5 Signs You're Over-Exercising & How to Recover Fast

we all know that exercise is good for us but too much of a good thing can sometimes be bad and may even lead to an injury there are five clear signs that you might be overdoing it with your exercise and in today's video I'm going to reveal what those signs are and what to do about it my name is will harow and I'm the over 50s specialist physio here at HT Physio infom and today we're going to be talking about the five signs that you might be exercising too much and how to reverse the problem

so the first sign that you might be overdoing it with your exercise is excessive fatigue and fatigue is a sign of tiredness and it means that you're not recovering in time for your next workout now there are two types of fatigue we need to talk about we've got local fatigue and we've got systemic fatigue and local fatigue pertains to the Target muscle that you've been working so let's say I've been to the gym which I have this morning I've worked this muscle here the bicep and right now because I was in the gym 90 minutes

ago I can feel fatigue in this muscle and fatigue in that instance is good I should feel fatigue because I've just worked it but in a few days time let's say three or 4 days if I still feel the fatigue in that muscle that means I've probably overdone it in the session before and that means that if I have another work out in 3 days time and I can still feel that local fatigue it's not recovered in time which means I'm going to jeopardize that next workout and have a higher risk of injury so we

want to be recovering between sessions in the muscle groups that we worked so if you've done a session of quads and you do quads let's say twice a week you do your squats on your Monday and your Thursday in your session if you find that your quads have not recovered from your Monday session by the time you hit Thursday that's a sign that you've done too much you've got too much local fatigue and you're going to jeopardize that workout now the second type of fatigue we need to talk about is systemic fatigue that is tiess

in the whole body and that feels quite different that can almost sometimes feel like you've got the flu you're aching all over you've got joint pains and stiffness you feel weak you don't look forward to your workout anymore these can all be signs that you've got systemic fatigue and systemic fatigue builds very slowly over time typically as a result of doing really hard workouts very repetitively and maybe not giving your body time to recover we're going to talk about what to do if you feel either of these things at the end of the video the

next sign that you might be exercising too much is that you can't get stronger no matter what you do and it's normal to hit plateaus for time in the gym sometimes it might be a week or two weeks you feel you know I'm not making progress but then on week three you're able to to just up it by a rep or maybe just a little bit of weight but if you've hit a plateau for 3 four five weeks and you're not getting any stronger even though you're pushing really hard you're exercising regularly and you're doing

all the right things it's just not happening that could be a case that you're overreaching okay it could be the case that you're doing too much you're not recovering in time so instead of getting stronger you're actually getting weaker and you're just fighting the process the next sign that you might be overdoing it with your exercise is pain now we want to feel a little bit of pain in the Target muscles when we're lifting weights and we also want to feel maybe a little bit of pain in our heart and lungs and in our leg

muscles when we're doing cardio but what we're talking about here is just like a mild ache maybe a discomfort just enough to show that you're working hard what we shouldn't feel is pain in your joints and in your connective tissues so let's say that I've got a dumbbell here and I'm doing a set of bicep curls what I want to feel during this set is a working ache in the Target muscle and I guess you could call that pain but really it's just like a discomfort what I shouldn't feel is pain in the tendon either

here or here at the top of the muscle and I also shouldn't feel connective tissue pain around my elbow and if that's the thing that means you can't do any more reps and you have to put the weight down then guess what you've not worked the target muscle you've just stressed your connective tissues so that's bad because you haven't done anything to change and it's bad because you've likely caused yourself a higher risk of injury so pain is a very good sign that you're overdoing it and as we do more and more and more exercise

we end up with tiny microt traumas in our connective tissues which is absolutely fine because they do heal between sessions which is why it's important to have rest times in between exercise you can't exercise all day every day because your connective tissues would just break down but if you're not giving yourself enough rest between your sessions that micro damage builds up into more substantial damage and can lead to the risk of an injury I'm going to tell you a story right now this is a true story of a patient of mine who came to see

me with a ruptured pectoral tendon that's a horrible injury to have it's basically your big chest muscle it ruptured off the bone so he had a serious injury in his chest and shoulder and basically he told me the story that he was going to the gym he was doing lots and lots of bench pressing he decided he was going to do three or four bench press sessions every week at first it was okay two three weeks no problem the fourth week he started to feel a niggle in his shoulder but he carried on the fifth

week he noticed he was getting weaker and it was the pain that was stopping him from doing more and on week six bang the tendon ruptured and suddenly he's dealing with probably 12 months out of the gym because of that injury so don't let that happen to you listen to the little signs your body are giving you pain is a big one and if you feel it in your joints or your connective tissues there are some things we can do to adapt that and I'm going to reveal more later another sign that you might be

exercising too much is poor sleep sleep is the foundation of your recovery when it comes to just about any type of exercise it's when your body heals it's when your brain recovers and it's when you basically reset all of the damage that you've caused during exercise but one of the main signs of overtraining is poor disrupted sleep and that becomes a vicious circle because if you're over exercising you need more recovery but that's affecting your sleep so your recovery is worse so you're more likely to overe exercise and the cycle repeats itself so if you've

noticed that you're waking up in the night more than you normally do and it's not to go to the toilet and it's not because of pain you're just waking up and you're having disrupted sleep and you can't get back off to sleep that could be a big sign that you're overreaching and need to pull back the final sign that you might be exercising too much is a total lack of motivation now your psychology is just as important as your physiology when it comes to exercise and if you're doing something that you enjoy you're more likely

to stick to it which means that you're probably more likely to get good results and this is why some people don't have the best program or they don't know about all of the science behind exercise but they have amazing results because they've picked something they enjoy and they've stuck with it consistently for years and years and years but burnouts during exercise is a serious thing and it is actually quite common and typically is classified by someone who really doesn't look forward to their workouts anymore they dread the idea of exercising they've gone from thinking that

the discomfort during exercise being quite nice is now really unpleasant Maybe maybe they feel listless maybe they just feel fatigued all the time and they're starting to think what's the point this is supposed to be making my life better and really it's making it worse now if this is you don't worry because there are some Shire ways to get your spark back and regain your motivation before we go any further I just want to tell you about a very special bonus I've created for viewers of this channel is called the complete guides to building muscle

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Channel all all you need to do is scroll down below this video there's a link in the description where you can sign up I'll send you the video straight away and you can get started it's some of my best info and if you use it I hope you enjoy so now we're going to talk about how to fix these problems if you are exercising too much it's not just as simple as have a couple of days off and come back it's much more complex than that so let's talk about the best way to reset your

body now this little plan here is going to bring down fatigue and reset your body so you can get back to exercise without running into the same problems you've just had so this is what you're going to do step one you're going to take one whole week off that doesn't mean training hard that doesn't mean going into the gym and doing half of what you normally do it doesn't mean doing one session instead of three it means a whole week off all exercise we're talking no running no cycling no swimming no gym work it's just

one week you can still walk you can still do the garden and things like that but one whole week off of your normal exercise routine is going to do wonders for your recovery and some of the things that need to heal need that whole 7 Day Gap where they're not being stimulated in order to heal so the first thing we're going to do is a no exceptions one whole week off just to reset your body a little bit now at the end of that one week you'll probably be feeling do you know what I do

fancy getting back and doing something but remember you're not fully recovered you got to a point where you were really fatigued it's not just going to disappear with a week so we still need to adapt what we're doing for week two so in week two we are going to go back to your normal exercise but you're only going to do 50% of what you usually do so if you're a gym goer you're going to drop the weight that you use by 50% for every single exercise you might also drop the number of repetitions you do

by 50% you might also drop the number of sets you do by 50% so instead of going to the gym for an hour you'll only be in there for 30 minutes and you'll be doing something very very easy now you're going to leave the gym and you're going to think I haven't really done anything I haven't achieved anything with that and that's precisely the point we're just waking the body back up to the fact that we're going to be exercising again very very soon we're stopping any muscle loss which does tend to kick in after

about one week of total rest and we're basically just prepping ourselves for what's to come now if you're a runner or a cyclist and you've been overreaching the same thing applies to you you're just going to do 50% of the distance that you normally do or you can do the same distance and go 50% slower or you might do both you might cut the distance down by 50% % and go 50% slower the idea here is to not challenge the body is just to get you ticking over okay so that's your first two weeks first

week is off second week's 50% of usual the third week we're going to get you back into doing what you normally do so week three we go back to your normal activity however you're going to change one thing significantly remember to get to this point where you're very fatigued something has to been too much you might have been lifting too much weight you might have been doing too many sets you might have been running too far we need to figure out what that thing likely was and tweak it now it doesn't mean you have to

cut back entirely it just means we're changing one variable to see how your body responds so for example if I was going to the gym and I was lifting very heavy weights I got really fatigued and I need to take the week off I've gone back I've done 50% of the weight and now I'm ready to go I'm not going to go straight back to doing the heavy weights I'm going to probably start with lighter weights but try and do more repetitions and remember if you're in the gym and you're lifting lighter weights as long

as you keep doing it to the point of fatigue you're going to get just about the same results as if you lift very heavy weights to the point of fatigue but you're going to have lower systemic tiredness okay this is a very important thing to understand and you'll also have a very slightly lower risk a lower risk of injury as well so change your one variable if you're a runner for example you might choose to do longer routs but do them slower that might be your new regime or if you've been doing very long routes

let's say you've been training for a half marathon or a 10K try doing half that distance but going quicker and see if that agrees with your body more and sometimes every few months it's just really good to have a change okay we just need something different a new stimulus will probably make you improve much quicker so change one variable and then once you've done that we're going to build up incredibly slowly okay this is super important most people they start off doing too much and they progress too quickly and then they crash what we're going

to do is we're going to start off slow you're going to change your variable and then very very slowly build back up so you might increase whatever you're doing by 2 to 5% every week or two so super slow almost not notice if you're running you're going to increase your pace by 2 to 5% every 2 weeks if you're lifting weights you're going to add 2 to 5% of uh resistance onto your lifts every 1 to two weeks and the changes are going to be so slow that your body will hardly notice it which is

what we want we don't want to be doing something then suddenly increase it and the body goes W that was too much that's a huge accumulation of fatigue and then that's what leads to these big crashes so you're going to build build up super slow but the final thing you have to remember the fifth Point here is that no matter how slowly you're building up you are still going to accumulate fatigue which is why for almost everybody no matter what type of exercise you're doing if you're pushing yourself you're going to need a rest every

couple of months and by a rest I mean a week off or a few days where you don't do any of it or two weeks where you just go really really light and then you get back into it you're going to need to give your body a break every couple of months and for people over 50 that's even more important because of the accumulation of this connective tissue damage if you give yourself a break every couple of months that damage resets it heals and then you can push again if you don't give yourself that break

it just accumulates and accumulates until suddenly it causes a problem so we're going to rest every couple of months then get back into it this is exactly what you need to do to reset fatigue and hopefully that's been useful so those are the five signs that you are exercising too much and how to fix the problem I hope you found this video useful and helpful if you have then do drop a comment below and just let us know your thoughts and consider sharing this video with a friend or a family member who you think might

benefit from it too anyway thank you for watching make sure you've liked the video and subscribed to the channel so you're the first to hear about our new videos when they come out and if you want to get more from me personally then the best way to do that is to pick up a copy of my brand new book thriving Beyond 50 the 2024 Edition out with hey house on the first of October 2024 it is 450 pages of my best exercises my best tips my best strategies to help keep people just like you active

independent and Mobile in their 50s and Beyond so I hope you love it if you pick up a copy anyway thank you for watching I appreciate your time massively and I'll speak to you again on the next video okay