How to use lifestyle management to prevent burnout/overtraining

Life stress can lower mood, cause sleepless nights, result in us drinking more caffeine and alcohol and essentially wipe us out. And then we add movement or exercise in order to combat stress. YES… exercise is clinically proven to enhance mood and reduce depression. BUT there is very little research done investigating the impact of adding training stress (intense working out/running) to chronic life stress. So before you jump on the bandwagon and take on too much, why not start by making room for your exercise by adjusting your lifestyle and enhancing your resilience. It means you’ll be able to engage in your sport/exercise safely without adding training stress to life stress.

Here are my top tips in how to achieve this.

1.       Don’t add training stress to life stress. Invest in a coach/trainer who will write you a programme that factors in life stress and adjusts your training to suit the demands you’re currently experiencing. Or if you can’t afford it, simply write a plan yourself, it’s better than having no plan and reduce temptation to train every day. Just because you CAN run train every day (or get outside for a Covid-19 ration run), doesn’t mean you should! If you write it down, you’ve more chance of training more sensibly.

2.       Let rest days be rest days. Life stress has the same impact on your body as training stress, so make sure you get full days where you do nothing other than a gentle walk. This will allow underlying physiological stress to reside.

3.       Move wisely. Shorter runs without a watch will take away pressure to run too hard/far. If you’re feeling tired take it easy. There are no medals for pushing through! You’ll just be giving future you an illness or injury!

4.       If you’re a runner, make sure you focus on strength and/or mobility. Being a good runner is more than the act of ‘running’. Identify weaknesses in your posture/technique and put time into training these rather than only running a lot.

5.       Monitor stress. This will allow you to appreciate when your body is trying to contend with an activated nervous system allowing you to have a day off or have an easy session, instead of sticking to your intended session that day. Monitoring stress can be done subjectively using a very basic score of 1/10 for stress OR objectively by monitoring heart rate variability (HRV) either using your running watch (some watches monitor this) or using an APP such as HRV4 training.

6.       Research and invest in your sleep hygiene. This will help take the pressure off your nervous system, adrenal glands and lower cortisol (stress hormones). Like training, good sleep is more about quality than quantity.

7.       Eat more fruit, vegetables, protein and good fats. Carbohydrate or sugar cravings often increase when we’re stressed, so if you feel this happening stick to carbs that are low G.I.

8.       Practise intentional breathing, meditation or mindfulness. This is clinically proven to change your brainwave pattern and switch off you sympathetic nervous system – the branch of your nervous system that causes us to be in fight or flight and release stress hormones.

9.       Get creative. Find a hobby or craft that allows your mind to get into flow state much in the same way it does when we run. Don’t get eye rolly…but things like drawing, puzzles, painting or even gardening and diy are great ways to de-stress.

10.   Laugh and have fun. When we’re training for an event, we often say no to social occasions and sacrifice time with friends so we can fit in our programmed exercise. BUT time to laugh with people we love the most will actually be better for our mental health in the long run.