Fatigue

It’s Friday and my muscles are sore and my body is tired. I am sure the fatigue is cumulative, as no one workout this week has been all that hard. So I thought it might be an appropriate time to say something about the fatigue that results from working out and how to deal with it. Perhaps you are experiencing the same thing, be it physical or some other stressor that is building up in your life.

Hard training, work and practice cause mental and physical fatigue and stress – and stressors stimulate the body to adapt. The inductors that cause fatigue – be it lactic acid, muscle breakdown products such as creatine kinase, and neurotransmitters in the nerves – all stimulate the body to rebuild itself stronger. This adaptation also occurs in the brain where new neural networks are made and neurotransmitter levels increase or decrease in response to the mental and physical training stimulus. But adaptation can only occur if the body is given enough time to recover. It is during the recovery period after exercise is completed, when the refuelling, repair and growth of the body’s systems takes place. If you train too hard, too often, there won’t be enough time for recovery. Instead of improving, you will deteriorate and possibly get sick.

Constant fatigue or stress over time leads to a condition called over-reaching. Over-reaching is a state where an individual’s mental or physical performance is compromised. In other words, one is simply too tired to perform well. The condition is easily reversed by allowing adequate rest, which may take several days.

Over-training, on the other hand, is more serious. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Sports Science and Medicine, over-training is a complex syndrome, described as “a combination of signs and symptoms, which cause the sufferer to feel mentally fatigued in absence of physical fatigue with a deterioration in performance.” It can take many months of complete rest to recover from over-training.

So how do we maximize our adaptation and improvement so we remain healthy, physically and mentally? This can be achieved by (1) ensuring there is enough low-stress rest time between work or training sessions to allow for recovery to occur, or (2) speeding recovery and regeneration so that there is optimal adaptation before the beginning of the next training session. If we can maximize the rate of recovery and regeneration after a workout, then the body and brain will continue to improve over many years.

There are techniques that athletes use – and I am not talking about banned substances – that are available to everyone. They can be plotted along a timeline, from what to do immediately following a workout, up to what can be done hours after a workout. I will outline these techniques and provide more information on this topic in future posts. In the meantime, the number one factor that is critical for recovery is getting adequate and good quality sleep. The optimum time for recovery and repair is between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. So it's not just how much sleep you get but what time you get to bed. Be sure and get your zee's!