Why Doing CrossFit Is Killing Your Testosterone Levels

Why Doing CrossFit Is Killing Your Testosterone Levels
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Meet Daniel.
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Daniel wants to look and feel like he did in his 20’s.
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As a successful business owner with a young family, Daniel doesn’t want to be seen as the old husband to his younger wife.
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He also didn’t want to be tired and exhausted when spending time with his 3-year-old daughter.
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And definitely not being remembered as the old and soft looking dad in family photos.
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Deep down, he wants to be seen as a LOT younger than guys at his age.
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As he drives to work, he sees a new CrossFit gym that’s opened.
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With the good intention to get back in shape, he drives by and signs up for it a session.
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3 months later and Daniel has lost some fat, yet feels tired and has low sex drive every day.
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What happened?
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Running a successful business with a team of 11 people, there’s always something going on in Daniel’s business.
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The other thing is, with his 3-year-old daughter he isn’t sleeping 7-9h a night.
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These two factors set the baseline for his lifestyle.
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Now let’s look at his fitness plan.
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As Daniel signed up for at the CrossFit gym, he also combined it with some sort of low carb and Keto diet.
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The reduction of carbs puts him into a caloric deficit where he’s body starts to burn fat.
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Most low carb and Keto diets create such a big deficit, that it becomes an extra stressor to the body.
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So now we already got 3 stressors, sleep, nutrition and work.
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The last thing he does is adding the classic CrossFit workouts 5x a week to his schedule.
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When you do CrossFit workouts, you train for performance.
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Training for performance is the most demanding training type as it involves multiple components, such as:
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– Strength
– Power
– Speed
– Agility
– Endurance
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It would be one thing if those sessions are short, but they are 60min+ long.
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This is a huge stressor to the body on top of the other 3 above.
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So how does this affect Daniel’s energy levels?
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A study done in elite athletes has shown that overtraining causes hormonal imbalances.
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These are young elite athletes who DON’T run a business, who DON’T have a family, who get tons of sleep and who are 20 years younger than Daniel.
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Their ability to recover is significantly higher than for Daniel who runs a business, has a family and is on a very restrictive diet.
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Yet by overtraining those athletes had a 50% drop in testosterone levels.
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That’s because cortisol shuts down your ability to produce Human Growth Hormone and Testosterone naturally.
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It’s no secret that Daniel is working against himself.
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And he’ll keep gaining body fat, keep looking softer and keep feeling more tired.
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The combination of a caloric deficit + a stressful lifestyle + 5 CrossFit workouts a week is a recipe for rapid aging.
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I know it’s a frustrating place to be in when you were in amazing shape when you were younger and can’t seem to find your way back ..
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Yet getting back into your athletic prime doesn’t have to be an uphill battle.
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You can look and feel like you did in your 20’s and beyond that.
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They key is to STOP focusing on those hardcore workouts and restrictive diets and START focusing on your hormones first.