If you’re looking to be more than just an average gym goer, you need to do more than just rock up and lift some weights! This applies to sports performance equally. You may not be shooting for the olympics but you a weekend warrior can improve performance with a few simple tweaks. Common performance killers are overtraining and fatigue. Try these simple tips to avoid training pitfalls.
Don’t Blow Your Budget
You shouldn’t have to blow a months wages on the latest technology when it comes to fitness. In this post I am going to focus on avoiding overtraining and fatigue. The way to do this is to monitor the being put on your body, day to day. I don’t want you to become a super stats analyst, just be aware. Below I will highlight a few bank friendly waist measure the effect your training is having on you.
Cardiovascular Measures
Generally speaking, the following methods may best suit endurance athletes and team sports players. events and sports that involve a lot of running and aerobic work in their training.
Measure your resting heart rate:
The best time to do this is first thing in the morning, as soon as you wake up. Don’t head to the toilet or have your coffee, take a minute to check your pulse. This is possibly the simplest measure of how your body is responding to aerobic training.
A lower total beats per minute implies you improving your aerobic capacity and ability to utilise oxygen. However, if you suddenly plateau or see a rise in your resting HR score you may be overtraining. If this happens, pull back on the intensity and volume until you find your norm again.
Rate your session intensity:
After each training session, record how hard you felt it was overall. The easiest method is to score a session out of 10. If you are recording 8+ for every session, the chances are you will fatigue, quickly. Keep things varied, you should have a good mix of intensities throughout your week.
Strength Measures
Within the gym and resistance training measuring HR may not be so suitable.
Track your numbers:
If you are looking to improve your strength, muscular endurance or muscle mass the chances are you are doing similar movements week to week. Keep a log of what weights you lifted and for how many reps. You should see a general progression in total weight lifted, or weights completed at a certain weight. If you see a sudden plateau or loss of performance, you are beginning to become fatigued. Take a step back, allow the body to recover and allow adaptions to occur.
How’s your grip?
Possibly the most simple and quick method of judging how you’re feeling day to day. Before your warm up, complete a grip strength test (you can pick up a dynamometer for approx £20). Over time you will learn your average score. On any given day that you drop significantly below average, it is likely you are fatigued. Pull back on training that day, don’t flog yourself!
Final Note
At NK Fitness we pride ourselves on keeping clients accountable. One way we do this is to have methods of monitoring performance and training. Every session of Personal Training in Twickenham, London, will be planned and recorded in relation to the bigger picture. This allows us to push or pull clients back, avoid fatigue and overtraining.