When wondering if you exercise too much, or overtraining, you have to know what we mean by exercise.
There are two top level types of what might be referred to as exercise. One is intentional exercise and the other is daily movement. When I write about overtraining or exercising too much, I am not referring to daily movement. I’ll define them both below.
Intentional exercise is going in to the gym and doing a class or a personal training session, doing a structured workout at home, hitting a hotel workout while traveling, etc. It’s intentional and it’s a plan, a structure, that you follow and follow through on.
Daily movement is going for a 20 minute walk, taking the kids to the field and actively playing with them at the park, an active recovery stretching session, a relaxing Yoga session, etc. It’s movement you are doing with the intention of moving. Daily movement is great to start becoming a person that moves every day. This is not what we are concerned about. Our plan with or without a 20 minute daily walk won’t change. I mean, if you aren’t walking every day we might like you to add that in, but it is not going to be detrimental to our plan.
Are you intentionally exercising too much?
Let’s say you come meet with us and we suggest you start exercising with us 3 days a week because you aren’t exercising at all now, or the movement your doing aren’t movements we will be doing in your personal training sessions or classes. You agree to the plan and you start.
You feel awful after a few weeks. You are exhausted and sore and start to get injured. We ask questions because that shouldn’t be the case and you tell us that not only did you start with us but you felt you weren’t doing enough so you added on other intentional exercise on your own or at other gyms.
Exercising too much will do more harm than good.
You came to a coaching facility for a reason
When you meet with us we prescribe the solution based on what you at that point in time & your recent history of movement, what your goals are, and the body you are in now. We measure results of the plan as time passes and use that data to continue to change things based on those results.
If you know what you are doing, how to program for yourself, the type of movement and food habits your body needs to get to the results you want, you can save a lot of money by just joining a gym that leases you equipment. You know, where you walk in to a brightly lit beautiful facility with tons of machines all over the place. You don’t need a coaching facility. You just need access to equipment.
If you don’t know how to do these things, how to achieve the goals you have for yourself and YOU change your own prescription, you have a serious risk of overtraining as well as a serious risk of not being successful and wasting both time and money. Your body does not want you exercising too much. It needs rest and recovery just like it needs water, protein and resistance training.
Overtraining will help you gain fat.
Overtraining will help you get injured.
Overtraining will help you quit.
Overtraining will help you feel fatigued.
Here is an article from Healthline that gets into much more detail on the effects of overtraining. Click HERE to read it.
Would you go to multiple doctors and add on multiple medications that may or may not work together?
If your coach doesn’t know what you are doing outside of the gym. If the other place doesn’t know what you are doing here, neither can help you. It’s like if you went to 3 different doctors for the same condition and each prescribed a different solution. That is not going to end well for your health and body.
Remember, why you sought out a coaching facility in the first place. Because you wanted a solution and wanted to be told how to get there. Because what you were doing wasn’t working.
Listen to your coach. We got you. You just gotta got you too!
Set up a 10 minute chat to learn about how to get started with your fitness prescription! Click HERE to find a time to chat today.