In gymnastics, what's exactly overtrain?

Well, the question is done.

I know gymnasts are suppossed to deal with high volumes of work in their training sessions, and talking about long trainig sessions.

Also it's suppossed that you can extend the time of a workout if you reduce its intensity.

But, exactly, how could someone determine if we're overtraining?

In my case, i'd like to know it, as i'm in the 4th week of my cycle, working out 3-4 times a week, and working for something like 2-3 hours a day, mixing different intensities during the workout, almost working in mid-low intenisty for the half of wod, and the other half for mid-high. I must say that i study and work, have not enough time to sleep (the most i get are between 7-7.5 hours/night), and having lots of work everyday. I have to say that this last week happened something very curious. I have bad mood, can't have good sleep, i can't perform good in both school and wods, and began to feel like i'm not getting enough recovery from one day to another....

Might this be considered as overtraining? Or just overreaching my capabilities to recover?

If so, whould you reccommend to cut work time, intensity, volume, or just to have a couple weeks of resting (obviously not complete rest, only active rest) ??

Thanks in advice

Might this be considered as overtraining? Or just overreaching my capabilities to recover?

That my friend is the definition of overtraining.

Overtraining is no different in gymnastics than any other sport or athletic endeavor. It's simply doing more than the body can handle. Usually this is from too much volume and not enough recovery. 2-4 hours is too long for a beginning trainee and in my opinion is way to long for a stength workout. This amount of time is usually only necessary when working on a skill.

You need to cut back the work. Reevaluate what you really need to do in your workouts. Make each focused. Also after you have done this, you should organize your eating and sleeping to help you recover. I study and work also at a very difficult university. There are some weeks where I have to give up training because I can't handle both.

Martin why are your workouts lasting 2-3 hours? That is quite long if you are doing the WODS. It could be you aren't scaling them properly to your level.

As Daniel said, you do have to also take into account the other things in your life, they also take energy.

If you were to do the GB program from the seminars, the prereq stuff, the warmup, stretching, FSP's, L and manna work, etc you could easily end up around 2 hours when you have some mobility series thrown in there like hip and shoulder and wrist besides HS work like balancing, walking, pirouettes, and presses.

To recover, focus on eating. Food helps recovery big time. Ice cream, man. Calories. Get sleep.

Try to get some exercise and blood flow.

Cut back volume drastically.

Since your mood is starting to get affected and your performance and ability to sleep, you more than likely are starting to get "overtrained."

Try to rest, active rest, passive rest (not necessarily sleep [but try to] but perhaps just laying about and relaxing and maybe nodding off), eat, hydrate.

What I use a lot of the time as a guage is to do my warmup and see how I feel afterwards. If you still feel like crud, call it a day.

There is a difference between overreaching and overtraining. You are overreaching, and it can be a very useful tool to improve work capacity. The body will adapt to the new training load, but you would need to support it through recovery means(sleep, nutrition, etc.) to push further. This is what John Broz calls 'the dark times', although your situation doesn't sound as bad.

I'm not sure how your 2-3 hour sessions look, but I'm assuming you're doing more than just strength work in your training sessions. Probably some handbalancing and mobility work as well, if not more.

You have to keep your training efficiency in mind. If you are training one movement at a time, you're going to be wasting quite a bit of time. You should be using supersets or combining training elements, to maximize efficiency. Pairing antagonist movements, adding specific mobility exercises as active rest, etc. can all be time savers.

Also, make sure you are deloading regularly. Some people like to cut the volume 1 week out of 4. Others like to cut it on the 4th training session of the same type. They work out to similar results, but I tend to prefer the latter.

You have to eat periodically during workouts like that. By eat, I mean liquid nutrition. Solid food will simply take too long to get through you, but part of this is due to the food you're not getting.

The over-reaching/overtraining thing is mostly semantic. Either way you're doing too much with your current lifestyle. Overtraining just goes on for a lot longer.

I think you're going to need to stick with one intensity per workout... You can't do high intensity training 3-4 times per week with a real job and school and actually expect to feel ok. Have light days, medium days and 1 heavy day per week.

You might want ro read the "Overtraining?" Sticky in the basic strenght forum, good info!

Joshua Naterman said:

The over-reaching/overtraining thing is mostly semantic. Either way you're doing too much with your current lifestyle. Overtraining just goes on for a lot longer.

I'd draw a comparison between overreaching/overtraining and tendonitis/tendonosis.

Also, the question in the title: "What is overtraining in gymnastics?" is kind of odd. Overtraining is an attribute of the body. It does not pertain to the sport.

Rik de Kort said:

Joshua Naterman said:

The over-reaching/overtraining thing is mostly semantic. Either way you're doing too much with your current lifestyle. Overtraining just goes on for a lot longer.

I'd draw a comparison between overreaching/overtraining and tendonitis/tendonosis.

I think that's a really good analogy.

It's pretty good one. Only applies with a good plan though. Tendonitis is more often indicative of bad planning not just pushing too far.

well, so far, what i've done is this:

This whole weekend i slept for lots!

seriously, i slept for 10 hours (probably it's not much, but for me is a lot )

took good food, good rest, good baths, and spent multiple sessions of foam rolling and smr

I'll get some more days in this way, i'm feeling great =)

thanks everybody for the comments

martinponce said:

(...) i'm feeling great (...)

That usually is a good sign...

Nic Branson said:

It's pretty good one. Only applies with a good plan though. Tendonitis is more often indicative of bad planning not just pushing too far.

Do you think that good planning would keep one from pushing too far?

Joshua Naterman said:

Nic Branson said:

It's pretty good one. Only applies with a good plan though. Tendonitis is more often indicative of bad planning not just pushing too far.

Do you think that good planning would keep one from pushing too far?

If the plan is done well and followed with recovery included then yes in 90%+ cases. I was more meaning a BAD plan will almost always lead to it.