Health log: how to prevent overtraining?

A few blogs before I told you about the health log: a diary about your own progress in health! It’s a perfect tool to keep an eye on your progress, because sometimes it’s hard to see your progress when you’re working on getting more fit. A health log could show you more clearly that you’re certainly going the right way! In my food log of a few weeks ago you could read what I eat and how I evaluate my eating habits. Today it’s time to evaluate my training log!

Health log: how to prevent overtraining?

 

About a month ago I was suffering from an overtraining injury. Main reason: not taking enough rest. Yes, that’s why all of you should take your rest days every now & then! But what is overtraining exactly? Fit Girl Suzanne already wrote a blog about supercompensation a little while ago. In short, supercompensation means that you get stronger by planning your workouts on exactly the right moment. This moment is when you’re fully recovered from your last workout for that muscle group. When you use it right, you get stronger every single workout. But when you don’t take enough rest in between your workouts, the opposite will happen: you get weaker every time! This is overtraining.

So I was overtrained, not even a little: Some muscles in my leg were so hypertonic that I couldn’t even bend my knee anymore! I was so stubborn, ignoring all the signals from my body…not the way to go! After some confronting conversations with my coaches and manual therapist, I decided to give in and take my rest to recover. This recovery process took over 2 weeks! But after that I certainly felt so much better.

To prevent overtraining again, I’m using a new way to log my training progress and this is what I want to share with you! Because this way it’s easier to see if you’re going the right way. First I will share my schedule, after that I will explain what you see.