My body is recovering from doing 33 challenge workouts on video last weekend. To be fair, I didn’t do quite that many videos because I had awesome trainers, Brian Kalakay and Sean Francis to help me out. These videos are for my upcoming program that I’ll be teasing you with it until I have it ready to release to you. In any case, it only makes sense that I answer a question about over training and recovery that came in this week.
Question: I’ve been using Challenge Workouts and I’ve been getting SO sore. I have no energy, should I be training when I’m still sore from my last workout? Becky
Answer: I have to say that I feel weaker this week because I’m fatigued from all the work that I did on those dang videos. It’s obvious that I’m not recovered from the a$$ kicking I took doing those workouts last weekend. It’s not just me being lazy with less energy and Becky, it’s not you being lazy either. Your body will be less able to perform at it’s best when you’re not fully recovered. The short answer to the training question is this: if your muscles are still sore, then you need to do either rest or do something else. A little muscle soreness is fine every now and then, but overall, it’s NOT best practice to keep training when you’re sore. It will lead to over training.
Let’s look at some signs that you’re over trained:
- Persistent muscle soreness
- Persistent fatigue
- Elevated resting heart rate
- Reduced heart rate variability
- Increased susceptibility to infections
- Increased incidence of injuries
- Irritability
- Depression
- Mental breakdown
Now these symptoms are a little extreme and you probably aren’t at the point of mental breakdown, but you may have persistent muscle soreness, fatigue and susceptibility to infections due to compromised immunity. (I know so many ‘healthy’ people that have constant colds.)
Over training will occur when other stressors are present like work stress, poor nutrition, dehydration and sleep deprivation.
Becky, you’re just experiencing muscle soreness, but it can be aggravated by other factors or stresses in your life. Are you sleeping enough? How’s your nutrition? Are you eating to aid recovery? These are things that are often overlooked.
If you really want to get stronger and perform better (eg. more pull ups!), then improvements can only happen when you’ve had enough rest and complete regeneration can occur. If over training and inadequate rest persists, then your performance will plateau and actually decline.
So Becky, and anyone out there that’s experiencing persistent soreness, check your hydration, sleep and nutrition and get a handle on other stresses in your life as well. If all these things are in check, and you’re STILL sore, then it’s a good idea to take an extra day off of training.
My guess is that in some cases if you control OTHER factors (nutrition, sleep, hydration, stress) this will help your recovery and training efforts.
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I’ve had a few questions about the suspension trainer. My friend, Dan Long is a suspension trainer expert. He’s just turned 40 and is in the best shape of his life.
The most common question he gets is ‘how is that the suspension trainer burns MORE fat than weights alone?’
He answers: The suspension trainer forces your body to burn MORE fat through added muscular recruitment. One piece of equipment allows you to train to muscular failure as well as you can do HIIT. Your core is constantly engaged through out your workout. You burn mega calories DURING the workout, you build lean muscle tone and burn fat all at once.
Cool stuff.
If you want to check out some suspension moves and a circuit, you can head to the blog HERE and HERE’s a great ab circuit.
Here’s the first circuit:
Do 50 seconds of work of each followed by 10 seconds rest or transition to get into the next position (the ham curl and plank abduction are quick changes). Repeat 3-5 times. Here’s how it looks:
- sprinter start right leg
- sprinter start left leg
- ham curl
- chest cross over
- T row
- plank abduction
Trust me, this doesn’t look like much, but my online coaching client texted me:
If you like suspension training, you’re gonna love Dan Long’s new program called ‘Suspension Revolution‘. You’ll find 27 intense workouts using the suspension trainer and over 190 exercises and ways to use a suspension trainer that most people wouldn’t dream.
I wanted to be sure you knew what you’re getting your hands on, so here is what you get with his brand new Suspension Revolution System:
4-Week TRX Beginner Revolution – Even if you’re a fitness veteran, you’ll want to start with the beginner program to wake up your muscles with some of these workouts
4-Week TRX Intermediate Revolution – Move onto these cool workouts and see that you’ll get leaner and stronger and you’ll never be bored.
12-Week TRX Advanced Revolution – Dan would call this one ‘Kill Mode’ (see his shirt in the picture 
). You’ll see advanced never before seen exercises and routines.
Bonus Videos – The Top 10 TRX Exercises That No One Else Does – Self explanatory, right? Give these a try, but be warned, they’re very advanced.
And Dan will be there every step of the way with follow-along instruction for those weird exercises… oh, and I didn’t mention…
12 Strap Finishers – My pal, Mike ‘Mr Finisher’ Whitfield has a bonus for you to add to the fun.
Also, When you grab Dan’s program, shoot me your receipt and I’ll send you seven of MY favorite Suspension Challenges:
Here’s the link, you’ll also save $20 until midnight tonight. All this value for under $30, seems like a no brainer for a welcome workout change.