Life is an Athletic Event: Don’t Overtrain for It

Written by Heather

March 15th, 2010

While I’m usually sweating it out over technical stuff for a responsible and informative blogpost, today I’m speaking straight from the heart. With maybe a little technical stuff thrown in here and there, we’ll see. But, really, I laid the groundwork last week with my post on the Central Governor Theory and discussion of the Central Nervous System. If you haven’t had the pleasure, we took a look at the fact that you have one Central Nervous System that some theorize is governed even more centrally by an inborn system that checks us physically when it feels we need it. Athletes, particularly elite ones, may have experienced this phenomenon when trying to will their bodies farther-faster-longer to no avail.

Where's my podium?

What I’d like to toss on the table is that this concept could easily be extrapolated to the mental and emotional, not just applied to the physical. I mean, after all, we only get one CNS that runs the whole show—body, mind, and spirit. Without getting too woo-woo, let’s just all agree that separating the mind from the body isn’t going to happen because it’s all brain-based ultimately, yes? Cool. Anyhow, what’s got me waxing philosophic (and probably esoteric and spastic at the same time) is my own struggle with a blend of physical, emotional, and mental trauma that pretty much has me spinning my wheels. And I thought maybe I wasn’t alone.

Half of the title for this post is a quote stolen from some former colleagues who used it as a tagline for their sport chiropractic practice: Life is an athletic event. True it is. We would find over and over again that physical injury resulted time and again from what is termed “an abrupt change in training”. You can apply that concept to anything—whether it’s a high level hurdler suddenly trying to change their technique and straining a muscle in the process, to a harried soccer mom quickly reaching over the front seat of her car to grab her child’s left-behind gym bag only to upset her rotator cuff. The point behind this is that, no matter how conditioned you are physically, a change is a change is a change. And an abrupt one can = trauma, assuming no proper dynamic warm-up and no prior movement rehearsal. I think this easily translates to losing it over a non-physical situation for which you have inadequate preparation or no prior experience from which to draw.

The second part of the title alludes to the concept of overtraining. Wikipedia defines it as “…a physical, behavioral and emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of an individual’s exercise exceeds their recovery capacity. They cease making progress, and can even begin to lose strength and fitness.” Um, is it just me, or has anyone else experienced the same sort of sensation outside of training for an athletic event? The sensation of “exceeding their recovery capacity” resulting in a “physical, behavioral and emotional condition”. A “bonk”, in other words. Don’t raise your hand. If you’re in the throes of something like this right now, you may be too spent to do that anyhow.

So now that I’ve explained the post title ad nauseam, you’ll be able to feel me on my recent life experience. And how I’ve been bonking all over the place. If you’ve been following our posts, by now you know that I’m pretty much o-v-e-r-over it with this AC joint (shoulder) sprain. It’s way better, but it still takes almost nothing when testing the waters to tick something off in that quadrant of my body. For most of you reading this post on THIS site, forced inactivity due to a frustrating injury would be enough to put you over the edge. Wait, I’m not done. My husband recently started a new job. He really likes it and all, but he’s in the training phase of it and he has to put in several hours of work every day…after work. If it’s not that, he’s catching up on his doctorate coursework so that he can complete that degree by this August. If you passed Health and Human Sexuality class in high school, you might be able to put it together that the fact that we are trying to race the clock and start a family (I’ll be 40 this year and, according to modern medical testing, my baby maker is out of business) is…er…extra challenging with us not even being in the same part of the house most of the time. Wait, I’m still not done. Maybe it’s the 40-what-the-heck-is-my-body-doing-these-days thing, but my snowball-prone brain has decided to wad all of this up into what feels like a full-blown midlife crisis. Because amidst chiropractic appointments for the injury and peeing on ovulation test strips and keeping up with dust bunnies and the rest of daily life, I’m now also consumed with “What do I want to be? How do I want to shape my career? Where do we want to live?” The oddest part about all of that is that in spite of girding my loins up over coffee each morning, telling myself “Okay, new day. Knock it off. Let’s get on with things”, I find myself less efficient with time running out on me constantly. Contrast this with the fact that just a couple of years ago I was competing in a sport that required a TON of preparation, time, and self-absorption while I (fairly) successfully juggled about 15 hours more work per week while keeping the house free of health department violations, and… well, I’m confused. I’m bonking. I’m bonking at the athletic event of “life”.

Writing last week’s post about the Central Governor Theory really got me thinking about the fact that, if we can’t separate mind, body, emotion, and spirit, why wouldn’t we experience a forced “time out”, like it or not, conscious or not, with an overload to any combination of those components of ourselves? Likewise, if an athlete is at threshold in one or more of those areas outside of the physical one, couldn’t it then negatively affect physical performance, just like physical overload—or, “overtraining”—can affect mental and emotional status? I say yes. And I’ve witnessed it for years with patients and friends. In fact, I’m excellent in a crisis. As long as it’s someone else’s crisis, that is. So I’ve objectively pieced these things together before. But it sure is a more meaningful learning experience when it’s a life-bonk all of your own, complete with the inability to make decisions, compartmentalize, draw on logic, or adequately manage your time. As the acupuncturist said to me Monday “Your chi is out of balance. You have too much yang. You must bring in more yin”. Folks, she was telling me to chill the heck out, adding that I wouldn’t heal any components of “me” until I got balanced. I wasn’t about to argue with someone who had me nearly-naked and face down on a table while tapping needles into my shoulder, back, butt, and feet. Harking back again to the Central Governor, the inner “Check please!” switch in my Central Nervous System—not being able to separate my physical injury from my mental strain from my emotional turmoil—is likely shutting me down on some level, as is reflected in my behaviors, such as getting less done, less well, with relatively more time at my disposal. (More time with which to fail. Yay. LOL) Assuming I remember to do things the first place.

Anybody but me?

My life story

Before this becomes too much of an all-about-me rant (or did it already?), I’d like you to consider this a friendly little slap, like Cher did in the movie “Moonstruck” saying “Snap out of it!”, in case you’re dazed and confused about why you’re bonking (aka. failing) in one part of your life in spite of spot-on efforts. It might not be that part of your life, but one of the other inseparable, intertwined parts of you-glorious-you that all feed into the same command central. I’ll let you figure that out because, whether you know it or not, you know yourself best. I find this self-knowledge to be especially true with health and fitness nuts, actually. And while you do that, I’m going to go get my husband to have a meeting over our daytimers, then re-read Kas’s post about using injury timeouts wisely, and then start perusing meditation programs before I don’t know my yin from my yang anymore.

Tags: hitting a wall, over training