Weight-bearing exercises like running keep your bones strong, but too much of this good thing may not provide the same benefit to your muscles. When you overtrain by running too much you actually begin to decrease your muscle mass instead of maintaining or increasing it. Incorporating running into a bodybuilding program designed to increase muscle mass also may prove detrimental to your goals.
Muscle Loss
When you overtrain by increasing your running frequency, distance or intensity too fast you decrease your athletic performance, lose muscle and lose weight. Other symptoms associated with overtraining include chronic fatigue, apathy, high levels of circulating cortisol, increased risk for getting sick and increased risk for injury, notes "Overtraining in Sport," author Richard B. Kreider. Other symptoms include an increased resting heart rate, legs that feel heavy as you run, difficulty sleeping, increased irritability, a decrease in athletic performance, lower blood pressure, digestive problems and increased sweating.
Periodization
Using training periodization will help you keep your muscles strong for running and to avoid overtraining. If you are a distance runner, for example, you may have an off season in which you concentrate on strength training followed by a training cycle that focuses on slowly increasing your running distance. Your intensity level during this cycle is low. The next cycle involves lower volume, meaning distance, with higher intensity training methods, such as lactate-threshold runs and interval training runs. As a rule of thumb, a lactate threshold run is done at a steady pace at 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, notes "Run for Life," author Sam Murphy.
Muscle Building Programs and Running
If you are using a weight-training program to build muscle, running may not be your best bet for an accompanying cardiovascular activity because it can decrease muscle size due to its high energy demands, according to exercise physiologist Irv Rubenstein in the July 15, 2005 Columbia University Health Services article, "The Skinny on Cardio and Muscle Gains in Men." Instead Rubenstein recommends performing three, 30-minute cardio sessions weekly to gain cardiovascular fitness without losing muscle mass. Try a rowing machine or interval training on a stationary bike in which you alternate one-minute bouts of high-intensity work with five-minute lower-intensity recovery periods. Also avoid doing cardio work and weightlifting on the same day if possible.
Prevention
There are many ways to prevent overtraining and its accompanying muscle atrophy. Do not increase your running time or distance by more than 10 percent per week. Also utilize careful monitoring. Measure your resting heart rate upon waking regularly. If it becomes more than five beats per minute higher for several days in a row it's a sign that you are overtraining and need to reduce the amount of exercise you are doing. Consuming an adequate amount of calories is another way to help prevent muscle atrophy during a running program.
References
- KidsHealth: Why Exercise Is Wise
- "Overtraining in Sport"; Richard B. Kreider; 1998
- "Encyclopedia of Muscle and Strength"; James Stoppani; 2006
- Columbia University Health Services Go Ask Alice!: The Skinny on Cardio and Muscle Gains in Men; July 2005
- "Nutrition for Sport and Exercise"; Marie Dunford and J. Andrew Doyle; 2007
- "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Jogging and Running"; Bill Rodgers and Scott Douglas; 1998
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