The Tired Athlete: An Issue Of Under Recovery
“Problems should make you act, not make you depressed!” — Bernard Shaw (an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist, and political activist.)
Movement is life, and exercises are good for your health. I hope you have heard these words. Indeed, it is so. But, unfortunately, people unprepared for intense training (and often prepared too) usually experience severe fatigue during or after training.
Stress during the day and poor sleep at night are as inseparable as tight sweatpants and uncomfortable new athletic shoes - both can interfere with your workouts. When someone struggles themselves during training with the last of their strength, the first thing to do is to understand how their life has been in recent weeks. Do you get enough sleep and do you regularly have free time? It is important to remember that training itself is stressful for the body, and all stresses accumulate. Therefore, if you work, do not get enough sleep, and relationships with other people require effort from you, then your training will make the body cry for help.
In addition to stress and sleep, physical fatigue can arise from the following reasons:
Reason #1 - excessive load. The more results we strive to achieve, the more load we take on ourselves. This is wrong, and you shouldn’t do that. The training program should be fully consistent with your fitness and fitness level. Therefore, ideally, it is better to start training in the gym with a trainer who will help you find the optimal load and increase it gradually, according to the progress in the exercises. Even if you practiced before, but then there was a break, be sure to start with a minimum.
Reason # 2 - incorrect exercise technique. This is even more dangerous than reason No. 1. Here there is a risk not only of overworking and overstraining the muscles, but also getting serious injuries, stretching the ligaments, “killing” the joints and the spine. It's not even a lot of weight, but the fact that the wrong technique is fraught with a load on the wrong area at all, to which you think it is directed. Energy is therefore wasted. Solution: Again, try to work with a trainer first so that he can give you a technique. It is important not to take large weights right away but to achieve the correct execution of the exercise at first without any weight at all.
Reason #3 - unhealthy diet. In parallel with training, have you decided to go on a diet? Well, that's commendable. Only here quick fatigue can signal just that you are still eating inadequate, and your body simply does not have enough useful and nutritious substances. Solution: a complete and healthy diet, albeit with a calorie deficit, but with everything you need - proteins, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, macroelements, and microelements. Otherwise, you run the risk of not only overworking, but also simply breaking into stress, overeating, and depression.
Reason #4 - lack of rest. Training should not be daily unless you are a professional athlete preparing for a competition or marathon. Enough 3-4 workouts per week or classes every other day. At least a day should pass from training to training in order for the body to recover as much as possible. You can alternate a day of cardio and a day of strength training, but in this mode, you need to give at least 2 days a week of complete rest, without physical exertion. And, of course, a full sleep is important - it is at night and at least 7 hours - only then both muscles and nerve cells are restored.
Reason #5 - dehydration. Another thing that should never be forgotten in training is water. Sometimes a person during an intensive exercise may not feel thirst at all, and a sip of water during active movements can only cause discomfort. But even the slightest lack of water in our body can lead to malfunctions in all systems: the blood becomes thick and stops delivering oxygen and nutrients to where it is most needed - to the brain or to the muscles that are working at the moment. Therefore, drink enough water, and the more you get tired, the more fluids you drink.
And most importantly, do not confuse fatigue with laziness. Yes, of course, the symptoms of this disease can resemble laziness. There is an unwillingness to work and unwillingness to develop. Instead of giving your body a rest and filling up with strength by replenishing all the necessary resources, most people force themselves to work even harder. Then they wash it down in the morning, and sometimes in the evening, with COFFEE (The caffeine in coffee increases catecholamines, your stress hormones. The stress response elicits cortisol and increases insulin. Insulin increases inflammation, and this makes you feel lousy). Some people began to hate themselves, lose confidence, lower their self-esteem, and begin to underestimate their capabilities. This situation worsens when a person, being in such a state, begins to observe the success of other people through social networks, television channels, etc… With a high probability, you can fall into depression.
These simple rules, if you do not forget about them and follow them regularly, will help you to train fully and achieve great results.
“Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.”
—Dale Carnegie (Writer, lecturer, and developer of self-improvement courses)
Works Cited
North Sydney Sport Medicine. “FATIGUE AND PERFORMANCE”, 2017,
https://nssmc.com.au/conditions-we-treat/fatigue-and-performance/.
Matt Wentzell,“Fatigue in Sport and Exercise”, The journal of Canadian Chiropractic Association, 2015 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4807688/.
Mark Hyman, “10 Reasons To Quit Coffee (Plus Healthy Alternatives)”, Hungry for change, 2019,
https://www.hungryforchange.tv/article/10-reasons-to-quit-coffee-plus-healthy-alternatives.