My top tips deal with fatigue, if you are a burnout athlete
I went from being a high performer in all areas of my life to extreme fatigue to a performer once again, while staying within my body’s limits.
For me at the time, it was devastating to go from #running 50 miles a week and lifting weights at least 3-4 days a week to not even being able to walk a block without having to sit down and take a break.
My “to-do” list felt like a joke compared to what I use to accomplish in a single day. Pacing myself meant breaking everyday activities of daily living into tiny discrete tasks that then took up an entire day versus maybe a fraction of the day.
After healing myself with the principles of functional medicine I still consider myself a high-achiever, BUT now I make sure to include balance into my life every. single. day. And I tune in and listen to the signals my body is telling me.
This is why I love helping those Type A go getter individuals who suddenly find themselves with an alternate reality of fatigue that’s holding them back from reaching their full potential.
I help my clients bring about inner peace, listen to what their bodies are trying to tell them, and heal from the inside out... while also achieving their goals.
So, if you are an athlete that’s all the suddenly dealing with more than usual fatigue, here are my top tips for you👇
👉 Treat yourself with the same kindness you treat others.
I find high performance athletes have learned to ignore their body’s signals to stop in order to push through the discomfort and achieve a new PR.
Maybe we are all a bit masochistic in this way? 🤔
Because those signals have been ignored for so long, it can be hard to “hear” them. Perk up those ears, and tune in, every little niggle is a gift providing you insights into how to reverse engineer your body’s healing!
👉Use objective data to guide you.
📍Heart rate:
When you are overtrained your morning resting heart rate will be higher than usual. (Or late in adrenal fatigue you can actually see a significant drop in HR when the autonomic nervous system struggles to respond appropriately.)
For some it will be perfectly normal at rest but elevated during exercise.
I suggest monitoring it closely. Personally my seated resting HR will typically be normal in the early stages of overtraining and fatigue, but my sleeping HR will be elevated. Exercise HR will be the same until I get above 70% VO2max. Knowing your own body’s response is so helpful to prevent relapse.
📍How many days are you sore from a given work out?
If muscle soreness is excessive for a workout that use to not cause much soreness, then you need to rest/cut back. Depending on the severity of the individual’s fatigue this can look significantly different. For one athlete reducing training by 25-50% for a few weeks may be all that is necessary. For others it may require stopping all exercise for a period of time, several weeks or even months.
📍How do you feel following a bout of exercise?
After exercising catecholamines should be elevated. You should feel great! Exercise in a healthy adrenal system will release dopamine, norepinephrine, epinephrine and cortisol. This is that exercise “high” people talk about. If you are no longer able to achieve this, or worse yet, feel like taking a nap after your training session. It indicates your adrenal glands were NOT up for the challenge and reducing or taking a break from exercise for a period of time would be beneficial to support fatigue recovery.
📍Sleep
The research on sleep indicates that adults benefit from having on average 7.5 hours of sleep per night. Professional athletes will often report sleeping a bit more, 8-10 hours per night and studies have shown that less sleep negatively impacts sport performance. PMID: 31288293
If you need an excessive amount of sleep compared to what you needed previously this may be a sign you may be overtraining.
If you find it hard to unwind and go off to sleep at night, this may be a sign of stage one adrenal dysfunction, “wired but tired.”
If you are waking through the night this may be a signal you are having either glucose metabolism issues and/or adrenal dysfunction caused by excessive exercise. After stage 1 adrenal dysfunction the other endocrine hormones may become dysregulated as well, such as insulin, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and thyroid hormones further impacting the circadian rhythm
📍GI dysfunction, or a change in bowel habits is not uncommon when you are overtrained.
Are you having 1-3 bowel movements per day? Are they a number 3-4 on the bristol stool chart?
