The Road to Recovery-OverTraining

[Forest]

Hi my name is Jack, I’m 21 a 2nd yr student. Playing sports has been a big part of my life; unfortunately over the last 6 months everything slowly started to deteriorate. At first it was injuries, then poor sleep, then headaches and nausea, poor eating habits and finally abdominal pain and swelling followed by several hospital visits- I have very mild Cystic Fibrosis. I had a blocked gut and the doctors feel it was to do with my condition but reading up on overtraining and the way things have been going for me I think poor recovery (little or no stretching after training)and excessive training were the main factors. I have been the picture of health for many years eating well training well sleeping well. It’s gotten to the stage now that if I run briefly to catch a bus etc my heart rate feels very high and painful and my joints feel sore.

I find it incredibly difficult to sit around doing nothing and if I have not done any kind of physical activity during the day I feel awful at night. This feeling of having to train and be active has ultimately lead me to rock bottom so now I am trying to pick up the pieces and get things back in balance and hopefully start competing properly in my sports, enjoying it and improving again.

I play soccer and I am the boxing captain for my university. The soccer team I train with is highly competitive and a good standard. The boxing is also very intense and as I am the captain I like to lead by example by working hard. My weekly training timetable used looked like this:

Mon: 5-7pm Boxing, Tues: 5.30-7pm Soccer, Wed: 8-10pm Boxing, Thurs: 5.30-7pm Soccer, Fri: 7-9pm Boxing, Sat: Soccer match (or gym if no match). Sun: Rest

I am trying to stay positive and see this as an opportunity to overhaul my body and work on the areas that I see as the biggest weaknesses, but, I am finding it difficult seeing things that I have worked hard at for a number of years slip away from me. I know that I need to rest just don't know how to. Due to my college and training timetable being very different each day, I have not had a routine for a long time.

My problem areas are:

• Left ankle- I have sprained 3 times in the past 6 months

• Left knee- when I try to stretch out my hips by bending my leg at the knee and externally rotating, it causes me pain and I feel a lot of pressure at the back of my knee and at the very top and outside of my shin. Possibly a strained hamstring injury or calf? and maybe poor hip mobility as added pressure.

• Tight hips and glutes-cannot sit crossed legged

• Neck stiffness- I crack my neck often to release the stiffness.

• Left shoulder- weakness, I cannot really describe it, when I lift my arms all the way up to the side, just before my left arm comes beside my ear it sort of falls/drops in feels like a tendon flicking over. Gets tired quickly when boxing.

• Pulling weakness- because of the sports I play and the gym work I have done in the past the majority of them have been pushing exercises. As a result my horizontal row and hamstring strength feels weak.

• Sleep- Probably my biggest problem because of college commitments, my sports commitments as well as family commitments my sleeping has been very poor. I normally wake up early, before my alarm, feeling like I had a very restless night’s sleep. I have been getting to bed late and irregular times.

• Nutrition- I think this has mainly been affected by my poor sleep patterns. If I sleep well I will eat well but my meal times and quality of meals have been very inconsistent. Sometimes very good sometimes very bad. I used to always feel hungry-but wary of eating too much because of boxing. Now I feel very nauseas and don’t feel like eating at all.

• Stress- because I am being pulled in so many directions I think this has also been one of my main problems. I have been holding things together but it’s getting more and more difficult.

If anyone can give me any advice, steer me in the right direction or let me know a little bit about your own experience of overtraining that would great. My overall goal is trying to get into a state where I can play sports again and reduce my injury count. I want to be proactive about this. I have access to a set of gymnastics rings (just bought), paralettes, a well equipped gym, thera-bands, running track unfortunately no swimming pool which I think would have been perfect for keeping up with some light cardio. I have begun doing yoga once or twice a week as recommended by the physio.

Thank you for your help.

[Pbkid39]

I'm actually studying burnout & overtraining as well as athletic injuries and psychology for my sport psych exam next week so I can give you many tips off the top of my head.

1. Make sure you have a solid base of social support. It can help you cope with setbacks by reduce stress, enhancing mood, etc.

2. No pain no gain attitude can lead to injury. Listen to your body. Rest periods are essential

3. Set goals for recovery. Do your research and dedicate yourself to it

4. Perfectionism can lead to overtraining and injury. Accept that nobody is perfect. Don't get mad at yourself if you miss a workout.

5. Use relaxation techniques (yoga, meditation) & imagery/visualization to reduce stress and keep you positive.

6. The problem with participating in sports for your whole life is that you identify yourself solely as an athlete, therefore a reaction to injury would be identity loss which is detrimental to your psychological well-being. Take a break from training, find other things that interest you besides sports, and focus on recovery.

7. Use positive self-talk strategies to keep you motivated and counteract decreased self-confidence from being injured.

Just know that a reciprocal relationship exists between your mind & body, with your mind playing a key role in injury rehab.

[Amebix138]

Kava kava might help with stress and sleep.

[Forest]

Thanks pbkid,

you've hit a few nails on the head there.

I'm not great and reaching out for some help when obstacles come my way but I understand this has got to the point where its serious and I'm treading water looking a bit lost so I'm gonna try to ease up.

Also with the no pain no gain mentality i understand the point you made, I've just got to put it into practice.....should be a doddle right!?!? lol hopefully step by step i'll improve that and get better at listening and not abusing my body so much. Perfectionism is something i've got to tackle too.

I'm just wondering if you could maybe go into a little more detail with the goal setting for recovery. I'm likely to be way too ambitious- make it back to full training within the next 3 days sort of thing. I've never really done much goal setting and not sure exactly sure how to go about it.

Also I was wondering if you could point me in the direction or explain a little more about those positive self-talk strategies and visualisation techniques.

Kava Kava looks interesting I may give it a go thank you

Thanks again for the help

[Pbkid39]

Sure, and I know how you feel because I've been injured and trying to get back too early can cause even more problems and burn you out of your sport.. which it did for me (I was a hockey goaltender). The key really is knowing that recovery doesn't happen overnight, it takes a while .. the challenge is to stay optimistic while you're in the process of recovery. As for goal setting.. what I mean is that you should set short-term goals with the long-term goal in mind being full recovery of that injury. Focus on those injuries that are bugging you the most first, one at a time. Few examples of short-term goal would be:

a) Go see physio, b) commit to doing recovery exercises 3-4 times a day, c) do your research & get informed about the nature of your injury, and how you can enhance recovery (you can find pretty much anything over the internet). d) Commit to keeping away from activities which cause you pain.

Positive self-talk strategies are used to relieve stress. Basically what you do is come up with a few one liners such as "I will recover" or "I am healthy" or "I'm in control of my life" . You repeat these to yourself either in your head or out loud, and mean it. The more you repeat it to yourself the more you're likely to believe it as true. It's all about keeping a positive outlook.

Visualization or imagery is a technique that needs a lot of practice to get it right, but what they claim is that when you visualize you're injury healing itself it actually fires neurons in that region and helps with the healing process. Same thing goes when you visualize yourself playing a certain sport , without actually playing it. While you're recovering from your injury you could visualize yourself doing certain moves in your sport, and this, if done right, would theoretically enhance recovery and facilitate your return.

I would look into seeing a sport psychologist if you have any in your area. They would surely get you on your way

[Forest]

Thank you pbkid I've been looking into some of the things you've mentioned and I'm just sort of updating my progress, I figure hopefully people can take something from what I'm trying to get through if they experience a similar situation.

So a month on:

1. Sleep- The most important thing to get right and after seeing the doctor I was prescribed with sleeping tablets. This was a scary step but I tried it and sometimes they would work and other times they wouldn't. However in the last few days I had left them at a friends house and had not been taking them, I have been sleeping much better. I think I may of needed them initially just to get me back into some sort of routine and thankfully I feel my body is remembering what to do.

2. Stress- I was referred to a psychiatrist and have had a couple of sessions with him- haha we wont go into that- but what i will say is that being proactive about dealing with some of these issues such as perfectionism, self criticism and taking on too much seem to be half of the battle. Being proactive is a positive action and breeds positive results. Still a long way to go but getting there. Also when looking for information on positive self talk, visualisation and meditation I came across a newspaper article about someone who had gone through a rough time and this manifested itself in thoughts of "having to be better" and "have to improve" generally not giving himself a break. A book was mentioned "The Compassionate Mind" by Paul Gilbert. It combines what we know about our existence today and what we know about the mind- its maturation over the thousands of years etc. with elements of Buddhist meditation and ways of training yourself to be more compassionate to yourself and others. It has been good, and has been helping for my specific situation anyway. Remember to keep an eye open is what I learnt there!!

3. Injuries and rehabilitation. I have not been keeping up with my specific injury stretches and exercises. Now normally i would have got on my back and felt very guilty about this, (we've been working on that though) but I'm in the middle of exams and so I'm telling myself to just concentrate on the basics like above. I have been going to yoga still and do a couple of runs when i feel up to it, also a few stretches during the day here and there.

I have constructed a bit of a recovery plan that's overall goal is to be injury free by august. I've split it into 3 week sections, at the moment I'm in the lead in phase and each new section has some progression and builds up. In a later post I will go into more detail of my plan.

There we go progress, hard to define exactly but progress none the less.

I have one question if anyone can help; since stopping training I have been much more aware of my injuries and general "niggles" that i had not really felt before. My left shoulder, hips and glute weakness and left knee problems have felt much more noticeable.

I'm just wondering if the tightness in my muscles has subsided somewhat and that has something to do with it....? If anyone knows or has an idea? I'm trying to see my physio but money is tight at the minute.

Thanks everyone and good luck.