What happens to your body when you overexert in the gym?

Muscle fatigue from excessive training or exertion impairs motor skill learning mechanisms in the brain, says a new research study.

Regular exercise can lead to wonders as far as overall health is concerned. But when you overexert yourself during workouts or if you're the sort who believes in gymming excessively to get the body of your dreams, here's some bad news for you. A report published in ANI says that training beyond fatigue or muscle fatigue, caused by overexertion when practising a skill, can affect the task in hand and impair learning afterwards. Most learning involves repetition of motor skills, but, 'fatigue eventually starts to degrade our ability to practice a task,' says the research published in the Journal of eLife.

Overexertion can have a lot of other detrimental health effects too. Here are some of them:

Heart attack: A research found that engaging in heavy physical exertion may significantly increase the risk of a heart attack. Heavy physical exertion and heart attack are closely linked, according to the study published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation. However, the association was stronger (more than triple the risk) in those patients who recalled being angry or emotionally upset while also engaging in heavy physical exertion. The researchers said that extreme emotional and physical triggers can raise blood pressure and heart rate, changing the flow of blood through blood vessels and reducing blood supply to the heart.

Low immunity: According to fitness expert Erin McCann, when the body is exposed to physical stressors such as exercise it releases the hormone cortisol. This stimulates energy production and improves muscle endurance which supports fight or flight reaction. Cortisol also acts as an immunosuppresant and following even just a moderate workout, immune function can take up to 72 hours to fully recover. This leaves individuals open to viral or bacterial infections.

Damage to the knees: A study by the University of California - San Francisco (UCSF) said that high levels of physical activities can speed up damage to the knee cartilage among the middle-aged.