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Frank Mir: ‘Overtraining True Cause of Low Testosterone’

Frank Mir: ‘Overtraining True Cause of Low Testosterone’

 

 

UFC fighter and BJJ black belt Frank Mir has not stepped into the octagon since the UFC banned TRT (testosterone replacement therapy).

In an interview with Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie, Mir talked about his low testosterone level and he received a prescription for his condition. In retrospect, Mir believes that the real cause of low testosterone is  overtraining, training injured and bad nutrition.

Frank Mir training with BJJ and ADCC champion Robert Drysdale:

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Overtraining is a physical, behavioral, and emotional condition that occurs when the volume and intensity of an individual’s exercise exceeds their recovery capacity. They cease making progress, and can even begin to lose strength and fitness. Overtraining is a common problem in weight training, but it can also be experienced by runners and other athletes. Split training can help with overtraining.

Like pharmacological drugs, physical exercise may be chemically addictive. One theory is that this addiction is due to natural endorphins and dopamine generated and regulated by the exercise. Whether strictly due to this chemical by-product or not, some people can be said to become addicted to or fixated on psychological/physical effects of physical exercise and fitness. This may lead to overexercise, resulting in the “overtraining” syndrome.

Mir told Mike Bohn for MMAjunkie:

 

“TRT was patchwork – it was putting a Band-Aid on the problem,” said Mir. “I went to a medical doctor, but I wasn’t searching out TRT. I just purely went to the doctor and said, ‘Hey, I don’t feel good, I have no energy, I’ve got no motivation, I’m kind of depressed. I’m constantly – guys are making jokes that I’m the most injured they’ve ever trained with. Every other day something breaks down on my body. What’s going on?’ Then they’re like, ‘Oh, well this is available.’

“He did the blood work and found low testosterone. Now that they’ve banned it, I look at it and realized that wasn’t really the problem. Improper training and nutrition was the reason; training too hard and excessive twice, three times a day, Monday through Friday. That was what was causing low testosterone. Looking back I realize that was just a symptom of the problem. I was just training improperly.”

“It’s like, ‘Oh, you train improperly, but we’ll fix your hormone levels!.’ It kind of helped out, but it still wasn’t the solution. The real solution was to train more intelligently, eat healthier, have longer off seasons where you train properly, not just sit on my butt and just wait for the next fight to be scheduled.

“Now I’m with trainers who are very smart about our training. I have days in the week where we go guns blazing and really hard, but the majority of my workouts are to rebuild my body to feel good.

“I still train several times a day, but now my schedule is so sane that I’m not destroying my body. The majority of guys train the other way and I think that’s why you see so many injuries in our sport. People train way too hard in the sport of MMA. I was a victim of that and those were the consequences I was facing.”

“The good thing would have been if TRT hadn’t been an option. I would have probably got the solution that I came to now sooner.”