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2 Simple Steps for Learning How Much Exercise is Too Much

Written by Dr. Ruscio on October 26, 2023

Written by Dr. Ruscio on October 26, 2023 — Reviewed by Aimee Gallo

Learn Our Two-Step Process for Determining How Much Exercise is Too Much and the Crucial Symptoms You Should Be Aware Of

• How Much Exercise is Too Much?|
• Step 1: Assessing Your Symptoms|
• Step 2: Estimating Overtraining Risk|
• Overreaching v/s Overtraining|
• Recovering and Finding Balance|
• Balance is Key|

Not long ago, I was making nice progress toward my exercise and fitness goals, and then I crashed and burned. There’s no doubt that regular exercise is one of the most important tools we have for health, and a lot can be improved/accomplished when you’re challenging your body. But, my drive for stressing the system without adequate rest taught me a painful lesson: more is not always better when it comes to exercise. 

The symptoms of overtraining will be different for everyone, and unfortunately, we often don’t recognize them until after the fact. Looking back now, I can see that, early on, I was experiencing a little hip flexor and low back tightness, as well as some digestive issues. I pushed past these and continued with my training regimen, but then I began to notice shoulder aches, unusual voice fatigue, and poor sleep, and I also had no drive to continue my resistance training sessions. While you may experience some of these same symptoms, overexercising hits us all differently.

In this article, I want to give you some tools you can use to determine if you’re overdoing it and also help you learn how to find balance in order to avoid grinding yourself down with excessive exercise. 

Let’s start off with a two-step process that will help you recognize how much exercise is too much for you.

How Much Exercise is Too Much?

We’re all unique and respond to physical activity in different ways, so the amount of exercise that feels right for one person may feel depleting for another. While we don’t have consistent ways of defining what too much exercise is [1], generally speaking, you can use a two-step process to determine if you’re exercising too much. The first step is to take note of your symptoms. 

Step 1: Assess Your Symptoms

The first place I like to start is with a self-assessment. 

While symptoms will be different for everyone, here are some early signs you may experience when you’re exercising too much:

• Reduced performance
• Reduced energy
• Poor mood
• Less motivation to perform exercise

It’s easy to attribute these to other factors, and if you’re like me, I didn’t really recognize these as signs of too much exercise until after the fact. If you ignore these symptoms, you can go on to experience worsening fatigue, you may have trouble sleeping, your appetite can change, you may suffer from various overuse injuries, and more [1, 2, 3, 4].

This is why it’s so important to spend some time assessing how you feel. 

Here are some potential questions to ask yourself when determining how much exercise is too much [5]:

• Are you dreading working out or thinking about skipping it?
• Do you feel more tired than usual?
• Do you feel unusual muscle soreness?
• Has your sleep quality declined?
• Has your appetite changed?
• Has your strength in workouts declined?
• Do you feel depressed, sad, irritable, or have mood swings?
• Have you experienced more weight loss than expected, or conversely, the scale won’t budge [6, 7]?
• Has your menstrual cycle changed [8]? 

If you answer yes to any of these, that could mean you’re pushing too hard with exercise, so it may be time to re-evaluate your routine. I recommend keeping an exercise journal, which can be one of the best ways to stay on top of how exercise is impacting you.

Exercise Journaling for Better Results

I personally enjoy exercise, and I like to be consistent with minimal interruption to my routine. If you want to avoid injuries and/or long, extended periods where you can’t exercise to your ability because you’ve overdone it, consider keeping an exercise and symptom log. 

The longer you keep this type of journal, the more you’ll be able to see patterns and develop a sense of when you might be at risk for overdoing it. If you notice you’re headed in the wrong direction, you can dial it back to prevent overtraining [3]. An exercise log is also a great way to determine if you’re pushing your body enough to meet the fitness goals you have for yourself.

There are many apps available for keeping this type of exercise journal, but you can always go old school and write in a notebook, too. Here are some things you may want to keep track of when trying to decide how much exercise is too much for you (or if you’re not pushing yourself hard enough) [4, 5],:

• Waking heart rate variability (HRV)
• Waking heart rate
• Recovery heart rate
• Body weight
• Mood
• Exercises completed
• Amount of weight used
• Number of sets and reps
• Intensity of exercises
• Time spent on each exercise
• Rate how easy or hard an activity felt (rate of perceived exertion)
• Sleep quality and quantity
• Illness
• Rest periods and active recovery methods and how they worked for you
• Food journal (the foods and macronutrient content – fat, carbs, protein)
• Stress level or stressful circumstances
• Timing of your menstrual cycle

There’s really no substitute for self-reflection here. Being honest with yourself and routinely keeping track of this information can be extremely important for optimizing your health and fitness results.

If you go through this symptom assessment and you’re still not sure, move on to step two, where you can use some biometric devices and calculations to help you gauge how your body is responding to exercise.

Step 2: Estimating Overtraining Risk

There are some labs that may indicate you’re overexercising, such as increased inflammatory markers and decreased white blood cells, but these aren’t reliable or practical when trying to determine how much exercise is too much [1, 9, 10]. It’s best to assess your symptoms and how you’re feeling, but you can also take a look at certain measures of your heart rate variability.

Why is HRV helpful?

Parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest) activity can increase when overtraining. We can estimate this with various measurements of heart rate activity like HRV. While HRV isn’t a confirmed way to measure overtraining or overreaching [1, 11], one specific HRV parameter, called the rMSSD, may indicate when you’re at higher risk of overdoing it [12, 13].

The rMSSD is the beat-to-beat difference in HRV that indicates the function of your vagus nerve and PNS activity [12]. 

To calculate your rMSSD with a device, follow these steps:

1. Download the hrv4training app, a camera-based app available for iPhone and Android devices that can be used with Apple Watch and Oura Ring [14].
2. Remain lying down for three minutes right after you wake up in the morning, then stand up for three minutes while tracking your HRV [15].
3. Record an average for the three minutes you’re standing.
4. Practice this daily for one week.
5. If your weekly average HRV (rMSSD) goes up relative to your other weekly averages, it may indicate that you’re at higher risk of overtraining.

You can also measure your rMSSD while sitting down after intense exercise, which may be another helpful way to assess overtraining risk [13]. Follow this process:

1. Sit down for 10 minutes after a bout of intense exercise.
2. At minute five, measure your HRV (rMSSD) using hrv4training for the last five minutes of your 10-minute recovery period.
3. Record an average for the five minutes.
4. If your rMSSD goes up relative to your other post-exercise rMSSD values, it could indicate a higher risk of overtraining.

If you don’t want to bother with an app, you can also estimate overtraining risk by testing your heart rate recovery (HRR) for one minute after intense exercise [13]. This test can be done with or without a heart rate monitor. Here are the steps:

1. After maximal (all-out) exercise, sit or lie down while your heart rate monitor measures your heart rate for one minute.

• If you don’t have a heart rate monitor, you can get a rough max heart rate by counting the number of heartbeats for 10 seconds and multiplying that number by 6 six right after your biggest exertion during training. Then, count your heartbeats while sitting or lying down for one minute.

2. Look at your heart rates during your exercise period and find 1) the maximum while you were intensely exercising and 2) the value at one minute of rest.
3. Subtract your heart rate after one minute from your max heart rate, and you’ll have your HRR. 
4. If HRR increases relative to your other times, it may be a sign that you’re at higher risk for overtraining.

I want to make it clear here that you don’t need any fancy equipment or even a heart rate monitor to determine how much exercise is too much. These things may provide some interesting information, but simply taking some time to self-reflect can be extremely helpful when it comes to knowing what’s right for your body.

Now that you know what symptoms to look out for, what questions to ask yourself, and some helpful calculations for estimating your overtraining risk, let’s get into some specifics about how we define overexercising along with how it impacts the body. 

Overreaching vs. Overtraining

You may hear someone say they’re overtrained, but there’s some nuance here that we need to tease out. Research discusses overexercising in terms of overreaching and overtraining. Overreaching can fall into two categories:

• Functional overreaching is when your exercise load reduces your ability to perform for a short time, like a few days to a couple of weeks [16, 17]. Many athletes actually incorporate functional overreaching because their performance improves once they’ve taken the time to recover appropriately [2, 17]. 
• Non-functional overreaching is when you’ve reached the point that a few days of recuperation isn’t enough to recover fully.  You need several days to a few weeks for your body to repair itself [2, 16, 17].

While rare, you can develop overtraining syndrome (OTS) if you’ve gone beyond non-functional overreaching. OTS is where you’ve exercised to the point of significant bodily damage, and you need several weeks to months to recover [16, 17]. Again, this is fairly rare for the general population.

Since we often don’t recognize we’re overdoing it with exercise until afterward, here’s a chart of common symptoms of overreaching and overtraining and how they may differ: 

As you can see, there’s some overlap here. The main difference is that functional overreaching can be a positive strategy. As long as you take time to recover appropriately, you’ll probably come back stronger and better than you were before [4]. When it comes to non-functional overreaching and OTS, symptoms will last longer, and the consequences may be severe. 

For example, if you have OTS and you continue to push, you may experience the following negative symptoms for months to over a year [1]:

• Chronic mood problems and poor mental health
• Chronic pain
• Chronic fatigue 
• Loss of lean muscle
• More frequent viral and bacterial infections (poor immune system function)
• Injury (like stress fractures or torn ligaments)
• Muscle damage 
• Inability to perform certain exercises for months or even years 
• Permanent disability

While there isn’t really a set of solid symptoms that each person can expect if they overexercise, it is clear that overstressing the body in any way (including with exercise) can cause damage that requires recovery time to heal. If you don’t allow your body to heal, you can experience some serious consequences that impact your quality of life and overall health. If you find you are overdoing it, rather than giving up on exercise, let’s discuss how to heal and find balance moving forward. 

Recovering and Finding Balance

If your body is telling you you’re overdoing it with exercise, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to stop exercising completely. Depending on your symptoms, you may need to significantly reduce your training load (by about 50–80%) for a week or so to recover [5]. This will be different for everyone depending on your fitness level and training schedule but may look like walking instead of running, reducing the amount of weight you use when strength training, cutting your aerobic exercise time from 60 minutes to 30 minutes per session, and/or reducing the number of days you’re exercising each week. It’s also important to prioritize sleep, nutrition, and hydration [19, 20, 21, 22, 23].

To prevent further issues with overtraining, self-reflection before training sessions can be helpful. The National Academy of Sports Medicine has some simple questions you can ask yourself before a workout to decide how to alter it to prevent overreaching [5]:

• Did I sleep well last night?
• Was my resting heart rate within my normal range upon waking?
• Have I had enough food and fluids?

If you answer “no” to one or more of these, that’s probably a good sign that you need to dial it back. If you’re still unsure, then consider the following:

• Do I have any major life stressors going on?
• Am I dreading my workout or thinking about skipping it?
• Do I feel unusually sore or fatigued?
• Am I sick or nursing an injury?

If you answer “yes” to any of these, then it may be best to take a rest day or practice more reparative exercises, like a walk or bike ride in nature, a restorative yoga session, or some light resistance training.  

If you love intense exercise, it may seem difficult to back off or change up your exercise routine. I used to believe that I needed to bring super high intensity to every workout. Over time, I’ve learned I get better results and feel better when I use a wide range of exercises and intensities. I’ve also discovered new exercises that challenge my body in different ways. So, let’s dig into how you can still challenge yourself without overdoing it. 

Challenging Yourself Without Overdoing It

If you’ve been overexercising, it’s important to allow your body to recover. While you’re taking time to slow down, you can investigate how you may want to adjust your training plan to find more balance. What I mean here is if you’re only focusing on cardiovascular training or strength training, then you’re neglecting other important activities that help to maintain balance in the body. 

So, in addition to aerobic activity and strength training, you may want to add in exercises that incorporate balance, flexibility, plyometrics (jumping and rebounding type exercises that rapidly stretch and then contract muscles), and speed/agility to create a more well-rounded plan [5]. 

Working with an exercise professional (like a personal trainer) is a great way to fine-tune your workout routine so you can challenge your body without overdoing it. But there are other lifestyle factors like food, fluid, and cold therapy that you can incorporate to help your body repair itself after exercise, which may improve your exercise resilience.

Nutrition and Hydration for Exercise Recovery

Paying attention to your nutrition and hydration can help with repair and recovery after training sessions. Consuming adequate amounts of carbohydrates and protein after intense training helps your body refuel and repair itself, and higher protein intake specifically may reduce your risk of getting sick during periods of overreaching [20, 21, 22]. 

Drinking plenty of fluid after intense exercise can also improve recovery [21]. In general, men may want to aim for 15.5 cups (124 ounces) of fluid per day, and women may want to consume 11.5 cups (92 ounces) per day with more before, during, and after exercise sessions. This doesn’t just mean water; this is total fluid intake, including what’s in your food [23]. It’s also a good idea to replace electrolytes (like sodium, potassium, and magnesium), especially for women during the luteal phase, approximately one week before menstruation begins. You could add hydrating foods like broth or miso or add a packet of electrolytes to your water [24].

Cold Therapy for Exercise Recovery

In addition to a well-balanced exercise routine, nutrition, and hydration, you may want to consider adding in some cold therapy. Several research studies have found health benefits like better body composition, reduced insulin resistance, and lowered inflammation with cold water immersion [25, 26]. One randomized controlled trial found elite synchronized swimmers who used air cryotherapy after a functional overreaching session slept better, had less fatigue, and had better performance [27]. 

Simple ways to simulate cold therapy, especially beneficial for women in the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle due to hormone-induced increases in body temperature, include using a cooling towel during workouts and adding in a cooler-than-normal shower after training [28]. 

Finding Exercise Balance is Key

Let’s face it: exercise can feel great, and once you see improvements in your body composition, you may want to do as much as you can, as often as you can. While I’m all for increasing exercise and challenging your body, it’s also important to know and respect your limits. Being tuned in to your own body will not only help you improve your exercise performance but also prevent symptoms of over-exercising like fatigue, mood changes, poor sleep, injury, and other health problems.

While there’s no exact way to determine how much exercise is too much for you, keeping an exercise/symptom journal and calculating your rMSSD and/or heart rate recovery can help you tailor a plan to prevent overreaching or overtraining. 

Self-reflection before workouts can make it easier to determine how you may need to change your training session based on your current circumstances. And prioritizing recovery with nutrition, hydration, and cold therapy can have a significant impact.

If you’d like some support on your exercise journey, contact us at the Ruscio Institute for Functional Health.

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