Are You Overtraining?

How hard would you need to workout to actually overtrain? Let’s break it down. If you do too little in the gym, you won’t grow — that’s called under-training. Do a bit more, and you’ll maintain. A bit more than that, and you’re in the sweet spot for gains. Keep pushing and you’ll hit functional overreaching, where performance drops for a few days, then rebounds above baseline once you recover. That’s actually good and sometimes I purposely try to functionally overreach. But if you keep pushing more, you’ll eventually hit true overtraining, where your performance tanks for weeks or months. And even once you recover, no extra gains But here’s the thing: overtraining is insanely hard to hit. One study had lifters do heavy compound lifts, for 25 heavy sets, every workout, 4 days a week. And they were all 3-5 rep MAXES. They did that for two weeks. And they still didn’t over train. Their strength actually went up?! The only study I’m aware of that actually caused true overtraining should be in the Geneva convention. They made people do 10 sets of 1-rep max squats, 6 days a week, for two weeks. It wrecked them — most took over a month just to get back to baseline. Unless you're training like that — and you’re not — you’re probably fine. Push hard. Recover harder, and you’ll grow.