While chasing the perfectly chiseled bodies, body builders are prone to overdo it especially in competitive professional body building. When a body builder goes overboard while in a workout, we usually say that he or she has overtrained. Overtraining is therefore engaging in extremely long and rigorous workouts until a body builder exceeds his or her optimal workload potential. Exceeding this optimal workload pushes the body tissues to a point where recovery is impossible. Instead of stimulating muscle growth and development, overtraining kills the muscles already developed and risks the entire body to grave dangers.

It is sometimes hard to understand why a sane body builder will over do exercises which are not usually easy or sugar-coated. Is it enthusiasm, foolishness or ignorance that can make an individual take an overdose of work? Most people dread a thirty minute visit to the gym, how then is it possible for a person to go there and then forget to get out? Contemporary research into body building training patterns has established that most body builders are pushed by various factors and pressures until they overtrain though with innocent motives. Some of the reasons that innocently prompt body builders to take an overdose of training include peer pressure where a body builder wants to beat colleagues in achieving physical bulkiness outdo competitors or compare to a fellow body builder. Another prominent reason that triggers overtraining is an inadequate diet that does not in any way correspond to training needs.

If the body builder takes in less calories and minerals than the body is using during workouts, then even minimal sessions of light training becomes overtraining. Another reason prompting overtraining is inadequate allowances for sound and effective rest and sleep needs. Medium training sessions becomes overtraining if done shortly after the last one or before the body builder has even slept. Sleep and rest are as important as exercises themselves and maximal workouts remain unproductive if the muscles are not given adequate time to recover, replace and regenerate. So how does one avoid overtraining?

Specialists recommend that body builders should alternate regularly the period allocated for exercises and that of sleep and rest. Each of these is as important as the other and should be obeyed without bias towards or from any. Secondly, the body builder must always match the body requirements during and after training in his dietary intakes. The body should be provided with adequate nutrients and minerals to sufficiently build new muscle cells, repair the injured and regenerate the exhausted ones. Solid carbohydrates, proteinious diets and all essential micronutrients must be supplied in the body builder’s regular diet. And as the old maxim goes food is made food because of providing adequate water supply for digestion and transportation purposes. Diets can of course be augmented by appropriate prescriptions of diet supplements, as supplements not as replacements to poor diets.

Overtraining whether before a sabbatical leave or in preparation of a major contest always results to dangerous consequences. Body building is not an art of hurting the body, rather it is the deliberate attempt to develop it naturally and enhance its fitness, volume and definition. So why hurt what you want to build? It does and will never make sense.

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