Taking a Week Off? Sudden 7-Day Exercise Cessation Perceived as a Strain by Highly Trained Athletes. Overtraining is the Culprit!
Did you ever decide to take a week off and felt like hell? Did you feel how the gym, a place of which, only two days before, you thought you would be happy not to see for at least a month, suddenly seemed to draw you in as a giant magnet? Yes? Then you are either an exercise addict or just a highly trained athlete (probably you are both), of whom a recent study ( Zeller. 2011 ) published in the Israel Medical Journal reports that exercise deprivation is associated with change in non-articular tenderness threshold and reduction in quality of life scores. I already hear the exercise junkie within you jubilating: "24/7, 365 days a year! That's the way to go. That's my way." Before you do fall for this misunderstanding, you'd better thing about possible underlying reasons for the sudden tenderness and the decrease in perceived overall health (-4pts out of 100) the 26 asymptomatic healthy athletes who regularly exercise 6.75 ± 3.65 hours a week reported after the 7 ...