When you initially begin your fitness journey, there are a lot of unique questions to be asked.
Whether the questions come in the form of regarding your goals, reasons behind changing your life, or what method you want to do, there is a more crucial question that we should answer first.
That looming question would have to be what limitation you should put on yourself to avoid injury. Better yet, how can you make steady progress without the possibility of setting yourself at a dead stop.
It would be hard to overtrain with calisthenics due to how many muscles you are using at once. You are using your whole body because you are not just training specific muscles.
This article dives deep into the workouts involved, the time you need to effectively recover, and what can happen if you overtrain. Keep reading to find out all of the information you need to know!
What Is A Calisthenics Workout?
Before we get into the possibility of overtraining, let us thoroughly define what calisthenics is in the first place. Calisthenics is a workout method utilizing a very minimal amount of equipment to build endurance in a wide array of muscle groups.
The methods you go about doing calisthenic-based workouts can vary greatly depending on your target muscle group. However, anything ranging from grasping, pulling, pushing, even standing or planking can fall within this category.
There are quite a bit of primary goals that most forms of calisthenics have. These would be to:
- Increase your general flexibility, strength, and overall fitness.
- Gain more advanced control over your body.
- Perform more elaborate displays of personal fitness in the process.
Calisthenics, upon itself, has earned a spot in some of the most prestigious positions in society.
These range from your top-tier Olympic athletes who utilize calisthenics to achieve even higher mastery over their body and train and is a core method of attaining peak physical fitness displayed most evidently in both the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army fitness tests.
Does Overtraining Exist?
All thing in moderation is a proverb for a good reason. That reason is that you should attempt to show a bit of restraint in some instances because there are many downsides to “overdoing it.”
You can indeed overtrain, but most people oppositely limit themselves by using overtraining as an excuse to not push themselves harder.
To elaborate more on this topic, let us touch base on muscle growth itself. Suppose you are attempting to grow any given muscle in the body.
In that case, it needs to be stimulated to a point where it is worn down and needs time to rest and rebuild itself from the strain endured in the workout, thus getting bigger.
Overtraining exists, but it honestly is not much of a concern in calisthenics.
Being overtrained is primarily because you need to exercise a specific muscle extensively to reach muscle failure. Attempting that typically requires unique gym equipment that only utilizes a singular muscle.
Bearing all of the above in mind, calisthenics training engages entire muscle groups at once.
Because of this, it is much more difficult, if not almost impossible, to hit muscle hypertrophy. As a result, so overtraining in itself is nearly a moot point.
Injury Risks While Overtraining
As with almost any form of exercise, it is possible to injure yourself while training. This is more likely due to poor condition or improperly attempting a new workout routine than strictly being a byproduct of overtraining.
Knowing your limitations for the time being and safely working around them is key to making steady progress. This may sound counterintuitive to pushing boundaries while “making gains.”
Still, safety is a concern, and if you are not sure of how to execute a new exercise properly, seek guidance from a professional to ensure you avoid unnecessary harm.
The ability to perform any given exercise is but one facet of putting forth the utmost diligence to avoid injury, though nutritional imbalances can be just as catastrophic to your routine as poor form.
Suppose you are not maintaining good hydration levels and keeping your caloric intake within proper amounts. In that case, you can suffer from high levels of fatigue in the same regard as overtraining.
Alongside nutritional values, giving yourself enough time to recover from strenuous workouts is essential to making progress in your fitness journey. Another critical aspect of this dynamic is rotating what part of your body you are hitting that day.
If your arms, hands, or general upper body are maxed out, for the time being, don’t use it as an excuse to simply not work out. Change your focus to targeting your legs and giving your arms to rest. This way, you remain active but also give yourself ample time to recover.
This delicate balancing act of nutrition, a good sleep regiment, and dedicating yourself to using proper form on every new exercise will ensure you avoid injury and guarantee the most amount of progress possible with any calisthenics routine.
Is It Okay To Do Calisthenics Every Day?
This topic in itself is both a yes, and a no. Yes, you can do calisthenics every day hypothetically speaking. On the other hand, do it with the same understanding we went over above. Keep rotating which muscle groups you are targeting in your workouts.
Due to calisthenics targeting large muscle groups, you won’t suffer horrendously for hitting the same ones repeatedly. Still, if you don’t give them slight rest, even if it’s just a daily interval, you won’t be achieving the same progress you could if you simply alternated.
While those geared towards a near bodybuilder ideology would aim for muscle failure, it’s a much more arduous task in calisthenics. It truthfully doesn’t entirely yield the same results.
Keeping variety in your routines can safely allow you to do calisthenics every day. Still, rest days are definitely worth the endeavor.
Do You Need Rest Days For Calisthenics?
Picking up where we left off above, you don’t technically need rest days, but your body and muscles would make much more progress if you make use of them. Still, unless you are hitting high-intensity workouts daily for nearly a week straight, you won’t need entire rest days.
Alternatively, do not push yourself to where you can no longer do it. Suppose you begin to feel highly unmotivated, tired and suffer from recurring pain in your muscles in joints. In that case, your body tells you it is time to take a breather and get yourself back on track.
Jumping back on the bandwagon on a good note is as easy as giving yourself a day or two to recover correctly.
Ensuring you are managing your nutritional intake, hydrating, and making use of some easier, low-intensity workouts to ease yourself back into the swing of things is a must.
What To Do If You Have Overtrained?
The most obvious solution would be to give your body it’s crying out for, and that would be nothing less than a few good day’s rest. Although it may seem daunting at first, or you may fear losing progress, the exact opposite occurs when you give your body time to build itself back up.
Some people will remain adamant about not giving themselves time to rest due to a “bro hype” mindset. However, this simply won’t give you the results you are chasing.
You can attempt doing less intensive training methods, but nothing will replace downtime and recovery. Let’s break down the individual steps you can take to recover from overtraining and ensure it never happens again.
1. No More Serious Workouts For A Week
Strike while the irons hot is an excellent analogy for a lot of different places in life, but in the middle of an overtrain burnout, nothing could do you more harm.
After you’ve realized that you are overtrained, give yourself some well-earned downtime, and take it nice and slow when you do start again.
2. Lower Intensity & Volume Of Body Weight Workouts
As you might imagine, recovery from muscle fatigue or injuries is a timely and grueling process.
Making sure you take your time and go for a gradual return to greatness will guarantee you make a triumphant return in place of a painful descent into regression.
Less is more; after overtraining, this is true. Tone things down a bit and do roughly 60% of your usual amount and effort so that you do not overdo it when you get back into the swing of things.
3. Improve Your Sleep
A whole night’s rest does a body good. It also stimulates recovery and growth in your muscles, as well as grants you the mental fortitude required to stay on track after being extraordinarily fatigued, and steer you back into a routine.
Your mental focus will be vital to keeping yourself in check while recovering and making sure you don’t derail yourself during this period of downtime.
4. Eat Plenty Of Healthy Food
Keeping your nutritional balances up during recovery is another staple to getting yourself feeling better. Doing so is as easy as taking in your usual amount of vegetables, vitamins, lean meats and doing so in a moderate fashion.
Just because you have overtrained does not mean you need to gorge yourself to make up for potentially lost calories or try to fill a void and get back to things faster.
Stick to whatever dietary regimen you are currently working with as long as it is healthy and approved by your doctor.
5. Don’t Overtrain Again
Sometimes spelling it out works best. However, you definitely should not put yourself in this same painful and drawn-out situation again, regardless of how you found yourself in it the first time.
Suppose the road to recovery is this steep. In that case, you want to double your efforts in avoiding the agony of overtraining again in the future. If you’ve been here once, you know exactly how much effort can land you back here.
Conclusion
To shorten this entire article in summarization, you most definitely can overtrain with calisthenics. While it may take a considerable amount of effort, the difficulties you will face in bouncing back from that tumble will ensure you do not let it happen twice.
Hopefully, this article has given you a better glance at how to avoid overtraining and given you enough information to either recover from or altogether avoid overtraining in the future.