How Do You Know When its Time to Layoff From Training

A lot of us can get overzealous in an attempt to quickly reach our fat loss or muscle building goals. Common examples of this includes exercising 2 hours or more everyday. Eating like a bird (to lose weight) or eating like a man whos been starving for days and just been released from prison (bulking up).

Last Friday, a clear indication of fatigue hit me and this has never happened before. I was at the book store browsing through some magazines (at the health and fitness section of course). As I was reading through some articles, my eyes lids suddenly felt very heavy. Before I knew it I was dozing off… while standing and holding a magazine… at a crowded bookstore! Luckily I wasn’t driving at that time! Even though it was already 8pm, I quickly replaced the magazine and headed over to Starbucks for a quick shot of skinny latte to keep the adenosine at bay.

As I was sipping the frothy latte, I started to think back at what I did this past week that could have made me so tired.

I worked out Saturday, Monday, Wednesday for an hour and a half. I had two morning conference calls – both 8am (actually there were three 8am calls but I missed one) and two night calls, 9.30pm and 11pm. Throughout this week, I had an average of about 5 hours of sleep a night. Hmmmm… I guess anyone would be able to pinpoint the problem there.

Yep, definitely, lack of sleep…

So for this entire week, I am laying off the gym to allow my body recuperate properly and then hitting the gym hard again, hopefully stronger than before.

I’m sure I’m not the only one whos not getting a proper 8 hour snooze. We are a generation of sleep deprived bunch. But I guess when you are also working out, all the more you should try to at least get 7 hours of shuteye. Lack of sleep not only impacts your workout performance, but also your level of concentration at work as well. Coffee is just a temporary solution and over reliance on it can be risky as well. (Think sleeping behind the wheel)

I guess in my next article I’m gonna write something on how sleep deprivation actually affects weight loss and why you should turn off that blackberry, postpone those late night conference calls and turn off the lights instead.

Its 11.57pm now as I’m writing this and I have an 8am conference call tomorrow… again. So I better get to bed now before I become a walking zombie.