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This is a topic that I really need to be careful with.  Why’s that?  I can just see people reading this article, blaming their exercise struggles on overtraining, and deciding to take a break from working out when they weren’t overtraining in the first place!

I want to start off by saying that I’ve only dealt with cases of overtraining on a few instances; one was actually with me.  Last year I started training for a marathon way too intensely, and I had to take a break because of the result; I’ll get into that later.
 
I also had a client who was working out nearly every day, and I could tell that it was starting to affect him negatively.  So what did I do?  I blocked his card access to the gym.  It really was a pretty funny story because he had become so accustomed to exercise being a part of his every day routine that he didn’t know what to do with himself on the few days off.  I had to block his access because I knew he’d try and sneak in when I wasn’t there.
 
Why’d I choose to write this article?  Someone asked me about it; it’s that simple.  See I told you; if you ever want me to write about a certain topic, let me know, and I’ll do it.

What is overtraining, and how can you recognize the signs of it?  Well first off, overtraining is not leaving a workout drenched in sweat.  That’s called good training.  I wish more people would take working out seriously and not turn it into a social hour.  (That’s beside the point though.)  Well done you serious workout people!  Well done!

Overtraining is actually when we workout so hard and for so long that our bodies actually start to breakdown at a faster rate than they can recover and build back up.  You may have also heard it called burnout.  How can you recognize overtraining?  Overtraining can cause a list of problems.¹

1.    Change in appetite (You either don’t ever feel like eating or you’re always hungry.)
2.    Poor sleep
3.    Injury
4.    Constant feeling of aching muscles
5.    Can’t get over being sick
6.    Quality of workouts is poor

And the three big ones …

1.    Irritable mood
2.    Lack of motivation to work out
3.    Constant fatigue

Another, more technical sign is an increase in resting heart rate, but this is hard for a lot of people to realize since they didn’t know their resting heart rate when they first started their workout program.

Now we know the signs, but how do we know what causes overtraining/burnout?  One of the big causes is lack of program variation.  Your body is just like anything else, it gets tired of doing the same old thing.  By changing up your workout routine, you’re constantly throwing new things at your body and causing it to have to adapt to the new change.
 
Now this next one kind of goes hand in hand with program variation; it’s intensity.  As I said earlier, overtraining is when we’re working so hard for such a long period of time that our bodies are unable to keep up.  Program variation doesn’t just mean doing a few weeks of endurance weight training followed by a few weeks of strength weight training.  (See my article on program structure.)  No, program variation also deals with the overall pace of your exercise program.  There has to be a week or so in your program that’s dedicated to recovery; that means you have to have a week where you take it easy and allow your body to reenergize itself.  You also can’t start a program coming out of the gate with tunnel vision.  You have to see the big picture of your program.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “weekend warrior”.  The “weekend warrior” is the person who doesn’t exercise much during the week, but when the weekend rolls around, he exercises as if he were still on his college football team.  The same applies to your overall program.  Maybe you’re not a weekend warrior; instead, maybe you exercise throughout the week, but you’ve been going so hard from the start that you’re starting to get worn down.

With the example with me, when I started training for my first marathon, I got started with my training a little late.  Normally, I’d like to have about 18 weeks to properly train.  Well, it wasn’t until I was motivated by Floyd Landis in the Tour de France (before we knew about the whole doping incident) that I decided to train for this marathon.  The problem was, Floyd didn’t have that unbelievable day of biking until the end of July, and that left me with only 12 weeks to train.  I started really late, but to compensate, I tried to speed up my training to get on pace with where I should’ve been with 12 weeks of training left.  What happened was I started to hate running.  I didn’t want to go outside on a beautiful summer day and get my training in.  I had to hit myself upside the head and tell myself I was overtraining.  What’d I do?  I stopped.  I completely took off a half a week of running, and you know what?  When I came back, I felt so refreshed and was fine from then on.

If you feel this way, please do your body, your mind, your soul, your family, and your friends a favor.  Take some time off!  With that client of mine, he was in a rut with weight loss.  I had him completely take a few days off, and he was fine after that.

Hopefully you don’t get to the point where you have to completely stop.  If you structure your program to allow for a week here and there of lighter exercise, along with varying the different phases of your program (again, it’s in the program structure article), you shouldn’t ever have to get to the point of having to take some time off.  The key is gradual increases in intensity.  Don’t do what I did.  Gradually work your body into a workout program; don’t come into your program going all out.  Take some time for your body to adapt to your new exercise routine.

Here’s another big thing … 45 minutes to an hour is plenty of time for exercise.  If you stay completely focused throughout your entire workout, 45 minutes of cardio and resistance training combined is plenty.  If you’re one of those social people, an hour is fine.
 
Now don’t take this the wrong way.  Don’t go into your workout saying, “Well Dan said 45 minutes, so I’ll go get a drink, then I’ll go see how Gary’s doing, then I’ll workout, then I’ll ask Christy about her job, and that should be about 45 minutes.”  Also, don’t use overtraining as an excuse to not work hard.  Don’t get me wrong, you should still be working hard, just don’t kill yourself day in and day out.  Give your body a day to recover.  If you workout 3 days a week, try and do it every other day.  If you workout 5 days a week, try and alternate between hard and easier days and upper body and lower body days.
 
If you’re working out for over an hour, you’re most likely doing too much.  There’s a point where your body will start to break down if it’s worked too hard in a workout.  In other words, exercise over an hour will most likely lead to too much muscle being burnt off for energy (especially if you haven’t eaten anything before your workout), which means that it’s actually counterproductive to work out that long.

Remember the big indicators of overtraining.  If you’re starting to experience any of them, it doesn’t have to be all of them, I’d suggest taking a break.  Also, pace yourself; don’t try and set any records the first day, and keep your workouts short but effective.  With this game plan, you’ll give your body a better chance of staying fit and injury-free.

¹American Council on Exercise (2003). ACE personal trainer manual: The ultimate resource for fitness professionals, (3^rd ed). San Diego, Ca.: American Council on Exercise.

Dan Falkenberg is the co-founder of Your Live Trainers.  He can be reached at DanFalkenberg.com.

Tags: exercise safety, injury prevention, program design