We’ve been taught that exercise is good and if a little is good, a lot must be better… right?  Well not really. Although it’s normal to get sore and fatigued… especially if you’re just starting out or you’re trying to push yourself to do more per workout… it’s quite easy to over do it.

Here are the top 7 signs that you may be overtraining:

1. You’re always tired

2. You have a hard time sleeping

3. You get sick often

4. Your muscles and joints are constantly sore

5. You’ve stopped improving

6. You’re moody

7. You can’t focus/concentrate

If you’re nodding your head as you read through this list, you may be suffering from overtraining.  Now, don’t worry, overtraining can be fixed… but that doesn’t mean that you should ignored these symptoms.  If left unchecked it can lead to burn out, depression, adrenal fatigue, muscle loss and even stubborn weight gain.

What is Overtraining?

Simply put overtraining means that you’ve worked your body too much for it to be able to recover properly. Overtraining isn’t just about your muscles either… it also affects your nervous system.  When you stress the nervous system beyond what it’s capable of handling, it can weaken the nerves and disrupt nerve signals, resulting in many negative health effects, such as chronic fatigue, sleeplessness and irritability.

How To Recover From Overtraining

Recovering from overtraining takes time and patience.  Depending on the severity of overtraining, you may need to lay off from training for a few days, up to a few weeks to even few months.  Keep in mind that your nervous system takes a lot longer to recover than your muscles.  So even though your body may feel ready, your nerves may still need time to recover.  In many cases, it’s actually better to over rest to make sure that you’re fully recovered before starting back.

How To Avoid Overtraining

If you’re used to exercising on a regular basis, overtraining can easily become a vicious cycle.  It’s real easy to get into the habit of pushing your body beyond its limit when you’re trying to squeeze everything into your busy life.  It’s important to keep in mind that what occurs outside of the gym (or your workouts) is often the reason you end up overtraining.  Your body can’t tell the difference between physical stress and mental stress. Stress is just a chemical reaction that occurs in you body.

So it’s important to take all matters into consideration when you work out. For instance, if you’ve been overly stressed and it’s negatively affecting your rest and sleep… it’s a good indication that you’re body needs rest rather than a workout.

Although many people use exercise to relieve their stress, it’s not always the best solution.  It’s best to be mindful of how you’re feeling instead of just mindlessly powering through your workouts.  

If you’re monitoring your body carefully and you start to notice signs of overtraining, you can also lower your intensity and volume of your workouts instead of resting.  In many cases doing light and easy workouts that doesn’t add any additional stress to your body.  can be beneficial and help you recover faster.

4 Simple Steps You Can Take To Avoid Overtraining

Eat enough calories
You may not think this way, but calorie restriction puts stress on your body.  This is why low calories diets don’t work in the long run.  It’s important that you’re getting enough calories… especially if your workout demands it. But make sure that you’re getting calories from the right food source.  Remember not all calories are created equal.  Always stick to real whole foods and stay away from calorie dense foods that are high in sugar like refined carbs.  Another reminder… make sure that you’re eating enough healthy fats!  Fats high in omega-3 fatty acids help you recover faster by fighting off inflammation caused by overtraining.

Change up your workouts
Make sure that you change up your workouts to avoid using the same muscles and energy systems over and over again.  Performing the same workouts with the same effort will halt any progression and make you susceptible to overtraining and injuries.  For this reason it’s important to change up your exercises, vary your workout durations and effort.  This is one reason why I encourage switching up your workouts often enough to ensure that you never plateau, and never over train.

Listen to your body
Although eating well and changing things up will greatly help, in the end you still need to listen to your body. For instance, if a workout requires you to give 100% maximum effort, but you know your body isn’t ready… than you need to listen to your body and modify the workout as needed.  Perhaps you can only give 75% of the effort this time around, because you haven’t been sleeping well the last few nights.  Be mindful and watch for signals that indicate how your body is coping.

Get enough rest
No matter what fitness schedule you’re on… you need to makes sure that you get at least 1 - 2 days of rest a week.  Rest is just as important as working out.  In fact, rest is when your body builds more muscle to get stronger.  And contrary to what you may think, rest is also when you burn the most amount of fat.  You don’t burn fat during workouts… it happens after the workouts.  There are many important processed that occur during rest, so it’s crucial that you get enough rest during the week.  One of the biggest signs of overtraining is lack of progress and it’s usually due shortage of rest.  So don’t skip out on rest thinking that it’s a waste of time.