Are You Overtraining? Here's How You Can Tell
- Destini Moody
- May 6
- 8 min read
If you’re a committed athlete or have worked with them (I’m a part of both teams), then you’ve likely heard of overtraining.
For us perfectionists, overachievers and members of the Type A species, whenever we want to be good at something or see optimal progress, it doesn’t take a lot for us to put our all into it.
To the point of doing way too much.
When it comes to training though, especially resistance training, you can actually set yourself back quite a bit if you go too hard. In the sports biz, we call this little phenomenon “overtraining.” And it’s not the badge of honor that many people try so hard to earn.
That said, you do have to train hard to gain an appreciable amount of muscle or to support optimal athletic performance, so where is the line? How do you find the balance?
And how can you tell if what your body is feeling are just the sweet sweet signs of progress or the harmful side effects of overtraining? When should you know to take a break?
Let’s talk about it.
What Exactly is Overtraining Syndrome?
Overtraining syndrome (or OTS) is surprisingly common, especially in elite athletes who may be training for hours and hours on back to back days, but extremely committed gymgoers can develop it as well. It’s also important to know that you can’t develop OTS from just one hard day of training, but it comes about from consistent overachieving efforts.
What makes it confusing is that some people who simply aren’t recovering properly may assume they are just training too much, but there’s a difference between overtraining and under recovery, which we’ll cover later.
Just know that overtraining occurs due to both a lack of recovery and an excess of training which results in pain, reduced athletic performance, illness and other symptoms that we will, again, cover in a bit.
Let’s talk about how this syndrome develops in the first place.
A high volume of resistance training puts a ton of stress on your nervous system. OTS at its most severe impacts your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for involuntary functions in the body like digestion, heart rate, and even feeling sexually aroused.
Do I have your attention yet?
As you can imagine, if any of these systems are disrupted, it can make your life pretty miserable. And this can happen if you exercise too heavily in one day, do not take adequate rest days, you aren’t eating enough to maintain your body weight and if you aren’t sleeping adequately enough to give your body time to recover from training.
So how do you know if that’s the case? Let’s cover the common signs and symptoms of overtraining to look out for.
Signs of Overtraining
Your Soreness is Not Getting Better
This is the hardest one to suss out as everyone expects to get sore after lifting weights. However, if you did all of your foam rolling, cold plunging, and typical recovery stuff, but your soreness is lasting days, weeks, or just way longer than you’d normally be sore for the same workout, then that’s a red flag.
It’s also a telltale sign if your soreness is significantly worse or even more of a pain than just being sore. This is the body’s way of showing its capacity for recovery is no longer able to outpace the volume of your workload.
You’re Falling Ill More Often
Exercise causes a short term production of cortisol, our stress hormone, which is necessary because the body’s adaptation to this stress is what produces strength and those sweet, sweet gains.
However, if you exercise excessively without proper recovery, cortisol levels remain elevated and elevated cortisol also has the ability to suppress the immune system. This leaves your body incredibly vulnerable.
So, if you’re the type who never gets sick and suddenly find yourself unable to get rid of the sniffles, you could be overdoing it, especially if you decide to work out anyway.
Your Workouts Feel Much More Difficult
When your muscles haven’t recovered properly from the previous bout of exercise due to lack of good nutrition, days off, or adequate sleep, then even workouts you’re used to just breezing right through might feel tough to get through.
It’s important to assess if you’re just having a day where you’re not feeling it, because we’ve all had those, or if this is something that’s happening consistently the more you train. If it’s the latter, you might want to take a step back.
You’re Out of Motivation
This is more of a psychological side effect of overtraining in that your brain is subconsciously telling your body to avoid the activity that’s wearing it down. If you’re somebody who is usually in the gym like clockwork, but now can’t seem to make it no matter how many scoops of pre-workout you take, that’s a sign.
You’re Experiencing Insomnia
Remember when we talked about the impact too much exercise has on your nervous system? This factor along with the increased levels of cortisol can wire up your brain and make it difficult to wind down, even when you’re exhausted from training.
This means that even if you are able to fall asleep, the sleep may not be of high quality and you probably won’t be able to stay asleep for long. This is a rough symptom to develop, too, because proper recovery also requires adequate sleep (I recommend my athletes get a minimum of 8 hours with an ideal length of 10 hours).
So, if it goes on too long, it can make overtraining symptoms even worse.
You’re Having Mood Changes
This is one of the early signs of OTS. Another byproduct of a wacky nervous system and too much stress hormone floating around, overtraining can cause feelings of depression, anxiety, and severe fatigue.
So you may be doing too much if your friends suddenly point out you’re having some crazy mood swings.
You Have Fatigue That Never Gets Better
And this is the culmination of everything we’ve been talking about.
Your muscles are achy. You can’t sleep. Workouts are hard and you possibly have the flu. It’s not a shock you feel fatigue all the time.
And we’re not just talking about the general fatigue that comes from living life in the 2020s. We’re talking about can’t-get-out-of-bed-just-want-to-perish type of fatigue. This comes from a shot immune system and the body running on literal fumes.
And when it comes to OTS, the more severe the fatigue, the more you’re overdoing it.
Who is at Risk for Overtraining?
As I said, athletes who compete at an elite level will almost inevitably suffer from OTS at some point in their careers, with some studies suggesting at least ⅔ will suffer the condition at some point.
However, anyone who does consistent physical activity can fall into overtraining. It’s just that some populations need to be particularly careful. These include:
Football players in training camp
Triathletes
Elite athletes prepping for a competition
Athletes participating in two- or three-a-day workouts
Time trial sports like running or cycling
There’s also good news that if you’ve already conditioned your body for intense training, it’s much harder to overtrain. Those who are more unseasoned have a greater risk of overtraining if they go too hard too soon before their body has developed the experience to recover from such intensity.
How to Stop Overtraining from Happening
Rest. Duh.
Okay that’s not the long and short of it, but it’s the shortest answer and the simplest solution. Let’s cover the full prevention list.
Take Rest Days
Listen. I know.
I KNOW it’s hard to rest, especially when you’re in the middle of seeing a lot of progress.
But believe me when I say that the rest is just as important as the work. Read that again. The REST is just as important as THE TRAINING.
That’s because strength, muscle, and performance gains only occur when our body adapts. We lift, get sore, our bodies recover by telling itself to get stronger for next time. Wash, rinse, repeat.
However, if we simply skip the recovery period, the body isn’t able to adapt in the way we need. This ends up making your training counterproductive.
If you think you may be overtraining, the best thing to do is take an entire week off. If at the end of the week you feel like a brand new human, you were almost certainly overtraining.
Now if you read “an entire week” and nearly fell out of your chair, you’re probably exactly the type of develop OTS. So I’ll level with you. Instead of a full rest, try a deloading week first.
Deloading weeks are simply lowering your normal volume and frequency, so it looks different for each individual. It could be doing 2 sets of a particular exercise instead of 4. It could also be replacing an hour of weight training with an hour of something more low intensity like yoga instead.
Whichever you choose, if you try it out and you’re still feeling crappy, then you’re gonna have to suck it up and take a week off, because this means your OTS itch is too deep for a deload to scratch.
Get 8-10 Hours of Sleep
The negative health effects that come with not enough sleep are beyond the scope of this article, but know that emerging research is showing us that those who don’t sleep enough are at higher risk of chronic diseases, weight gain, poor hunger control, and even early death.
This is not me being dramatic.
From a fitness standpoint, sleep deprivation is a disaster for athletic performance. Sleep time is the main time the body has to repair all the damage that was done to your muscles and body systems during the day. If you don’t give your body adequate time to do its thing, it’ll start to shut itself down in the form of the symptoms we covered earlier.
Eat More
Surprisingly, the number one reason I find an athlete has developed overtraining syndrome wasn’t because of too much exercise. It was a manageable amount of exercise in combination with not eating nearly enough calories.
Notice I said calories. Not protein. Most people think all we need is a good amount of protein for optimal recovery, but the body needs enough energy as a whole in the form of calories to truly run at its best.
Not only can lack of calories cause fatigue and mood changes on its own, but it also leads to a major imbalance in the body’s hormones, most notably estrogen and testosterone. So, if you’re lifting your little heart out, but not eating enough, you aren’t allowing your body to produce the hormones needed to even make yourself stronger.
If you need some guidance on how many calories you should be eating for your goals and the macronutrients within these calories, I can help with that.
The Bottom Line
I know this whole article sounds scary, especially to those of us who just love to go hard with our training.
Just know that you’ll likely have to train much harder and longer than you think along with seriously neglecting your body nutrition-wise before you start developing these symptoms.
Also, now that you know what the signs look like, hopefully you can take action much sooner to reverse the condition if you do fall into this trap. Because the problem with OTS is, the deeper you are into it, the longer you’ll have to rest and recover to get out of it.
Remember, the rest is just as important as the work. So be kind to your body and be smart about your progress. Don’t set yourself back under the guise of being dedicated. Because the truth is, there’s nothing admirable in that.
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