Post-Workout Fatigue

Pain associated with working out can be difficult to prevent, diagnose and treat correctly. Think about it, some pain is normal and should be expected but others can’t be ignored and should be addressed immediately. The problem is knowing which is which and how to deal with it. 

Fatigue is a specific type of pain that can come across in the form of tiredness, soreness, exhaustion etc. A lot of people experience fatigue immediately after a workout that leaves them feeling unable to live out their everyday lives. Like I say, certain types of pain are to be expected after training, like acute muscle soreness and DOMS but being able to live your life normally after being at the gym should tell you that something is wrong.

Before treating anything you can always look at certain ways to prevent it occurring and post-workout fatigue is no different.

• Keep workouts short. I can’t think of any time when you should be spending two hours in the gym. Shorter workouts won’t cost you in results because you can easily plan them to last no longer than an hour, providing you work at a high enough intensity.
• Plan when you are going to workout and what you are going to do. Deciding what you are going to do five minutes before you leave for the gym just isn’t the right idea. It is best to assign different days to separate muscle groups, giving yourself enough time to recover.
• Nutrition is the fuel you need before and after exercise. That means that even if you train first thing in the morning or last thing at night, you need to find time to eat. It’s simple, if you are hungry before you even get to the gym then you are going to feel fatigued when you finish. So supply your body with the right amounts carbs and protein before and after your workouts to ensure that the body recovers, repairs and builds effectively.
• Even if you don’t exercise an awful lot, poor levels of sleep can leave you feeling constantly fatigued throughout the day. You want to feel like you are in perfect physical condition every time that you go to the gym and resting well overnight will help you to do this. The general rule that I try to stick to is make sure you get at least 8 hours and try to get your head down before midnight. Obviously that isn’t always possible but it is a good place to start.

Something that I have mentioned before is the danger of getting into too much of a routine. If you can keep the body working in different ways by mixing up what you do, as well as progressing with small incremental changes then you will find that you are less likely to feel fatigued. Be careful though, if you try to do too much too soon when you change your workout routine then you might have the opposite effect and end up causing fatigue.

So remember, pain is going to be present if you are training. But there are things you can do to remove the unnecessary pain, which will help you to identify pain that shouldn’t be there.