6 Signs You’re Overtraining – And How to Avoid It

Many athletes worry about overtraining. Overtraining can make it harder to achieve your fitness goals, as you’ll find yourself at a standstill while you recover. It can take up to two or three months to fully recover.

Fortunately, overtraining isn’t as common as you may think and can be prevented with adequate rest and recovery periods between workouts.

What Are the Signs of Overtraining?

Overtraining is more than just muscle soreness or pain during or after your workouts. In fact, true overtraining looks more like chronic fatigue than physical strain.

Some of the signs of overtraining include:

• Exhaustion and fatigue
• Depression or moodiness
• Loss of appetite
• High perceived exertion and diminished performance
• Erratic resting heart rate
• Insomnia
Are you surprised that many of these signs have more to do with your emotional state than your muscles? Overtraining manifests as overall fatigue and ill health. When it happens, only a prolonged rest period, a healthy diet, and taking care of yourself can help you get back on track.

It’s far easier to avoid overtraining than to recover after you’ve overtrained.

How to Avoid Overtraining

The best way to avoid overtraining is to be aware of the intensity of your workouts and, more importantly, how you feel before you start.

You can measure your “rate of perceived exertion,” or RPE, during your workout. If your workout feels as if it’s a “10” but you’re lifting less weight or doing fewer reps than usual, you could be close to overtraining.

RPE 10: Maximum effort to failure (you cannot do another rep)
RPE 9: Heavy lift, but could do one more rep
RPE 8: Heavy lift, could do two more reps
RPE 7: Moderate weight, can continue with reps

You can also perform a measured vertical jump before and after your workout. If you can’t jump as high as usual before the workout, it may be smart to rest for the day.

You can also use a hand dynamometer to measure your grip strength. If you’re exerting a lot of effort but not up to your usual strength, it’s probably time to take a break.

Benchmark So You Can Measure Your Progress

Of course, all these methods require having benchmarks; choose one method and use it regularly so you’ll know what’s normal for you. You should be getting stronger with continued weight training efforts. If you discover progress has slowed or stopped – or that you’re not as strong as you were last week – consider resting to regain your strength.