Is There Such Thing As Over-Training?
Over-training is quite real. Athletes are often motivated to push themselves to the absolute limit with every training session in an attempt to improve their abilities. However, over-training can result in a series of debilitating side effects. Most notably, the condition can lower your testosterone levels.
Causes Of Over-Training
Over-training is typically described as an imbalance between exercise and recovery. Over-reaching is the short term version of the debilitating condition. Overworking the body in singular training sessions may leave the individual feeling depleted and overly fatigued.
Over-reaching may occur when these intense workouts are not followed up with ample amounts of recovery time. Anything from stress at work to a newborn child in the house may add to the stresses of over-reaching. With time, over-reaching may progress to its more severe stage that is known as over-training. Over-training is a far more intense condition that sometimes requires months of recovery time.
Exercise and Testosterone
Testosterone allows for the body to burn more body fat, build muscle, increases cognitive functions and supplements healthy bone growth. Of course, these are only a few of the benefits of having healthy testosterone levels.
Through over-training, an individual may gain an enlarged adrenal glands. As the body is pushed to its limits within a workout, it will begin to produce cortisol to combat the stresses being experienced.
Well, cortisol can have negative effects on testosterone levels. Stresses from everyday life added on to the physical stresses from a workout can significantly boost your cortisol levels and therefore decrease your levels of testosterone.
After reaching lower levels of testosterone (low t), an individual may experience hair loss, fatigue, erectile dysfunction, increase in body fat or even depression.
Ways To Protect Your Testosterone
Weight loss is an excellent way to increase one’s testosterone levels. A high body fat percentage is well known to decrease the sex hormone’s levels. Furthermore, muscle gain can be a great boon to testosterone levels.
By increasing total muscle mass, an individual may experience higher levels of testosterone. Sleep is also a necessity in order to maintain healthy levels of testosterone.
