Are you training TOO MUCH?!
When I first committed to bodybuilding, I didn’t train effectively. I was living alone in Nottingham at the time and the gym became my little safe place. I convinced myself rest days were a no go. I only rested when my body literally begged me. Because I avoided structured rest, largely ignored nutrition planning and lacked consistent sleep/recovery routines, I saw respectable results but nowhere near my potential. If by 2024, I had recovered and fuelled appropriately in line with my goals, the gains could’ve been far greater.
Over time I experienced:
A lack of drive to train hard
A lack of discipline to structure training, nutrition and recovery. (More specifically, no set training plan, no consistent shopping list for food, no designated rest days, no regular sleep schedule)
A stagnation and even regression in my progress.
100%, you can train hard and make progress despite these flaws but the ceiling of what’s possible gets drastically lowered. That leads to the question: can you work out too much? The answer is yes. But “too much” isn’t a fixed number for everyone. It’s when your training load outpaces your capacity for recovery and starts driving down your results.
What is overreaching? And how is it different from overtraining?
Functional Overreaching (FOR): short term increase in training load (volume/intensity) which causes a temporary drop in performance, but after adequate recovery your performance improves.
Non functional Overreaching (NFOR): training load is still excessive vs. recovery. Your performance drops and does not rebound (or rebounds only weakly) and your recovery takes weeks.
Overtraining Syndrome (OTS): chronic excessive training + insufficient recovery + additional stressors (life, nutrition, sleep) leading to prolonged performance drop (months), mood disruptions, hormonal/immune changes.
Key distinctions:
Overreaching = relatively short timeframe (days to weeks) and can lead to better gains if managed.
Overtraining = much longer recovery, maladaptive state, real risk.
It should be said that the studies I’ve sourced this information from deals with elite athletes and in bodybuilding populations (and those who primarily look to build lean muscle) there isn’t as much data.
Why does overreaching (and its mismanagement) matter?
When you train harder than you’re recovering, fatigue accumulates.
Your muscle building (anabolic) pathways become less responsive. Your breakdown (catabolic) mechanisms increase. That means you may do a lot but gain little.
It may look like you’re staying the same, but in actuality you’re regressing relative to what you could have achieved with proper recovery.
It’s important to not that more is not always better. Without appropriate recovery the training stimulus stops being productive and becomes counter productive.
How do you recognise when you’re slipping into non functional overreaching or overtraining?
Persistent drop in motivation, mood or energy despite doing everything right.
Strength or performance stagnation or decline. You can’t hit previous weights or reps.
Sleep disturbances, poor appetite, chronic soreness, increased illness or injury risk.
Lack of recovery across sessions. You go into each workout more tired rather than fresher.
Reduced training sensation. You go through the motions but the session feels hollow, not getting any pumps or you don’t bounce back.
What you can do:
Firstly of all C’MON! You already have half the solution because you observed your lack of rest/structure/deliberate nutrition/recovery. Here’s how to rebuild properly:
Plan rest & recovery as part of your training, not as an after thought. Designate rest days and be disciplined with them, just like you are with your training days.
Track training volume and intensity over weeks. Monitor your performance trends.
Integrate nutrition and sleep into your plan. Adequate protein and overall energy intake, sleep timing/quality.
Monitor subjective metrics (motivation, soreness, mood) and objective ones (weights/reps).
When you detect a downward trend in performance or recovery markers, reduce volume/intensity for a week, deload rather than pushing harder.
Final take:
If you’re under recovering you can still make progress, but you will not maximise your potential. Overreaching when managed is a tool, but when left unchecked it drifts into non functional overreaching or overtraining where your training becomes inefficient or counter productive.
Your task now: build the recovery, the structure, the nutrition, the monitoring to match the training. C’mon!
