When you don’t get a sufficient amount of recovery between workouts, you may suffer from unusually prolonged fatigue and decreased exercise performance and this is a physical condition known as “over-training”. Over-training is also a behavioral and psychological condition leading to decreased motivation and even depression. While technically very few people suffer from real over-training (which may take several months to recover from), it is believed that quite a few exercisers experience these symptoms from time to time. (read more: link1, link2)

The easiest way to treat these symptoms is to simply take a few days off from training. Which is exactly what I am doing now as I have felt very fatigued lately. My primary indicator of over-training (or “over-reaching”) is when training does no longer feel enjoyable. When it’s not “fun” to go to a group training session.

While the level of over-training/reaching I am feeling as a simple hobbyist exerciser is nothing compared to what elite athletes must endure, it is still a very creepy condition. It’s kinda like an eating disorder, in the sense that it is a condition which is kinda shameful in a way to admit that you have to yourself and others. I guess in some circles it’s actually the opposite, where they would consider it a “rite of passage” into “hardcore training” or whatever, but to me it is more like a symptom of an addiction. Training addiction. Endorphin addiction. I know I don’t really need to work out five times per week, but I just can’t help myself.

But I digress, and I paint a gloomy picture, in reality we are all endorphin addicts in one shape or another, and in the absence of a girlfriend (or chocolate :-P), I guess I just get my “fix” from where I can get it, Sats Jakobsberg.

But this leads me to a related problem. One way to prevent symptoms of over-training to appear in the first place is to get adequate rest in-between workouts. So naturally I want to figure out a way to do this. However, the recommendation if you don’t want to increase the number of real rest days is to utilize so called “soft” or “slow days”, which is essentially a day of low intensity training, a form of active recovery. The problem is that as an exercise addict it is very difficult for me to discipline myself to stick to the plan and actually work out on a lowered intensity level. This is especially true for a group training session obviously.

So what do I do? I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s good to reach an over-reached state every two months or so. Elite athletes over-reach deliberately as a way to break true a plateau. But I am not an elite athlete. So I need to do something.