How To Know If You're Overtrained

Hey, what's up, you guys? It's Ben Greenfield and I recently did a webinar with WellnessFX about how to recover faster and how to reduce inflammation. About 40 minutes. That webinar is available over@wellnessfx.com and I'll be sure and link to it in this video. But the first 20 minutes or so we had some scratchy audio and some technical difficulties going on. So today I'm here, it's Friday afternoon, I'm in my office and I wanted to address some of the stuff that kind of didn't get across during that webinar because there were some really good questions that Jim asked in the webinar that I wanted to make sure to get to you. So that being said, let's jump right in. And then if you like what you see, you can always access the rest of the webinar for free over at WellnessFX and I'll put a link for that for you as well underneath the video. So let's go ahead and start with this. Jim asked me this. He said, you've created this really unique voice in the space of optimizing human potential and performance. What kicked you off this path?

That's a great question. For me, what got me to want to delve into getting more out of the human body or getting it to bounce back faster was just the fact that.

I'm an average Joe. I have a job, I've got kids, I've got.

A lot of other things I want to do, like playing the guitar and cooking and reading. And for me, I need to squeeze a good amount of high quality exercise into a short period of time. And then I need to be able to consistently be able to exercise every day for like short bouts of intense exercise. For me, when with my lifestyle, that's the way that I'm able to actually compete at a decently high level in something like Ironman Triathlon, but still be able to squeeze it in. Now, one of the implications of that means that there is much higher intensity work being done, whether it be in the weight room or out on the road, and the recovery implications get a little bit higher and recovery becomes more important. And, and so what I was forced to do or what I have been forced to do based off of the way that I train, is find ways to not only identify whether my body has recovered properly, but also bounce back more quickly from those workouts. So.

You know, case in point, I've got all these different things that are kind of hanging around my house that I'll show you later on in this video or I'll show you in the webinar with Jim and also talk about in this video and all these things from electrostimulation to low level laser therapy to foam roller. You can see my foam roller back there in the background behind me. Both basic and advanced recovery concepts. These are things that I have around my house that I always have on hand and that I'm always using to help me bounce back like that. And then a lot of the markers for inflammation that I'll talk about here in just a second are also really important for me to kind of keep my finger on, to know where my body's at. So I'm going to tell you guys about that. But the reason that for me it becomes important is because I got to squeeze in a lot of high intensity, consistent training day after day. I find that the older I get, the more that tends to be the case. I started off in my college days as a collegiate tennis player and as a bodybuilder, and then kind of went on from there. And I know that I bounced back a lot more quickly back then than I do now. Even at just age 31.

Just over the past 10 years, I've noticed the difference, and I know it will continue going forward. So it's of prime importance if you want to exercise consistently and also exercise hard and get the most bang for your buck. So in terms of that, that's kind of what kicked me off on this path. The next question is, what do you think some of the themes over the last five to 10 years that have begun to emerge in terms of equipping normal people with the tools they need to become better athletes?

What do I think are some of those themes over the last five to 10 years? So some of my thoughts here, the first is something that I just alluded to, and that would be the portability and affordability of a lot of these different recovery tools that are now available that you could put in your house. So, for example, when I wake up in the morning, I roll over in bed and I grab my smartphone, which is off during the night, I turn it on, I put on my chest strap, and I track my heart rate variability. The other thing that I keep next to my bed is what's called a pulse oximeter that I can literally put on my fingertip and measure my oxygen saturation. Two very simple things that would have been a lot harder to get your hands on 20 years ago. I have a portable electrostimulation unit that allows me to deliver a Low grade frequency to my muscles to enhance blood flow and recovery, whether I need to manage an injury or whether I need to basically recover faster from a workout. My dog's beginning to tear apart his bed. Just a second. What's in? Get out of there. There you go.

So can't guarantee he's gonna behave running around in the office, but we'll find out. Okay, so the next thing. Quiet boy, quiet. Lay down, lay down. So the next thing that I have around the house.

That'S just portable and affordable and wouldn't have been something that would have been so accessible to me before is I've got a cold low level laser. The one that I have is called a Kenko Wave, but allows me to direct low level laser into an area that's been injured. Another thing is like portable magnets that you can wear. There's a company, it's a multi level marketing company, but it still makes a solid product called Niken. And Nikken has all these different magnetic applications for magnets you can stick on different areas to maintenance, you can wear while you're asleep. And these enhance blood flow. You've got products like the Gameready, which is a compressive boot or compressive wrap that puts like an icy cold surge of ice water through the wrap while also providing compression at the same time. So you don't get what's called backflow of lymphatic fluid. That's something that you can get for about $1,500, which is on the higher end of the price range, but can really help you bounce back more quickly if you're serious about running, sprinting, cycling, things that use your legs, or slightly less expensive versions of that are available in a device called the recovery boot. There's also something similar to that that's kind of a wireless high end version called the Normatec. And these are other things that you can get for your home that are portable and relatively affordable compared to the fact that they would have only been available as a unit that cost tens of thousand dollars in a physical therapy clinic a decade ago. And then you've got little things like the foam roller that's behind me, like little muscle tracks and sticks like this kind of stuff, the tiger tail, the muscle track, the myo rope, all sorts of things like this that you can rub up and down on muscle. And it's just little things like that that 10 years ago you wouldn't have seen hanging around a lot in terms of the average athlete's house that are available to all of us now to work with. So portability and affordability of a lot of these home units.

You've also got stuff like vibration platforms, and there's another thing called pulsed electromagnetic field therapy or pem. Those are two other things that you can get for your home to help you to recover faster. I know this stuff sounds geeked out, but a lot of it does help. Okay. The next thing that I think that we're going to see as an emerging trend is, and that we have seen as an emerging trend is just the ability to use your smartphone. I use the Sweet Beat app for heart rate variability tracking. There's a suite of apps made by a company called Azumio A Z U M I o. And basically with the zoom, you know, you can track your stress levels, your heart rate variability, resting heart rate. My dog's getting excited. I'm gonna. I'm gonna stick him out here. Okay, go on you go. All right.

Hopefully he doesn't do too much damage out there.

So you've got all these different smartphone programs. Like I mentioned, the Sweet Beat, you've got the Zumio app. You've got an app made by a company called Restwise. That's another good one. TrainingPeaks has a way to monitor your metrics when you wake up in the morning. And by the way, just leave a comment under the video if you didn't catch any of this stuff or you need links and stuff like that. But all these different tools that are available on your smartphone kind of make anybody who's got like an iPhone or an Android have the ability to instantly identify a lot of these metrics in their pocket. And kind of related to that. The next thing that I think is an emerging trend is just the. The whole ability to do biomarker evaluation like you see with a company like WellnessFX, where you can go in and you can literally just wander into your local lab corp with a requisition form and give blood, give saliva, give urine, and be able to identify all this stuff at a relatively affordable rate compared to what it was again five, 10 years ago. A lot of us just couldn't do this stuff. It was too expensive.

The other thing that I think is really more accessible, or at least more, I guess, top of mind nowadays, is the ability to have a lot of supplements and dietary protocols in your life that are really, really good at controlling inflammation. Proteolytic enzymes, that's one thing that I've got around my house to basically break up. Fibrinogen help me to recover more quickly without being sore I keep basically like a high dose curcumin extract around. I've got this stuff called phenocaine. These are just some sample packs. I've got a bottle in the kitchen. But phenocaine has got a high dose curcumin extract. Boswellia, phenylalaniline and nattokinase. All these do a lot of the similar things that ibuprofen does in terms of limiting soreness without kicking your kidneys or your gut quite as hard as some of those non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. We've got things like fish oil as an anti inflammatory, like a good high quality omega 3 fish oil.

There's another thing that I take that's like a blend of a bunch of herbal anti inflammatories like cherry juice and ginger and garlic mixed up with a high, high quality glucosamine chondroitin blend. That one's called Cap Reflex. That's another example of an anti inflammatory blend that I've just got lying around my house. And the ability to be able to use targeted anti inflammatory protocols that are still healthy the body, but they help you bounce back more quickly. That's another trend that I think is pretty cool that this kind of stuff is just super accessible to us now. So those are some of the main things that I think in terms of recovering more quickly from workouts and being able to bounce back more quickly or things that you can really take advantage of.

So Jim also asked me, how do you figure out if you're over training or over recovering?

There are a lot of things that you can do for both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective. So let's start with the easy stuff, the low hanging fruit. As far as qualitative variables that we can identify to help us figure out if we're over training, one would just be simple morning resting heart rate measurements. If you see your heart rate fluctuating on a consistent basis by more than 5%, typically 5% over and above what your normal resting heart rate is.

That'S a sign. By itself it may not be that big of a deal, but if it's associated with a cluster of other symptoms, some of the other stuff I'm going to talk to you about can be an issue. So if your resting heart rate is say 50 and 5% of 50 is what, 2, 2 and a half? So let's say your resting heart rate is 50 and you're seeing values that are like 53, 54 consistently, then that can be a marker that your body is starting to have a more difficult time bouncing back from whatever you're doing to it. From a physical activity standpoint.

Another thing is an inability to reach as high a heart rate as you can normally reach during your exercise sessions. Again, something that you can very easily test with a heart rate monitor. But let's say that usually during your intervals you're able to bump your heart rate up to 170 or 180 or something like that. And all of a sudden you're having trouble getting above 160. That can be a sign especially that your sympathetic nervous system is over trained. That's having a hard time activating the sinoatrial node in your heart via your vagus nerve and telling that thing to get up and go. That can be a sign that you're running from the lion too much and that system is getting over trained. Another thing is body mass. If you notice that you suddenly lose more than about 2% body weight. And that's just if you're weighing yourself every day and all of a sudden you're 2% lost, just bam. All of a sudden that can be a sign that you're training too hard, that your body is starting to dump a lot of fluids. The other thing that you tend to see, this is more typically related to like high, high cortisol sympathetic nervous system over training again is you get fluid retention, water retention, and you're just constantly bloated. And your body mass again can be up when that happens as well. Loss of appetite. That's another sign, another qualitative variable that you can look at. Soreness, being consistently sore, especially sore to the touch. Another qualitative variable you can look at, and that usually also manifests in a loss of certain ranges of motion. So if you've got a dynamic warm up that you usually go through and you suddenly can't move through that range of motion as well as you were able to before, that can be a sign that you're starting to get over trained, that there's a lot of tissue adhesions going on, probably a lot of connective tissue cross linking, some scar tissue formation, and a lot of signs that you could do a better job recovering or you need to give yourself some R and R.

There are mood state scores. This is something that a company like Restwise, which basically lets you keep track of a matrix of mostly qualitative variables on a daily basis. They have an energy score, a mood score, and a well being score. And if you're consistently scoring low on each of those variables, that's another cluster of signs that you're either going to get sick or you're on the edge of overtraining. And it's pretty amazing how this stuff can predict. All of a sudden you get congested and runny nose and sore throat. You go back and look at your variables and they were all getting low leading up to that point. So you can identify this stuff and nip, for example, getting sick or getting injured in the bud.

Now the other thing you can look at would be just your hydration status. Typically, you'll just want to pay attention to your urine color. Of course, taking a high dose vitamin B is going to influence that and cause it to be kind of like a neon yellow. But consistently yellow or orange urine in the absence of a vitamin B intake can be kind of a warning sign. And then we get into some of the biomarkers that you can test.

HSCRP is one that's super, super easy to test. You can look at that, that C reactive protein as a sign of total body inflammation. That's something you can test through WellnessFX. It's something that shouldn't stay elevated for more than about 48 hours after a tough workout. And if HSCRP levels are consistently elevated or you test in a rested and recovered state or a state that you think is rested and recovered and your HSCRP values are high, that's a red flag. Interleukin is another one. It's not as commonly tested, but it's one you can test your omega 3 tissue saturation as well as your omega 3 index, which is basically your DHA EPA ratios. Those are other things that you can test. I would say the more valuable of those two that wellness effects can also do for you is an omega 3 index DHA EPA ratio test. If your omega 3 index is low, that's another sign that you need to probably take in a little bit lower intake of omega 6 fatty acids from vegetable oils, seeds, nuts, stuff like that, and probably step up your intake of like a high quality fish oil, like a triglyceride based fish oil, or like a cod liver oil or a marine algae source of omega 3s or something of that nature.

A couple of other things that I kind of already alluded to, but that are really helpful. Pulse oximetry, a pulse oximeter that you can put on your fingertip when you wake up in the morning and you generally want that to be above 96%. That's a good sign that you've got good oxygen saturation going on. If that begins to dip down consistently that can be a sign that you're overtrained and then heart rate variability. And I really geeked out on heart rate variability a little bit more in the second part of this series. That actually has good audio with Jim. But if you're tracking your heart rate variability and it does one of two things, it can be a pretty good sign that you're overtrained. Number one, your heart rate variability. Not your heart rate, but your heart rate variability. The interval of time between heartbeats that an app like Sweetbeat can test for you, or an EM wave 2 unit, or a Bioforce unit, or an athlete unit, or the Izumio phone app or any of these protocols can test for you. If you tend to see that consistently low, like below 90, that can be a red flag. And if you see it consistently bounce around from day to day, that can also be a red flag. Consistently low usually means you're overtrained with too much endurance work. Consistently bouncing around from day to day usually means you're overtrained with too much sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight intensity type of work. But that can also be a really, really good thing to track. Probably the only thing I forgot to mention was your sleep quality. That can be a really good sign of overtraining status. Waking up in the night constantly to pee, that can really be a sign that you're hypercortisolic, that your sympathetic nervous system could be over trained. Being consistently tired throughout the day, feeling like you got to take naps when you're driving, just being exhausted at night, that can be a sign that you're over trained. Typically that's too much endurance training, too much parasympathetic nervous system stimulation. So sleep quality is another big one as well. So those are some of the biggies as far as the top of those things that I just mentioned that I personally track. I look at heart rate variability every morning when I'm leading up those last couple weeks leading into a race. I also look at pulse oximetry using the fingertip pulse oximeter. I look at sleep quality like if I'm always waking up at 3am 4am to pee, to me that's a sign that I'm hypercortisolic. The other thing that I look at is my level of sorenessrange of motion because I usually am doing a dynamic warm up at least three or four times a week. And so I know if I'm not moving through proper range of motion with a lateral lunge or side to side movement, a lot of times it's a pretty good sign. My hips are locked up. I'm not moving properly. I need to throw a recovery day and get some foam rolling and some magnesium bath soaks and stuff like that in there.

All right, so that kind of covers what got messed up with the audio when Jim and I were doing the first part of the segment with WellnessFX. Of course, I'll put a link to the second part of the segment under this video. Hopefully that was helpful. If you have questions, leave them as a comment under this video. Check out my website@BenGreenfieldFitness.com I'm going to go make sure that my dog is not chewing up the couch, which he's very likely to do, and I hope that was helpful for you. So I'm Ben Greenfield from BenGreenfieldFitness.com over and out.