Feeling tired is a major reason why people don’t exercise. Those who start a new workout routine – to lose some extra weight or to tone up – give up after a week or so because they’re drained for the rest of the day. Most people think it’s because workouts make you move and burn energy, so obviously you’ll have less energy later in the day right? Not exactly. Feeling tired after a workout is actually a sign of overtraining. In fact, a good workout routine should leave you with even more energy than before.
Tiredness is one of the primary signs of overtraining because you’re not giving your body enough time to recover from stress. Other signs include lack of progress and chronic physical or mental stress, and all signs can be eliminated by fixing improper workout and recovery.
Why Overtraining Makes You Tired
To better understand how this works, it’s important to learn what happens to the body during the workout, while it recovers, and throughout your normal day. The two bodily states mentioned below describe how the central nervous system (CNS) handles stress and recovery for the body.
The Two Bodily States
Sympathetic State (Fight or Flight)
The sympathetic state is often referred to the “fight or flight” state. It activates whenever we run into stressful situation; both physically and mentally. This is state you enter during your workouts. As you start your workout, your body recognizes the physical stress of the exercise and starts releasing hormones to enhance the experience. These hormones – most common of them being cortisol and adrenaline – help increase your blood pressure, get your sweat moving, and overall make you stronger as you move.
However, the sympathetic state is not exclusive to workouts. Mental stress can also trigger the same heart pounding and sweat pouring reaction. Major mental stress can include financial hardships, family emergencies, being laid-off work, etc. Times like these can get the heart racing as if you’re running a mile. There are also minor stress events that may not have the same magnitude of side-effects, but add up over time to cause chronic stress. Minor stressful events include demanding jobs, unhealthy relationships, poor sleep, etc. None of this make your heart rate skyrocket, but the fact that they do cause stress over long periods of time makes them just as dangerous if left unchecked.
Parasympathetic State (Rest and recovery)
The parasympathetic state refers to “rest and recovery.” This is essentially the complete opposite of the sympathetic state; the body relaxes and tries to recuperate after being stressed. After your workout, your body tries to enter the parasympathetic by releasing unique hormones like insulin to repair the body. All of the muscle building and metabolism boosting benefits occur here.
Again, this state is not just for workout recovery. Any activity that let’s you unwind and relax will put you in the parasympathetic state. Even certain foods full of carbs and protein enhance enhance the parasympathetic state through the hormones that are released after consumption.
How These States Make You Tired
The tiredness you feel from exercise is caused by an imbalance between these states; you’re putting much more stress on the body than it can recover from. Common beginner mistakes that cause this imbalance includes:
- Exercising for too long or too often
- Using too much intensity
- Sacrificing sleep to exercise
- Improper nutrition
What can also make you tired is a stressful lifestyle. As mentioned, minor stress over a long period of time can have serious negative effects. More examples of minor stress that often gets ignored includes:
- Being overly productive (not having time to just sit and breath)
- Working long hours
- Shift work (any shifts between 6pm and 6am)
- Poor sleep quality
To be 100% sure that the tiredness you feel is caused by overtraining, review the other common signs of overtraining below.
Other Signs of Overtraining
Chronic Soreness
It’s common to think being sore means you had a good workout. In reality, soreness is a major sign of overtraining if it becomes a constant feeling.
Soreness is caused by muscle inflammation, which is essential for repairing damaged muscle tissue. Damaged muscle tissue is actually what causes you to get stronger and more fit after a workout; as you exercise, you create microscopic tears in the muscle fibers that are repaired during the parasympathetic state. If the workout was optimal, the body will repair the damage and make the fibers stronger to handle the stress better next time. This is the best case scenario with exercise. On the other hand, if you overtrained, your muscle will be so damaged that the body cannot make them stronger. The body will only repair the damage and hope it doesn’t happen again. This is what happens with chronic soreness.
Feeling sore the first week is fine, but if every single week you feel so sore that grazing your leg or chest makes them hurt, you’re overtraining.
Lack of Progress
Most people who over train are either trying to lose weight or build muscle. If you’re putting hours upon hours in the gym each week and seeing no sign of progress, it’s possible you’re overtraining.
However, sometimes the reason you’re not seeing progress is a different yet equally important factor like nutrition. An easy test to tell if your workouts are effective is to measure the progress of the workouts themselves. For example, instead of just using the scale to keep track of your weight, pay attention to how much weight and how many reps you use for each exercise in your workout routine. If you’re doing the exact same thing every single day, your workout is not effective. If you notice you’re slowly making the workouts harder by adding weight, reps, time, etc., then your workouts are definitely effective. Here are two example with someone doing a full body routine.
If the routine works
| Exercise | Week 1 (Weight x Reps) | Week 2 (Weight x Reps) | Week 3 (Weight x Reps) |
| Squats | 20×10 | 30×10 | 40×10 |
| Shoulder Press | 30×8 | 30×10 | 35×10 |
| Lat Pulldown | 40×10 | 45×10 | 45×12 |
| Plank | 20 seconds | 35 seconds | 50 seconds |
If the routine does not work
| Exercise | Week 1 (Weight x Reps) | Week 2 (Weight x Reps) | Week 3 (Weight x Reps) |
| Squats | 20×10 | 20×10 | 20×10 |
| Shoulder Press | 30×8 | 30×8 | 30×8 |
| Lat Pulldown | 40×10 | 40×10 | 40×10 |
| Plank | 20 seconds | 20 seconds | 20 seconds |
If your goal is to lose weight, why does it matter if you’re lifting more weight? It matters because too much exercise will never make the body improve. The body will only repair all the damage you did to it, but it will not build muscle or burn bodyfat like you want it to. Seeing the weights go up in your exercises is the perfect sign that you’re body is not only repairing the damage from your workout, but also improving itself by changing it’s physical structures (fat and muscle).
How to Fix Your Stress/Recovery Balance
Reducing Intensity
People make their workouts too intense by either working out too much or making the workout way too stressful.
Most beginners should start with 1-3 days a week of dedicated exercise. This includes going to the gym, running, cycling, or any major activity that puts you in a sympathetic state. If you’re going more than 3 days already, try taking away some days and replacing them with light activity like walking. Walking is great because it keeps the body activate, but actually enhances the parasympathetic state because it’s relaxing.
To make the workout is not too stressful, use the “lack of progress” test from above. Every workout should see steady improvements if it’s right for you.
Reducing Stress from Everyday Life
As mentioned in the beginning, mental stress doesn’t just mean getting fired or having a family emergency. Minor stressful events can go unnoticed yet add up to impede workout recovery.
Try to be more aware of things that can cause even a little bit of stress. Some small yet very effective examples include:
- Reducing time spent with negative people (“energy vampires”)
- Create bigger gaps between appointments so you’re not rushing from place to place all the time
- Keep work and home life separate by not taking calls/emails when out of work
- Take time every day doing something you like doing (hobbies)
- Don’t have too many stimuli going at the same time. For example, try listening to calming or no music as you drive to work
The goal is to add more time each day to just breath and relax. This will not only improve your workout recovery, but also add energy to your everyday life.
Optimizing Sleep
Your parasympathetic state works the most powerfully during sleep, making it vital for recovery. Without it, you’re missing a majority of your workout recovery, essentially making your workouts much less effective.
Although there are a variety of opinions on the internet, the consensus is that you need 8 hours of sleep every day. Even if you feel fine with just 5 or less, getting 8 will make you feel and function even better. To optimize those 8 hours, its recommended to turn off excessive lights an hour before bed as well as keeping the room pitch black during sleep.
Most people spend their time before bed watching TV, using their computer, or being on their phone. Despite being so common, these devices can actually reduce sleep quality because of their blue light. Blue light is a specific wavelength of light that only naturally occurs from sunlight. Because of this, when the body senses blue light, it will produce hormones to keep the body awake since it thinks its daytime. These hormones are why humans have a circadian rhythm: depending on the amount of blue light the body detects (and yes the skin can detect light), it will either make you feel awake or tired. To make sure your body knows it’s almost time to sleep, try not to use any electronics an hour before bed, and turn off as many lights as possible while still being able to navigate the house.
For the same reason, it’s best to keep the room pitch black while you sleep. Invest in blackout curtains and a quality sleep mask if needed. Also try to put tape on small LED lights from idle TVs, clocks, or other electronics.
Post-Workout Nutrition
What you eat after your workout can influence your recovery for the rest of the day.
Normally, the body enter the sympathetic (stress) state during the workout then slowly calms down to the parasympathetic (recovery) state to start resting. However, this transition can take hours before finally getting to a full recovery state. Post-workout nutrition aids in recovery by making this transition much faster, allowing you to enter recovery almost immediately after a proper meal.
The nutrient that helps recovery the most is protein. Having a modest serving of protein immediately after the workout will signal the release of parasympathetic hormones like insulin. These signals force the body into a recovery state much faster than if you don’t eat anything after your workout. Carbs do this as well, but protein is preferred because most people who exercise don’t eat enough protein, and protein can help keep you satisfied and energized throughout the day. Check this article about the many benefits of protein as well as how much you should eat a day.
Lastly, it’s a common myth that eating protein post-workout makes you build more muscle. This is called an “anabolic window,” but this has been debunked for many years now. However, post-workout protein will indirectly improve muscle growth because of it’s recovery benefits. Protein shakes are the easiest since they don’t require preparation, and can be transported easily if you need to be somewhere after your workout.