Overtraining

Overtraining is working out past your body's ability to heal itself. This results in negative gains or loss of muscle or strength levels. Under training or failing to work out long enough or hard enough may keep you from experiencing the optimum level of strength and muscle gains as well.  The difficult question to answer is how do I know if I'm overtraining or under training? Personally, I believe most of that has to do with your own personal body. How old you are, what kind of shape you are in, etc has a lot to do with it.

I found some videos on youtube that attempt to clear up the question of overtraining. This first one is by  BetterBodyNYC. The question they attempt to answer is - What is over training and how often should I workout?

Verdict according to them is give your body 48 hours per body part to heal. A lot of body builders will tell you only to workout once a week per body part to give yourself time to heal.

How do I recognize the signs of over training by Power1K.com

 Answer they give is when you hit a plateau and no longer see any results, you may be overtraining and also feeling chronically tired.

Another video entitled - Signs Your Training Too Much by CorePerformance.com

They recommend looking at your heart rate before and after exercise to determine if you are doing too much in the gym.

 

How long should I workout  by

Their answer stick to 45 minutes to an hour per duration. I tend to agree with that. Although I'd like to add I think it doesn't hurt to add more time doing easy going exercise time to your day especially if you sit all day. Walk around the park do some floor work while you watch TV etc. We spend too much time sitting for the most part these days.

Bottom line is that your body can only take so much of any one activity. If you lift weights one day really hard, then maybe you might want to play basketball the next day, go swimming, do an exercise video, throw a Frisbee, or just do that walk around the park. Our bodies need time to heal, and respond best when we keep our muscles guessing as to what is coming next. So keep variety in your life.

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