Overtraining?

[OmarEvo]

I am currently serving active duty in the US army. As a soldier we run 3 times a week mostly focused on endurance and do hypotrophy training twice a week. Along side that I train 6 times a week with a push/pull/legs split with the first half of the week focusing on lifting heavy and the second more of a circuit/HIIT training type of workout. I usually finish off every workout with a 1 mile run at about a 8-9mph pace. I am also trying to cut down weight I’m 6ft 191lbs with 16% body fat. My resting HR is 55 BPM and my cardio Fitness score is 52. I’m wondering if I’m overtraining or overthinking my workout routine. I feel normal most of the days but fairly sore consistently as I believe in giving 110% every time I workout. My calorie intake daily is about 2000 and I usually burn between 4200-5000 calories daily. Any tips or advice on what I can change or do better?

[Dominique · Accepted solution]

Can’t say about the overtraining (don’t you have qualified supervisors in the military to give you advice on that?), but you’d certainly appear to be undereating for your size and level of activity.

How much weight do you need/want to drop? The "biggest loser" approach probably isn’t the best way to do it.

[OmarEvo]

I’m not trying to undereat it’s just the food I usually eat is enough to fill me up without being heavy on calories.. I do follow a pretty routine eating diet of 3 hard boiled eggs, 3 sausage links and a pbj sandwich and a banana for breakfast, a chicken breast and broccoli and tomatoes and banana for lunch and the same thing for dinner. And we do have nutritionist but they’re usually booked by people who need them.. I’m just trying to fine tune and go down in body fat % from 16 to maybe 12-10%

[bikerhiker]

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@OmarEvo wrote:

I am currently serving active duty in the US army. As a soldier we run 3 times a week mostly focused on endurance and do hypotrophy training twice a week. Along side that I train 6 times a week with a push/pull/legs split with the first half of the week focusing on lifting heavy and the second more of a circuit/HIIT training type of workout. I usually finish off every workout with a 1 mile run at about a 8-9mph pace. I am also trying to cut down weight I’m 6ft 191lbs with 16% body fat. My resting HR is 55 BPM and my cardio Fitness score is 52. I’m wondering if I’m overtraining or overthinking my workout routine. I feel normal most of the days but fairly sore consistently as I believe in giving 110% every time I workout. My calorie intake daily is about 2000 and I usually burn between 4200-5000 calories daily. Any tips or advice on what I can change or do better?

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If you suspect you are overtraining, then I think maybe you are.  You don't have a lot of rest days allocated with your training.  Looking at your workouts; that's pretty intense for a working soldier.  8/9mile pace for 1 mile run is not slow and your 55 RHR perhaps slightly elevated but looks good still.  I assume your body fat of 16% is determined by the traditional US Army calliper measurements or is it with a DXA?  

Here's a tip.  When you are as lean as you are now, doing drastic cardio workout and also in a severe caloric deficit will not help you burn body fat any further.  This is what I think you are trying to do; burn more so you can get that ripped look.  The only I can think of is your regular US Army workout; they are designed to give you that needed endurance and strength to complete your assigned long deployment duties, but that workout which has that long cardio hard component that is actually detrimental to your body recomposition effort.  Meaning, to get you down lower than 16% towards something like a 9-10%, you actually have to increase your weight and strength training and cut severely down on the cardio workout.  But then you will have a problem meeting your 1 mile pace qualifier.  The cardio workout is meant to keep your endurance level high and therefore, your body fat has to be in a higher percentage.  Body fat is used as a reserve fuel for emergency use.  As a working soldier deployed in the field, you want more reserve fuel, not not enough reserve fuel just because you want to look ripped, but under fire in enemy lines, you would likely wish you have enough reserves in you to keep fighting with little food you may have.  That's part of your army training and survival I would think.  When I was running ultra-marathons, my body fat % was much higher than I am now because I'm not running ultra-marathons anymore.  I don't need more body fat to rely upon as my emergency fuel reserve.

So in order to recomposition your body to a lower body fat%, you need to focus more on weights and strength training and as little on high endurance cardio.  The cardio component is used to speed up the fat loss, but too much of that when you are that lean will start to burn lean muscle tissue.  Most people are who are in severe caloric deficit plus intense workout suffer from a symptom called "Sarcopenia" (losing lean muscle) and that leads to Sarcopenia Obesity -- skinny fat or TOFI (Thin Outside Fast Inside).  Which is why typically you get people asking how can I get ripped with Sarcopenia Obesity.  Well you can't as the extreme cardio HITT component strips lean muscle tissue.

Hope this helps..

[Dominique]

In order to lose fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit. The size of your deficit will affect the ratio of fat mass to lean mass being lost. With a moderate deficit, you will lose more fat and less lean mass. With a big deficit, you will lose less fat and more lean mass. This is especially true since you’re starting from a relatively lean state (people who carry more fat can be more aggressive).

[bikerhiker]

The size of the loss is dependent on the body fat % and the activity level.  Below is an example of the result from a DXA scan on an individual.  

So based on this example, this individual who is doing extreme workout similar to the OP would need to eat 2438 calories, but this individual workout need to stay within a caloric deficit of 1950-2072 calories to be safe from losing lean muscle tissue to lose weight, which carries the range between a deficit 366-488 calories.  The higher the intensity the workout, the easier it is to exceed the safe working zone of the caloric deficit zone and therefore the higher likelihood of overtraining and not much in terms of losing body fat.  Rather, the risk of losing more lean muscle tissue is elevated.  The lower the activity level with a modest caloric deficit of 1411-1500 with a maintenance intake of 1764 calories has a higher likelihood of maintaining muscle mass but reducing body fat.

This individual has a DXA scan of 15% body fat.  The OP's 16% body fat has clearly far larger deficit (like 2000 calories) than EVEN the recommended lower limit recommended for a lean body person from the DXA scan (366-488 calories deficit).  Since 1lb of lean muscle mass = 600 calories.  If we are to take the same individual with the 15% body fat and subject him to a 2000-5000 deficit, means that after 488 calories max deficit, the remainder of 1512 calories for a 2000 calories deficit has to come from somewhere other than body fat.  It comes from muscle mass.  So 1512 calories/day deficit x 7 days = 10584 calories /600 calories = 17.64 lb of loss muscle mass per week with just under 1 lb of fat loss.  No wonder a person gets sore as you get no muscle growth, but muscle loss this individual is subjecting the body to more and more progressive overload despite the weight load staying the same doing the same strength exercises!

This DXA scan facility is one of the world renowned Olympic sanctioned place we have in town.  Their results are used for international competition.

[Kris111]

Did you not just answer your own question? Your intake of calories is 2000 and and you are burning 4000 - 5000

Soo you're burning 2000 to 3000 calories on a regular basis? One day, possibly 2 you can get away with that but more then that you're sending your body into fight or flight mode. 

The Max you should try burning on a regular basis is probably 1000 and even then sometimes it's hard not to activate your sympathetic nervous system. 

I will say if you have a lot of stress weight sometimes for a day or 2   I admit it works and it is ok at times but once that fat storage is gone then you just need more calories if you want to do that much. 

I also recommend more rest days. Everyones different but now that I'm in my 30s I find every other day for intense sessions works well and light exercise like walk/yoga the next is what works for me. 

But overall if you feel normal then you might be ok.however sore isnt a good sign. If you were overtrained you would know it and probably have a lot of water retination,tiredness etc.