/flu last week, I referenced some advice I gave just a few days beforehand.  I subscribe to a page on facebook called Fit Chicks and they posted the following question from a fellow subscriber seeking advice:

How many of us can't identify with this, right???  We've all been there.  I left my own two-cents in the comments section, as follows:

Yes I am aware that there is a typo - it should say *aren't, not 'are'!

Now, I want to take a quick minute to discuss over-training.  To be fair and honest, I have never allowed myself a one week break from training other than for illness or injury.  I have reached overtraining and burnout points MANY times in my life, but up until only just recently, I never really knew what overtraining was, or the signs and symptoms of it.  I viewed it only as laziness, which made me push harder (which undoubtedly resulted in illness or injury, and thus the break my body desperately needed).

I posted on my Fan Page the other day about going through month-long spells of insatiable hunger and lethargy, and month-long spells of diminished appetite and abounding energy.  I could never figure it out.  For years I tried to understand what was going on, and was convinced it had to do with hormones.  I have had my thyroid levels checked more times than probably someone who legitimately has a thyroid problem!  Always normal.  Always.  Well, it wasn't until I re-read this post and my ensuing response that it dawned on me -- my spells of lethargy and hunger had nothing to do with hormones; they were 100% overtraining.

Bodybuilding.com posted a great article (found HERE) that details overtraining on a summary-level.  Overtraining, at its very basic, is simply pushing the body physically (or also mentally / emotionally) to a point that is beyond what it can recover from.  But it's not resultant of a sprint - that is to say, we all have workouts that are of higher intensity than others.  Rather, it is an accumulation over time where the body simply just breaks down because it can't keep up.  Signs and symptoms range from sleep and appetite issues to chronic muscle pain and fatigue during workouts to moodiness, depression/anxiety, and elevated blood pressure / heart rates even while at rest.  Teh strain can also deplete the immune system, resulting in colds and flues one normally would have been able to fight off.

According to the article "The Real Dangers of Overtraining" by QualityHealth.com (article found HERE), the process of overtraining can be described as such:

"What happens when you overtrain?  The goal of progressive exercise is to stress muscles enough to make them stronger.  If muscles aren't allowed adequate recovery time though, they rebel with fatigue, pain and poor function.   Tendons and ligaments that are put through too many repetitions or exposed to too much weight become inflamed.  Not only is this painful, it can cause such serious injury that it can shut down an athlete's career.  For less serious athletes, it can result in weekend warrior-type injuries that reduce your enthusiasm and capacity for future exercise."

I posted my response to the Fit Chicks status update literally ONE DAY before I found myself in a dilemma with falling deeply into sickness.  The lethargy I was feeling the couple days prior had become unignorable.  I thought perhaps I had fallen victim to overtraining myself (after all, just a couple days before I had gone on a spontaneous 10 mile beach run which lasted 2 hours!).  I told myself I would rest Thursday and let myself eat whatever I wanted but by the time Thursday was over, it was clear that I was in the throes of a nasty illness.  So, I took my own advice.  Just as I had said, one week of a training / diet break wouldn't be enough to throw me off course.  So I embraced it.  I slept, I lounged, I guiltlessly rested.  The result?  I got a one week break to rest my muscles, recover my health, and do a CRUCIAL re-grouping before I start completely over with intensity anew.  I am so excited!

I also learned a lesson in all of this.  I no longer am going to fear overtraining, or beat myself up if I feel my body is begging for a break.  I am thinking about actually planning a full week of rest every other month as a way to recover and re-group before pushing again.  Treat it as a vacation, you know?  Catch up on sleep, catch up with old friends, maybe do some laundry???? Hahaha :)  I mean, I can't believe all the great things I got to do in the past week even while dying of illness.  I caught up on some reading, got to place some phone calls with out-of-country friends, it was really nice to not be rushing from gym to work to gym to errands to bed, wash-rinse-repeat.

But with that said.... I'm ready to get back on that horse and give it another whirl!  Happy Friday!