Anyone experienced parasympathetic overtraining?

[MMouse]

How long did it essentially take you to get out of the hole?

Reason I asks is cause during the last 6 weeks of my fight prep I've taken measures I regret taking. Training high volume amounts on insuffecient amount of calories (mainly carbs) in order to lose weight. Even though I did 80/20 where majority of my training was at aerobic intensities, eventually I was foolish to believe the lower RHR (45bpm) was in correlation to my improved fitness, that is until I realized even trying to get my heart rate at 130-140bpm was very difficult. But being a stubborn athlete I've pushed this for another 2 weeks and eventually I would lack explosiveness and endurance to maintain my power. I would even feel winded during light technical sparring. Whats even worse is I thought adding back the carbs would help but it didnt other than put on weight. I assume by this point it was too late. I didnt end up taking the fight as I realized I was overtrained and coming in I would underperform very badly.

Now I took 5 days off hoping things would be back to normal. And yesterday what was supposed to be easy day, I did two 90mins liss sessions and it ended up still feelig somewhat moderate and even though Ive consumed 3000+ calories, I still felt fatigue, unmotivated, sore, inflammed, burnt out the next day. And even though I ate alot carbs it temporarily made me feel good but eventually felt back in a rut.

This is getting myself a bit worried as Ive never experienced something like this. Ive decided to take another week off.

Any feedback would be great

 

[senri]

How long did it essentially take you to get out of the hole?

Reason I asks is cause during the last 6 weeks of my fight prep I've taken measures I regret taking. Training high volume amounts on insuffecient amount of calories (mainly carbs) in order to lose weight. Even though I did 80/20 where majority of my training was at aerobic intensities, eventually I was foolish to believe the lower RHR (45bpm) was in correlation to my improved fitness, that is until I realized even trying to get my heart rate at 130-140bpm was very difficult. But being a stubborn athlete I've pushed this for another 2 weeks and eventually I would lack explosiveness and endurance to maintain my power. I would even feel winded during light technical sparring. Whats even worse is I thought adding back the carbs would help but it didnt other than put on weight. I assume by this point it was too late. I didnt end up taking the fight as I realized I was overtrained and coming in I would underperform very badly.

Now I took 5 days off hoping things would be back to normal. And yesterday what was supposed to be easy day, I did two 90mins liss sessions and it ended up still feelig somewhat moderate and even though Ive consumed 3000+ calories, I still felt fatigue, unmotivated, sore, inflammed, burnt out the next day. And even though I ate alot carbs it temporarily made me feel good but eventually felt back in a rut.

This is getting myself a bit worried as Ive never experienced something like this. Ive decided to take another week off.

Any feedback would be great

Have another refeed, and monitor your weight. Take time off as you are doing, and get some sleep. At this point i think it's a waiting game to see how well you will recover.

 

[selfcritical]

If it's parasympathetic overtraining (which is consistent with an unresponsive HR), then you want a drastic reduction in volume, but at least some intensity/power work to remain, and "contrast" recovery methods, like sauna to cold shower, as well as dynamic mobility work

 

[MMouse]

Thanks for the feedback. Lesson learned, never restrict calories during high volume training.

At this point i think it's a waiting game to see how well you will recover.

What frustrated me was after taking 5 days off, mentally I felt ok going back, but still was physically unresponsive . Definately hard to tell if you're still in hole unless you attempt to train.

 

[Tosa]

Rest, and when you return to training, start light, and gradually build back up. Not with two 90 minute sessions of LISS.

 

[CelebritySexist]

Sympathetic Training

Hell awaits!

 

[ironwolf]

Im not sure if I ever really overtrained but back when I was competing in ironman triathlons, I certainly didnt rest enough. Often I would train 20-25 hours a week without taking days off or doing really easy workouts.

There was one point where I couldnt sleep at all and continuously got colds for the better part of 3-4 months and long stretches where I would get out on my bike and just getting my hr into the low 140s (which at the time was an HR I could keep fairly easily for 3-4 hours) was brutally hard. I also struggled with injures during that time. Give that, I would say that I either overtrained, or I was undertrained for the volume/intensity I was doing. I remember getting on my indoor bike trainer for an hour interval session where the goal was to do intervals of 1 to 5 minutes, I can remember for at least a month not being able to get my HR up during those intervals and my legs just being torched. I also lost a lot of weight even though my race weight was 175, I dropped to 168 and felt weak and sick. It also didnt help that I was racing almost every weekend

I really dug myself into a hole and ended up with an injury to my soleous that basically ended my triathlon "career". THat took months to get out of and actually be able to train regularily again.

When I did get back to it, I did LOTS of LISS like 30 minute runs, easy swims, short bike rides, it was very discouraging, I remember getting out on my bike with a plan to do 3 hours and calling it quits after an hour because my legs were just burning...even though I was riding on flat roads at only 18mph. It sucked.

During my last year - year and a half doing triathlons, I was pretty much in constant pain, I had some bursitis in my hip and something wrong with the ball of my foot/big toe on the opposite side of the hip. I didn't tell anybody because I was the president of the University triathlon club and felt I had a reputation which is stupid, I also didnt tell my coach who was a liscensed USAT professional coach married to a physiotherapist so he probably could have helped me. Instead, I just kept adding more volume and intensity to my training until I just couldnt do it anymore. It was stupid, really stupid. I get really depressed these days when I talk to some of the guys I train with and see how awesome they are doing at triathlons and all I j=had to do was take a few months off probably nd get injuries and rest sorted out.

Anyways, TLDR: rest now instead of being forced to rest later when you dont want to.

 

[MMouse]

Ironwolf,

Were you getting enough carbs during those times when you were putting in 20-25+hours per week?

I always thought l.i.s.s would never play a role in overtraining and you can do as much as you want as long as you want, provided your within the approriate ranges in comparison to say doing intervals day in day out.

When does it become too much for a competitive/recreational athlete, whos got work and other stresses and resposibilities on a day to day basis?

I guess another problem I realize as well is having the belief more is better kind of thing. I recall the best fight prep I had, I was only doing 1/2 or more (5hrs per week 60mins per day) of what Im doing now and I was happy with results Ive gotten during the fight (didnt feel gassed and recovery between rounds was unbelievable) that lead me to wanting to eventually doing more l.i.s.s.

 

[ssdd]

I read your last thread and I believe you were doing too much LISS to begin with. Check out this article, I think it will you help you structure your training: Periodization for Mixed Martial Arts
That article is a good primer, but you might have to consult something more-specific to get a complete grasp of how to set up each block. Something like Ultimate MMA conditioning would probably be best.
Although I forgot, are you competing in Boxing, MT or MMA?

 

[JauntyAngle]

I've experienced over-sympathetic parrot training.

Try teaching a parrot the merits of Tough Love. It ain't easy.

 

[MMouse]

I read your last thread and I believe you were doing too much LISS to begin with. Check out this article, I think it will you help you structure your training: Periodization for Mixed Martial Arts
That article is a good primer, but you might have to consult something more-specific to get a complete grasp of how to set up each block. Something like Ultimate MMA conditioning would probably be best.
Although I forgot, are you competing in Boxing, MT or MMA?

Thanks. I do MT. I own a copy of that book as well. I recall reading one of Joel's comments on here saying when he went down to Thailand, he said those guys do a ton of liss.

Never had thought to much liss was possible. Miss the days were it was hard to keep the HR down:icon_sad:

I've experienced over-sympathetic parrot training.

Try teaching a parrot the merits of Tough Love. It ain't easy.

at least it's easier to recover from

 

[selfcritical]

Those guys in thailand have a decade of easy jogs to build up to their volume. Recovery capacity is an adaptation like everything else.

 

[ironwolf]

Ironwolf,

Were you getting enough carbs during those times when you were putting in 20-25+hours per week?

I always thought l.i.s.s would never play a role in overtraining and you can do as much as you want as long as you want, provided your within the approriate ranges in comparison to say doing intervals day in day out.

When does it become too much for a competitive/recreational athlete, whos got work and other stresses and resposibilities on a day to day basis?

I guess another problem I realize as well is having the belief more is better kind of thing. I recall the best fight prep I had, I was only doing 1/2 or more (5hrs per week 60mins per day) of what Im doing now and I was happy with results Ive gotten during the fight (didnt feel gassed and recovery between rounds was unbelievable) that lead me to wanting to eventually doing more l.i.s.s.

At the time I was eating absolutely everything I could find, me and my girlfriend would go to restaraunts and I would order like 2 meals and a bunch of other stuff. Still lost weight.

I've experienced over-sympathetic parrot training.

Try teaching a parrot the merits of Tough Love. It ain't easy.

Im 90% sure you actually ARE a parrot that just types really long winded stuff about lifting weights...

 

[MMouse]

Those guys in thailand have a decade of easy jogs to build up to their volume. Recovery capacity is an adaptation like everything else.

I agree.

I was doing some research on joels forum and looked up lyle mcdonald's contribution since hes an endurance guy himself, he states how it's alot easier to overtrain high volume low intesity as oppose to low volume high intensity. His reason being that if you go all out, you're pretty much done for the day wereas low intensity you'll still be able to grind and keep going despite feeling hard digging yourself into a deeper hole.

And looking back at my volume. It was way too much for me to handle per week. A similar poster on 8weeks asks if doing liss 60-90mins 5-7x a week would be fine. And he was advised not to

 

[ironwolf]

I agree.

I was doing some research on joels forum and looked up lyle mcdonald's contribution since hes an endurance guy himself, he states how it's alot easier to overtrain high volume low intesity as oppose to low volume high intensity. His reason being that if you go all out, you're pretty much done for the day wereas low intensity you'll still be able to grind and keep going despite feeling hard digging yourself into a deeper hole.

And looking back at my volume. It was way too much for me to handle per week. A similar poster on 8weeks asks if doing liss 60-90mins 5-7x a week would be fine. And he was advised not to

I agree with that. Regarding my earlier post, when I was doing ironmans, it was very normal for me to finish work on Friday and do a 2 hour swim followed by an hour on my bike trainer in the garage, Saturday was usually a 6 hour ride followed immediatly by a ~short-ish run, Sunday was a 2 hour bike ride followed immedietly with a 2-3 hour run. the other 4 days of the week were typically 2-3 hours (2 sessions) of either swim/bike/run.

I alwasy thought it was interesting that the fastest guys i knew were typically married guys with kids who had far less time to train. I knew one guy who was a 9:20 ironman who trained ~8-9 hours a week.

 

[MMouse]

I agree with that. Regarding my earlier post, when I was doing ironmans, it was very normal for me to finish work on Friday and do a 2 hour swim followed by an hour on my bike trainer in the garage, Saturday was usually a 6 hour ride followed immediatly by a ~short-ish run, Sunday was a 2 hour bike ride followed immedietly with a 2-3 hour run. the other 4 days of the week were typically 2-3 hours (2 sessions) of either swim/bike/run.

I alwasy thought it was interesting that the fastest guys i knew were typically married guys with kids who had far less time to train. I knew one guy who was a 9:20 ironman who trained ~8-9 hours a week.

Thats an insane amount of volume.
What boggles my mind is that when I asked how much you were eating and I assumed a huge amount of calories yet eventually you still had signs of being unable to fully recover. And compared to how much I was eating, I was doing 1000+ deficits. Never again.

 

[JRT6]

When I over train, which is pretty much my cycle of training, it's a slow boil so I don't expect my recovery period to go any faster.

What helps me in regards to lifting is to focus like made on one exercise like close grip bench for instance and when that goes south switching to weighted pushups because they're both horizontal pushing but both affect my shoulders differently.

 

[Thunderkopf]

I alwasy thought it was interesting that the fastest guys i knew were typically married guys with kids who had far less time to train. I knew one guy who was a 9:20 ironman who trained ~8-9 hours a week.

That's insane. Do you know what his routine was like?

 

[ironwolf]

That's insane. Do you know what his routine was like?

I think his swimming was almost entirely drill work for efficiency. His long bike rides were ~ 3 hours and he used a power meter to keep his efforts exact, I know he also reced with a powe meter so he coud precisly meter his effort on the bike. Thats all I really know. His FTP was like 450 watts, he was a beast.

 

[Thunderkopf]

I think his swimming was almost entirely drill work for efficiency. His long bike rides were ~ 3 hours and he used a power meter to keep his efforts exact, I know he also reced with a powe meter so he coud precisly meter his effort on the bike. Thats all I really know. His FTP was like 450 watts, he was a beast.

Of course...that makes a lot of sense. That's brilliant. He was "hacking" his training by working primarily on his form for maximum efficiency. Thanks for sharing, ironwolf.