Pain barrier: Dangers of over exercising in the gym
September often means a return to fitness programmes after a beach break. Just don’t overdo it quickly, advises
A WEEK or two of soaking up the sun’s rays by the pool might have done wonders for your stress levels, but what about your body? Studies have shown that fitness levels can plummet (and, consequently, fatness levels rise) after just a fortnight of doing little more than eating and lounging around, changes that can trigger a rise in the risk of conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Researchers at the University of Liverpool reported that two weeks of being lazy and mustering a daily total of no more than 1,500 steps — enough to take you to the pool bar and back a few times from your lounger, but well below the 10,000 daily steps recommended by the government as part of the Healthy Ireland programme — saw cardio-respiratory fitness levels decline sharply, leaving people unable to run for as long or at the same intensity as previously.
Their findings, presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Portugal last summer, also showed that healthy people experienced “a substantial loss in skeletal muscle mass” after a 14-day exercise break and an increase in total body fat which tended to accumulate in the worst place — around the middle.
“Such changes can lead to chronic metabolic disease and premature mortality,” says Dr Dan Cuthbertson, a researcher in the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease who led the study.
“The results emphasise the importance of remaining physically active and highlight the dangerous consequences of continuous sedentary behaviour.”
Our statistics for activity are not good at the best of times — less than a third of adults in Ireland meet the minimal physical activity recommendation of 30 minutes’ moderate activity five times a week.
Now, you might think, is as good a time as any to throw yourself into an exercise regimen with vigour. But not so fast.
For as much as they encourage us to stay active even on holiday, researchers stress that overdoing it when you get back to compensate is no good thing. A classic symptom of the returning holidaymaker who is plagued with guilt about spending too much time on a beach towel and too little time swimming front crawl is that they attempt too much exercise too soon which can have almost as many downsides as doing too little.
In a study presented at the American College of Sports Medicine’s annual conference recently, Jinger Gottschall, an assistant professor of kinesiology at Penn State University, suggested there is an “urgent need” for evidence-based guidelines for high-intensity training, including setting a weekly upper limit for gym-goers.
According to Gottshall, workouts that push the heart rate to a thumping 90% of its maximum, as many high-intensity gym sessions and circuit classes are designed to do, should be capped at 30-40 minutes per week.
In her trial, she recruited 35 healthy adults who typically worked out for more than eight hours a week and asked them to wear a heartrate monitor while carrying out their usual exercise routine for three weeks. They were also asked to keep tabs on their diet and mood.
Results showed direct correlation between time spent training at a high intensity of 90% maximum heart rate and what scientists call overreaching, symptoms of which include disrupted sleep, more illness and injury, and a plateau or drop in fitness.
By comparison, during an easy intensity workout, your heart rate would be 50%-70% of its maximum; during a moderate session, it would be 70%-85%.
Bryce Hastings, head of research at Les Mills Fitness who also contributed to the paper, said that hitting more than 90% on too regular a basis “doesn’t achieve transformative effects” and can prove counterproductive. “In fact, too much actually hinders progression.”
Some max-effort workouts are fine if you have been building up to them over several months in order to be able to attempt the intensity. But even then you should start by substituting one or two sessions a week with vigorous workouts, exercising within your own capacity and, according to Gottschall’s guidelines, separating each hard workout “by two sleep cycles”.
Pacing yourself is essential, particularly if you have had a break from activity, according to Matt Roberts, the London-based celebrity personal trainer and author.
“It’s counterproductive to go full throttle without factoring in recovery,” he says.
“You might think it puts you on the fast track to fitness, but actually, you are more likely to be on a fast track to your body breaking down through injury or fatigue.”
What, then, should we be doing in the weeks after we get back from our holidays? Roberts says much depends on your starting point. “If you were following a regular routine before you went away, then you can pick up more or less where you left off, perhaps taking a week or so to get back into the swing of things with some steady cardio like cycling, swimming and running,” he says.
“If you’d let things go before your holiday, then the build-up should be more gradual and progressive and you should begin with some gentle cardio and then build in some body weight strengthening exercises such as squats and lunges.”
Try to be active every day by totting up your daily steps, but restrict exercise that leaves you puffing and panting to alternate days of the week. That way your body recovers, your muscles repair and rebuild, and you are ready to rock again and reap the benefits.
“Elite athletes follow a rule of not increasing their workload by more than 10% a week,” says Dearbhla McCullough, a sports psychologist who has worked with numerous Irish athletes. “Do the same and you will ensure you don’t fall into the overtraining trap. Your fitness will soon be back on track.”
