Weights + martial arts = Overtraiing?

Casshern88

I train sometimes up to 5 times a week with my martial arts club this is very intensive training working mostly anaerobically and also working body weight excercises core, push ups, squats ect in at least 2 of these sessions.

now i also have a love of doing weights, not bodybuilding but just functional strength to help my athletic goals. At the moment i usually do 2 resistance sessions a week , 2 full body work outs mostly compound movements (squats, rows, deads, bench,military press,bicept curls,french press lunges....)focusing on endurance.

My question is , is that too much should i cut it to one resistance session a week considering im doing MA 5 times a week and sometimes i even go for a swim or something extra once a week also.

My diet is good and clean.
I 20 years old.
75kg
take PWO shake after resistance or intensive MA session.

Opinions please.

Roper

It depends on how your sessions break down over the week, and what you're doing from night to night.

There's really no right or wrong answer here, lots of things come into play like the sort of training session you'd be doing on a lifting day and so on, how long your recovery period is etc. etc. Out of interest, what MA is it?

Casshern88

Muay Thai

bwardrop

It is highly unlikely that you are overtrained.

Overtraining is not common, but the term is bounced around an awful lot. It is basically chronic fatigue (long term, minimum a couple of months), accompanied by a variety of other factors - primarily a decrease in performance with a combination of: depression, increased in incidence of infection / illness, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, muscle soreness and a few others. The key to it is that it is long term - if you are overtrained it will not go away after a few days rest.

Overtraining may be viewed as a continuum. At one end you have normal training / competition with adequate recovery. Everything is progressing normally. Next you have overreaching. This is happens after a short period of intensified training and is considered a normal part of any properly structured training program. Symptoms include muscle tiredness, fatigue, some changes in mood state and possibly an elevated resting heart rate. Symptoms should disappear and performance will get back to normal after a a about of 2 weeks rest / decreased training load.

If you are chronically overreached, you will then progress to overtraining. But this takes time - outside of elite, full time athletes, the vast majority of people will have noticed something is wrong and eased back enough prevent overreaching developing into overtraining. Overtraining can takes months or even up to a year to recover from.

Unless you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, it is highly unlikely that you are overtrained or even overreached. If you are upping the weights and still training hard in the Muay Thai you may experience some degree of overreaching - but as I said this is normal and necessary in most training programs.

To avoid any problems, just build in a fortnight of light training every couple of months - drop the intensity of the training that is under your control and you should be fine. Also, make sure you get enough rest - sleep is critical for recovery - and keep the diet under control.

One other thing - the wikipedia page on overtraining is pretty rubbish. It cites one good paper, but it is the wrong paper to base an overtraining definition on.

Thought I would add this for balance:

Sometimes, stresses external to training may have an effect on performance. For example, if you are particularly stressed in your life (e.g. work / relationship not going well / financial worries etc etc etc) your chances of over reaching may increase. During times like this, it is important to realize that continuing to train really hard may - only may - make things tougher. The interaction of the external stresses and the potential stresses of overreaching (i.e. increased irritability, incidence of depression, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite etc) could exacerbate an existing problem.

This would be rare though and I reckon that in the vast majority of cases, the benefits of exercising, particularly the sense of achievement / feel good factor would far outweigh what I have said above. Still, it exists - forewarned is forearmed.

Hanley

bwardrop wrote: »

It is highly unlikely that you are overtrained.

Overtraining is not common, but the term is bounced around an awful lot. It is basically, chronic (long term, minimum a couple of months) fatigue, accompanied by a variety of other factors - primarily any combination of a decrease in performance with: depression, increased in incidence of infection / illness, sleep disturbances, loss of appetite, muscle soreness and a few others. The key to it is that it is long term - if you are overtrained it will not go away after a few days rest.

Overtraining may be viewed as a continuum. At one end you have normal training / competition with adequate recovery. Everything is progressing normally. Next you have overreaching. This is happens after a short period of intensified training and is considered a normal part of any properly structured training program. Symptoms include muscle tiredness, fatigue, some changes in mood state and possibly an elevated resting heart rate. Symptoms should disappear and performance will get back to normal after a a about of 2 weeks rest / decreased training load.

If you are chronically overreached, you will then progress to overtraining. But this takes time - outside of elite, full time athletes, the vast majority of people will have noticed something is wrong and eased back enough prevent overreaching developing into overtraining. Overtraining can takes months or even up to a year to recover from.

Unless you are experiencing any of the symptoms above, it is highly unlikely that you are overtrained. If you are upping the weights and still training hard in the Muay Thai you may experience some degree of overreaching - but as I said this is normal in most training programs.

To avoid any problems, just build in a fortnight of light training every couple of months - drop the intensity of the training that is under your control and you should be fine. Also, make sure you get enough rest - sleep is critical for recovery - and the diet under control.

One other thing - the wikipedia page on overtraining is pretty rubbish. It cites one good paper, but it is the wrong paper to base an overtraining definition on.

That's a really, REALLY good post.

Everytime I see this type of thread come up I just shake my head because I don't people realise what overtraining actually is. It's not just being tired from a week of hard training.

DiscoHugh

I agree with Hanley.
When you are very into lifting/sport you get very good at listening to your body.

Basically your body will tell you if you're overtraining by displaying some of the symptoms listed above.

When I was in college I would train 3-4 times a week (boxing) for 2 intense hours and lift on the other 3 days. Would occasionally take a day or 2 off if I felt I needed it.

During that period of time I never felt better. Never got sick or felt I had no energy. Just make sure you're pre/post training supplementation/diet are in order and that you get plenty of sleep.

And listen to your body.