Can I Overtrain?

Recovery has become a big topic the last few years with the explosion of passive modalities like massage guns, cold plunges, and saunas. This leads many to ask a very real question of if they are training too much and how much rest should be given each body part between training sessions. This is really a loaded question that should be looked into with a lot of nuance to the specific individual and their goals. If you’re following what we teach at Showtime, which is little and often over the long haul, it’s easy to design a plan that allows you to periodize your training and nutrition efforts to get maximum benefit without risk of doing too much. If you’re trying to lose 20 lbs before your class reunion next month, your chances of overtraining are high, and there’s not much that can be done to avoid it because of the parameters you have set. To fully understand overtraining and the risks, we need to know what factors are involved and how to work around them. 

What is Overtraining?

A physical and mental state where stress outpaces your body’s ability to recover and adapt.

Symptoms of Overtraining

Constant fatigue

Performance decline

Frequent sickness

Increased soreness

Mood changes

Loss of drive

Poor sleep

Trouble focusing

Factors

• General Physical Preparedness - This is essentially your baseline of fitness that has been developed over years. This combines how strong you are with how much endurance you have, and so on. People who have trained for many years have a much higher base level of fitness than someone just beginning. This shouldn’t steer people away from starting to exercise as it can all be developed over time. The SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) principle tells us that the body will adapt to the type of stress and physical demands we put upon it. This is why it’s best to begin slow and gradually progress over time so that the adaptation can occur. Too much stress too soon will not allow the body to adapt. 
• Age - The high school athlete can train more and recover from more than a 60-year-old beginning to exercise. Their body is simply more efficient at repair. That doesn’t mean the 60-year-old can’t improve recovery rate, but age is a big factor when looking at overtraining. 
• Stress - Physical, mental, nutritional, emotional, and social stress. Your body doesn’t differentiate, and it all adds up. Slight increases in the dose of stress allow us to adapt and grow from it. One of the quickest ways to overtrain is to begin a high-intensity exercise plan during a high-stress period of time in life (newborn phase, new job, marital change).
• Rest - People often forget that you don’t have to sauna or cold plunge to recover. You can take a nap and get more benefit. A favorite question of mine is “what do I do on my off days”…ummm nothing. Most of the people we work with would be better off focusing on 30 more minutes of quality sleep each night than wondering what they’re missing in their recovery protocol. 
• Nutrition - People that eat like shit and consume a lot of alcohol don’t recover well. A balanced nutrition plan complemented with hydration is a game changer and amplifies everything you do in the gym. 

Training

Let’s talk about how training affects your recovery rate. Due to the SAID Principle, we can throw out the idea of only training a body part 1-2x a week. Of course, for hypertrophy or physique-based competitors, this doesn’t apply. Kids carry 40lb backpacks every day, no problem because they’ve adapted to the load in their backs, hips, and abs. Your training should be the same way. The benefit of full-body training routines is you get a higher frequency rate for each muscle group. The reason people overtrain in the weight room is simple: they progress too quickly and can’t adapt. A golden rule I’ve lived by in my adult life is if I want to add something into my training, I have to remove something from my training. We can’t simply continue to add stress into our workouts and expect progress forever. 

Seasons of Life - If you’re chasing the same goal 12 months a year, you need to get more serious about your goals for a shorter period of time. Many people chase the same goal with half ass intent. Instead, become focused seasonally on different goals. Here is how I lay out my training and nutrition focus based on weather and my activities:

Winter - Lift heavy, higher protein and carbohydrates.

Spring - Begin to add some endurance training like climbing stairs or interval runs, increase fruit for carbohydrates.

Summer - Full-body training to support biking efforts, lower protein, more fruits and vegetables, and healthy fats.

Fall - Back to compound lifts focused on increasing training volume, start to increase carbohydrates.

This keeps me interested and engaged and reminds me that seasons aren’t that long. I can adjust based on life events or competition events as needed. This is one of the biggest levers people can pull and they never use. 

In my experience, the idea of being underprepared is more likely to happen than overtrain. We should pause the David Goggins videos and have a hard conversation with ourselves about where we’re truly at in this moment. It’s always better to train a little bit more often than a lot sporadically. Your training should blend with your life and goals to create a holistic approach to reaching goals. 

The best training plan is the one you can recover from.

The best nutrition plan is the one you can follow forever.

By following these two rules, most people will avoid overtraining almost all of the time. 

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