It starts with the desire for a better fitness or a healthier life – then all of a sudden people can no longer live without it. Without the exercise or in our case Crossfit. Exercise addiction is a real thing and the border between training a lot and becoming addicted is a thin line. Crossing over to the dark side can have serious physical and mental consequences.
More, more, more
Experts detect exercise addiction as a more widespread problem than previously thought. Statistics are rare to find, because it’s difficult to define the problem after certain quantity patterns like in substance-related addictions (i.e. cigarette or alcohol consumption). It starts with your body craving for more frequent and more demanding workouts and to keep the “sense of pleasure” up, people need to increase the daily dose: add even more rigorous trainings.
First warning signals are: feeling withdrawal symptoms like headache, stomach ache or nervousness when not sticking to the plan. As well as becoming aggressive or peevish/tetchy when your routine gets thrown over board. Could something similar be present in the world of Crossfit as well?
“Overtraining Syndrome”
At first sports medicine defined the problem as an “overtraining syndrome”, an imbalance which is a consequence of extreme physical efforts with insufficient recovery. By now the experts know there is a huge difference: overtraining is just a part of exercise addiction. An addiction to exercise is about using sports as an activity for regulating mood and internal physical and emotional disharmony.
Phases of addiction
In their research Freimuth, Moniz and Kim (2011) developed a model to distinguish the phases of an exercise addiction. The four stages contain the three main components: motivation, consequences and frequency.
1. Recreational exercise
A person is motivated to exercise for increasing the individual level of fitness, she finds it enjoyable and rewarding.
2. At risk exercise
It’s not just about improving health any more: exercising becomes a way to relief stress and escape from unpleasant feelings.
3. Problematic exercise
In this phase a person constantly pushes on to new levels. If loosing control or the plan gets mixed up, the person will feel withdrawal symptoms.
4. Exercise Addiction
In the final phase, exercise becomes the person’s life. Everything else has to fit around the training schedule. Family, friends and work don’t fit into the schedule any more, exercise controls the daily life.
Sport as a drug
But what exactly counts as extreme behaviour? To give an example: people wake up in the middle of the night to exercise. In fact they have to deal with insomnia and isolate themselves from family and friends to train even more. Exercising becomes the meaning of life, regardless of other priorities.
Many studies have attempted to establish the neurobiological mechanisms which turn sport into a drug. Through such a high frequency our reward system is constantly kept on its toes. Undoubtedly sports can help us to get over psychological problems like anxiety or depression, but it also has the ability to activate the availability of dopamine and beta-endorphins, brain substances with similar effects to exogenous opioids.
From well-trained to diseased
Serious injuries, wear of the joints and a weakening of the immune system are just a few consequences. Men get obsessed controlling their body with a pathological fear of becoming too thin (regarding the amount of muscles – called bigorexia). For women an addiction to sport is often related to anorexia or bulimia nervosa. Both genders can suffer from hormonal changes, which in a long term can lead to problems like anxiety, depression and heart disease.
Is exercise addiction present in Crossfit as well?
Probably. But what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.
Sources:
Übertriebene Fitness: Wenn Sport zur Sucht wird, Jonas-Erik Schmidt, Spiegel Online, 03/2014
Psychology: addiction to sport, benessere.com, 09/2014
Is exercise addiction a real thing?, One Medical, 02/2014
Clarifying Exercise Addiction: Differential Diagnosis, Co-occurring Disorders, and Phases of Addiction, Int J Environ Res Public Health 10/2011