Feeling moody and depressed the day after workouts

[ChrisShirling]

Hi. I'm 22 years old, male and do olympic lifting with a very high volume workout. Mon, Tues, Thurs, Friday with the weekend off.

Lately, after my workout Tuesday (heavy back, front squat, and presses) and my workouts friday (light back, front squat and presses) I'll be feeling like GOD. After the workout I'll be on an intense high feeling like I could take a gorilla. My libido is really high for the rest of the day and night and my muscles are pumped.

The morning comes and I'll be feeling EXTREMELY depressed and down in the weather. This never happened before until lately these past few months. I don't take any supplements , gear, and eat a pretty clean diet. The mood swings have been getting stronger lately, and nothing in my diet / workout has changed. The weights have gone up, but that is about it.

Is this a hormonal problem? Should I visit a doctor and have my levels checked? Thanks!

 

[theprofessor]

Is this a hormonal problem? Should I visit a doctor and have my levels checked? Thanks!

it couldnt hurt... it could only help..

 

[coolcolj]

it's called fatigue. too much fatigue and it becomes overeaching which does stuff you up hormonally

 

[oso0690]

Do you ever take any days off or deload?

 

[ChrisShirling]

Do you ever take any days off or deload?

Every 5th week I deload.

 

[Madcow2]

I'm not saying that's your problem but tolerance is individual and it's not necessarily a binary weekly thing (i.e. hard week = 1 and deload week = 1). It depends on the amount of stress being applied (workload) and the state of the organism (other related stresses or lack of destresses). It's like a battery, if you keep taking 10 out and only put 9 back in - that's okay for a while but eventually you get to a point where you may only have 10 to give. This is kind of like a phase in a macro cycle where even though there are deload periods in each mesocycle, work is still very high and it's gradually draining even though you can keep it up for a decent while.

Example:

now, of course in programming for elite athletes it gets much more complicated than thsi. you may also have a 6 month "overload" period, during which you have a series of 5 week periods each consisting of 3 weeks of hard work and 2 weeks of lower stress training. then you may have another 3 or 4 month period of "recovery" consisting of 1 week of "loading" or hard work, then 1 or 2 weeks of reduced training.

all this may be superimposed upon 3 years of slightly harder overall work, in other words slightly higher volume overall... then 1 year of slightly lower volume.

this fits into the fact that the olympics are every 4 years and athletes want to hit their highest performance at the olympics. the greeks do 3 loading weeks followed by 1 unloading week (approx 12 workouts a week during loading, and 9 workouts a week during unloading, also all weights are lowered by about 10kilos during the unloading week)... these are "loading" months, then every 4th month is an "unloading" month consisting of only 1 loading week and 3 unloading weeks. close to a big competition like the olympics... they switch to alternating weeks, 1 loading week followed by 1 unloading week.

however, to actually program sets and reps... this is very individual. what is unloading to me may be highly stressfull to you.

Point being - this is very individual and maybe what you have been doing is too much for too long and you need a lighter period for a while. Or, maybe maybe other things in your life or way of living are impacting your ability to tolerate such work.

That's the idea being put forth anyway. It may not necessarily be the case for you but in a training context this is what can go wrong. Outside of that, I'd visit a Dr. to get bloodwork done maybe.