One of the biggest mistakes that I see a number of people making with their workout programs, whether it’s a weight loss diet program or a muscle building workout program is goal focus.

For example, have you ever uttered one of these goals before?

“I want to tone up.”

“I’d really like to build some muscle and lose some fat.”

“I want to get rid of my ‘love handles’.”

“I just need to get in shape.”

If you have, then it’s time to put some focus into your goals.

How much weight do you want to lose?

Define it.

How much muscle do you want to build – what’s your goal measurement for your arms for example?

How much weight do you want to be able to squat?

How long do you want to be able to run for?

All of these are important to identify.  If you don’t have a clear idea what exactly it is you’re working towards, it’s like driving to a place without a map.  How will you know when you get there?

Conflicting Goals

Another important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t want your goals to conflict with each other. This is another big issue I see happening quite a bit.

For example, the goal to ‘build muscle and lose fat’, is not going to happen at the same time.

You can certainly work on building muscle, and then after that you can progress to fat loss.  But don’t expect them both to happen at the same time since they require opposite processes in the body and require two very different diets.

Likewise, it wouldn’t be smart to set a goal to really increase your overall strength level while also training for a marathon. You simply are not going to be able to increase leg power all that much when doing such a high volume of running, so having these opposing goals will not work to your advantage.

So have a look over your current goals.

Could they be more specific?

Are they working together with each other (if you have more than one goal)?

Both are important questions to answer to make sure you move forward in the direction you want to go.

Related posts:

1. Can You Really Build Muscle and Lose Fat At The Same Time?

Unfortunately though, if you didn’t make note of these and kept on training, you’re now likely dealing with full blown overtraining.

So now what do you do?

Overtraining can be a long process to recover from, but it will depend on how you approach it. If you are serious about wanting to get better, you will do everything you can to speed up the process, regardless of what your mind may be telling you.

Here is how to recover from overtraining.

Rest

The very first and absolutely most essential thing that needs to happen is rest. By rest, that means no workout sessions, no cardio sessions, no other types of ‘unplanned’ activity – basically, avoid doing anything more intense than walking around your house, work, or school.

If you have a job that requires you to be active (such as an electrician for example), then it will be slightly more difficult since obviously you cannot stop work, but just be sure whenever you can rest, you do.

Also make sure you’re making the effort to get at minimum 8 hours of sleep a night.  9 would be better to just give your body that much extra time to heal itself.  This is not the time to start overcrowding your schedule, taking on more than you can handle.

Proper Nutrition, Including Increased Carbohydrate Intake

Next, you also want to make sure your nutrition is where it needs to be. If you’ve been on a diet, bring your calories up to maintenance.  Those who are diets, especially low carb diets, are much more prone to overtraining due to the lack of readily usable fuel coming in.

If you don’t come off the diet, this will significantly hinder your recovering from overtraining – in fact, you may not recover at all. Many people are scared to do both of these – rest and come off the diet – for fear they are going to gain body fat.  But, you need to ask yourself.  Eventually if you keep going you aren’t going to be train at all, and then it will be really hard to lose body fat.

Plus, when you’re severely overtrained and if coupled with a metabolic slow-down, your body isn’t going to be responding all that well to losing fat anyway, therefore you’re not really doing much benefit anyway by continually trying to push through.

Monitoring Of Stress Levels

Stress, even stress that’s non-exercise related, is also another major contributor to overtraining syndrome.  I would highly recommend you also start taking some steps in your life to reduce your stress levels since this will just make the situation that much better.

When someone is verging being overtrained and then they start adding outside stress to their life, that is what could actually push them over the edge and leave them full blown overtrained.

By keeping stress levels down all the time, you create less that your body has to recover from, therefore less chances that overtraining happens in the first place.

Re-Evaluating The Workout Program

Finally, the last thing that also must happen as you are recovering from overtraining is re-evaluating your program.  Obviously there is something wrong there – either not enough rest, too much volume, or something else at play that needs to be changed or you’re just going to keep ending up overtrained.

Note that this could be nutritional too again. Perhaps the amount of volume in the workout would be okay given more food, particularly carbs.  It’s a trade-off when it comes to exercise and diet.  The more food coming in, the more exercise the body can sustain.

But, and this is a big but, there does come a limit where it’s just too much exercise. You will have some people saying that you can avoid overtraining completely by just eating more, but I personally believe this not to be the case.

There will come a time when too much exercise will just be too much exercise regardless of what you’re doing diet-wise.

So, be sure to keep all these points in mind. Overtraining is a very unfortunate situation to be in but you can reduce the recovery time from months to weeks if you do follow all of these steps.

Related posts:

1. Are You Overtraining? Understanding The Symptoms Of This Condition
2. Top Signs You Need A Break From Your Workouts
3. Reader Question: What Type of Cardio Burns The Most Fat?

All you had to was say the ‘word’ (ball) and that dog high-tailed it as fast as it could towards the door, just begging to get out. 

How many of us have this attitude towards fitness?

Not many.  For most of us, our workouts are just another thing on our to-do list; something that has to get done even though you’d rather not. 

Why is this? 

People are constantly on the hunt for the latest and greatest workout – the workout that is finally going to strip those last stubborn 5 pounds from their body or the workout  that’s going to magically unlock 10 pounds of new muscle over the next month.

They spend more time looking and reading about workouts than they actually do working out.  They don’t especially like the workouts they find, but they’re supposed to do the trick, right? 

They aren’t going to do the trick though if you’re not doing them. 

The dog doesn’t spend hours trying to figure out how to chase after a ball. She just does it. She knows what she enjoys and she does it as often as possible. 

The Morale Of The Story

So, getting to the point of why I’m telling you about this dog (and there is a point, I promise), instead of searching for that magical workout, ask yourself, what do you want to do? 

What exercise gets you excited? What movements do you enjoy doing? What type of workout could you see yourself doing over and over and over again?

That is the exercise you should be doing. 

For example, take building stronger legs. 

Is the squat the best exercise to do to accomplish this goal?  I’d say, likely yes. It is an extremely effective movement when done right and I’d recommend almost everyone include it in their program. 

But, do you need squats in order to build muscle in your legs and get stronger? Certainly not. 

As long as you’re applying an overloading stimulus on the muscle tissue in some manner (leg press, lunges, deadlifts, etc), muscle will grow.  If you can lift more weight doing a sled leg press than you can a squat, you should be doing that and not doing squats. 

Or, if you simply hate squats that you just skip them every workout, how much are they really  benefiting you? 

They aren’t. 

So start thinking about your workouts more in terms of what you enjoy. When you enjoy them, you’re more likely to do them.  And nine times out of ten, it’s the person who’s doing their workout on a regular basis who’s getting results, not the person who has the perfect workout but only shows up once in a blue moon. 

If you’d like to see the dog in action, here are a couple of videos we took of her.  (she’s still practicing these tricks. )

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All of us have had these thoughts at one point or another, but what happens when they don’t seem to go away? – you’re having these thoughts day after day after day? 

Taking a break from your workout from time to time is vital for renewed motivation, good progress, and overall sanity.  Here are some of the top signals that you need to take a break from your workout.  

Your Energy Levels 

The most obvious signal that it’s time for a break from your workouts will be low energy levels.  You may not only notice this during your workouts, but the rest of the day as well.  If climbing the stairs up to your office seems like a challenge that’s just too much to handle, something’s very wrong. 

If you just did a hard leg workout the day before, okay, then that may be okay.  But if you’re feeling like this on an ongoing basis, it’s time to give the body some rest.  

Your Motivation For Other Activities 

The next thing to assess is how your energy levels are to perform other activities you formerly enjoyed.  Perhaps you used to play on a rec ball team, or you regularly took in a yoga or kickboxing class at the gym.  Now you may feel as though a more appealing way to spend your time is at home on the counch in front of the TV. 

Assuming you aren’t suffering from depression, this is yet another signal that you’re workouts are asking too much from your body and you aren’t recovering. 

Your Libido

While you may be quick to blame your lack of desire to being busy or stress from work, overtraining can also lead to dramatically low sex drive levels.  In addition to this, if you’re on a fat loss diet and are getting very lean, this is another thing that will influence your libido. 

When your body fat levels get too low, the reproduction system is impacted, and this in turn causes sex drive to lower reducing the chances that you conceive. 

Your Sleep Patterns

Finally, the last thing to have a look at is your sleep patterns.  Despite feeling fatigued all the time, you may actually notice that you aren’t sleeping all that well at all.  Again, this is a signal you’re on the verge of overtraining. 

Ideally you want to be tired enough that you fall asleep in about ten to fifteen minutes. If you’re either falling asleep immediately as your head hits the pillow or you’re taking hours to fnally drift off, you know something is up. 

Ever have a day where you get up in the morning and just don’t feel like working out?  Or perhaps 5 o’clock was nearing and the last thing you wanted to think about was heading to an over-packed gym for yet another session fo cardio. 

All of us have had these thoughts at one point or another, but what happens when they don’t seem to go away? – you’re having these thoughts day after day after day? 

Taking a break from your workout from time to time is vital for renewed motivation, good progress, and overall sanity.  Here are some of the top signals that you need to take a break from your workout.  

Your Workouts 

Your Energy Levels 

The most obvious signal that it’s time for a break from your workouts will be low energy levels.  You may not only notice this during your workouts, but the rest of the day as well.  If climbing the stairs up to your office seems like a challenge that’s just too much to handle, somethings very wrong. 

If you just did a hard leg workout the day before, okay, then that may be okay.  But if you’re feeling like this on an ongoing basis, it’s time to give the body some rest.  

Your Motivation For Other Activities 

The next thing to assess is how your energy levels are to perform other activities you formerly enjoyed.  Perhaps you used to play on a rec ball team, or you regularly took in a yoga or kickboxing class at the gym.  Now you may feel as though a more appealing way to spend your time is at home on the counch in front of the TV. 

Assuming you aren’t suffering from depression, this is yet another signal that you’re workouts are asking too much from your body and you aren’t recovering. 

Your Libido

While you may be quick to blame your lack of desire to being busy or stress from work, overtraining can also lead to dramatically low sex drive levels.  In addition to this, if you’re on a fat loss diet and are getting very lean, this is another thing that will influence your libido. 

When your body fat levels get too low, the reproduction system is impacted, and this in turn causes sex drive to lower reducing the chances that you conceive. 

Your Sleep Patterns

Finally, the last thing to have a look at is your sleep patterns.  Despite feeling fatigued all the time, you may actually notice that you aren’t sleeping all that well at all.  Again, this is a signal you’re on the verge of overtraining. 

Ideally you want to be tired enough that you fall asleep in about ten to fifteen minutes. If you’re either falling asleep immediately as your head hits the pillow or you’re taking hours to fnally drift off, you know something is up. 

So, keep these points in mind.  While it’s great to be dedicated to your workout program, too much dedication is not always the best thing. 

You don’t have to come out of the gym dragging after every single workout to get good results.  In fact, it’s when you aren’t dragging that you’re going to be recovering maximally, hence making the greatest amount of progress. 

So, keep these points in mind.  While it’s great to be dedicated to your workout program, too much dedication is not always the best thing. 

You don’t have to come out of the gym dragging after every single workout to get good results.  In fact, it’s when you aren’t dragging that you’re going to be recovering maximally, hence making the greatest amount of progress. 

Related posts:

1. How To Recover From Overtraining
2. The Biggest Mistakes Women Make With Their Workouts and Diet
3. Are You Overtraining? Understanding The Symptoms Of This Condition

On the flip side, it might come first thing in the morning when your alarm clock rudely awakens you at 5:00 AM sharp for your supposed-to-be morning workout.  Lying in bed you debate it (hey, at least you gave it a fair shot), and decided your warm bed was a much better option at that point.

Whatever your particular instance is, it’s important to identify your fat loss excuses and bring them out into the open. You can’t beat something when you don’t know exactly what it is, so identification is the first step.

Figuring Out Your Excuse

First, you need to ask yourself when you are most often to use an excuse.  Is it when you are tired? When you are pressed for time? When you don’t have any quick, healthy food in the house and are already starving?

Identifying this will help you figure out what you can then do to change your circumstances.

Finding Solutions

For example, if you always find an excuse to skip your workout when you’re tired, you might want to consider moving your workouts to a point in the day when you aren’t as tired.

If you’re always turning to an excuse when you’re pressed for time, have a good honest look at your schedule and figure out what could possibly go in order for you to be able to make more time for your workouts.

If you never cook because you’re already starving when you get home, consider pre-preparing a big batch of certain meals and freezing them so they can be warmed up in minutes – faster than it takes you to order in.

While the onus is on you for using the excuse in the first place, having a look at (if any) situation factors that may be present can guide you to finding a solution.

Sometimes it’s simply a matter of you not being so lazy. But other times, there are small tweaks you can make to your lifestyle that make it much less likely that you’ll turn to that excuse in the first place.

What’s the biggest problem you battle in sticking with your diet and workout program?

For another article discussing solutions to excuses, check out this one by Men’s Health Magazine.

===> Overcome The Top 6 Reasons You Don’t Workout

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