the days when you feel like weak

hey guys!

So today I want to talk with you about those horrible days where you do nothing and you have the feeling you can feel your muscle mass decrease and getting weaker and wobblier every hour.

I am doing gymnastics 18 hours a week, 6 days a week I have a tough strength workout. I just have sundays off.

But my gym has a lot of breaks (more than 2 months per year) and I try to continue with the strength, flexibilty and basic stuff at home during that time.

It really works most of the time, but then, out of nowhere, on some days, I don't have the motivation to go into my back yard and throw 10 standing back tucks, 10 handsprings etc and I don't do anything but sit in front of the TV or my Laptop and do homework. And then I have the mess...the next day I feel kind of tired cuz my metabolsim slowed down and then it usually is like that for some days and it gets worse with everyday. I also can't sleep even if I am awake for 18+ hours because I haven't exercised and I am not tired. I hate myself for that, but I somehow don't manage to go out there and do something, until

the day when gym starts again comes or I find a little piece of motivation somewhere. If I manage to train again, everything is fine the next day when I suddenly can feel my body again with this amazing little soreness that tells me my muscles are still there!

Just some thoughts as I am in this stage at the moment...

It doesn't happen too often, but like evey 2 or 3 months and it lasts between 3-7 days.

When I talked to my coach about that, he said he experienced the same thing and he still does and it is very common in athletes. When he had these periods, he used to eat like everything he wanted to because he usually had a planned diet.

Anyways, he told me that if it doesn't last longer than 5 days, it won't harm you at all. Even if you feel like crap, weak, wobbly, tired and just horrible, it is actually not too bad for the body, because all the muscles can fully recover and so can your whole body.

Have you ever experienced that?

What is you opinion?

 Sometimes your body will force you to back off and take breaks. This is generally why back off weeks should be programmed into training.

 Of note. The Chinese male weightlifters take backoff weeks every 3rd week. Sometimes these do not last the entire week but 3 days midweek so they are generally back to a normal schedule by Friday and Saturday.

 The women are trained a bit differently as it revolves around the menstrual cycle. 3 weeks on, 1 week to 10 days.

"Example: Men can do heavy training for 2 weeks, women can do 3 weeks. But for women the recovery period will be longer (1 week to 10 days). Men can train heavy for 2 weeks, but they recover faster (“maybe 3 days” was the example)."

 Coach Sommer used to backoff his guys strength training on the 4th week.

Does sound a lot like overtraining and mentally drained. You have to rest for a longer journey.

Blairbob said:

 

 Coach Sommer used to backoff his guys strength training on the 4th week.

Yeah, a deload week every 4th week is pretty universal, even in weightlifting circles.

Hi fellas , I become addicted to training. Planche ,front lever , muscle up, arm chin , flag , one leg squat , 2hrs a night , 6 days a week , and I had a physical job ,I just kept trying till I couldn't do any more , then I started to get aches ,pains , no energy , it was hard to get up , no motivation. I thought I was I'll. went to doctors loads of blood test all come back clear, so I started the foundation , 4 times a week 30 mins , nothing else , it was hard cause I thought I wouldn't make any progress , but I was wrong , I improved on everything started to feel fit no aches no pain , I could lift an house , I had energy for all the workouts . It was My body telling me to stop, I remember coach saying something like ,work as hard as you can on your workout , then just as hard on recovery , I'm doing less training but getting more gains , so listen to your body . Cheers Mel