Physical activity has many benefits for the body and mind, thanks to it we improve fitness, muscle strength and tone, cardiovascular system and even our cognitive abilities; however, over-exercise or overtraining can also have a number of negative consequences.
Problems you may have with overtraining and without resting the time required include addiction to certain sports, such as vigorexia or runnorexia, muscle injuries, heart and respiratory problems, weakened immune system, aging of the joints and so-called overtraining syndrome.
- Sometimes excessive training takes you to the next level.
- Leading to overtraining syndrome.
- A syndrome similar to exhaustion that occurs in workers.
As a result, there is a sharp decrease in the performance of athletes, even at rest, accompanied by a number of physical and psychological symptoms.
Among your symptoms, it is possible to differentiate between physical and mental overtraining:
Physical and physiological symptoms that may appear in this syndrome include:
In addition to the above symptoms, the following psychological symptoms occur:
In addition, a recent study found that excessive training can lead to increased impulsivity, a fact that does not simply affect this feature, but can have very negative consequences on behavior and health.
Impulsivity is a characteristic that leads the individual to act quickly, unexpectedly and excessively in the face of internal or external stimuli, so the person acts without thinking and whatever the consequences.
In September 2019, a group of French researchers published a survey on the consequences of excessive training on impulsivity, in particular how overtraining affects cognitive control.
To do this, they recruited a total of 37 triathletes, which were divided into two groups: overtraining and control group, i. e. 19 of them increased the duration of training by 40% each session for three weeks, the remaining 19 were supervised in normal training during the same period.
Thus, after weeks of experimental training (habitual or overloaded), participants underwent an evaluation session, which was divided as follows:
In this way, the researchers observed the excitability of the cerebral cortex, performance in specific tasks and preference for immediate or late rewards.
Researchers analyzed the activity of the cerebral cortex related to impulsivity and results in the task of temporal decisions; In addition, cognitive tasks were included, mainly, to trigger the activation of this brain area.
Thus, by comparing brain activity after 45 minutes of exercise with the activity of the first part of the session, they found a decrease in lateral prefrontal cortex activity during decision-making, not cognitive performance.
This would mean that overtraining has a negative effect on tasks where a decision needs to be made subjectively, consuming resources and making the task difficult.
In this task, they noted that overtrained triathletes showed a greater preference for smaller but short-term rewards compared to the control group that maintained their normal stress level.
These results are relevant in several respects. On the one hand, cognitive control, unlike impulsivity, helps us to perform tasks consciously and directly.
In the practice of exercise, less cognitive control would provide a greater sense of safety, taking the body to greater limits, so that not to stop, not to rest if necessary or to value a more immediate reward, can lead the athlete to injuries and behaviors of greater risk.
On the other hand, this preference to get the best out of the moment is related to doping, a falsification of the body that, in addition to compromising long-term objectives, has direct consequences on physical and psychological health.
In summary, as with most activities, the fatigue accumulated by overtraining can have negative consequences in the short and long term, so it is important to promote healthy habits, which should include learning to make appropriate decisions and knowing how not to put pressure on our body . and minds to their limits.