HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH WHEN IT COMES TO EXERCISING
If you're a beginner and you train for an hour 6-7 days a week that is definitely too much. If you're a professional athlete and you train 5 hours/day, 6 days/ week, that's most probably appropriate. Most people are confused when it comes to how many days they should train to see effective results when working out.
In order to answer this question, you need first to determine two things:
⚪️your level of fitness
⚪️your goals
Beginners would train 3 times per week, while the advanced ones would train 5-6 times per week. The more you train the more your body will get used to intense physical activity so you might need to increase both the frequency and the intensity of your workouts in order to keep seeing results.
SIGNS OF OVERTRAINING
To go back to our initial question, there are a few signs that could help you understand if you are overtraining:
👉You are all the time tired.
👉You feel like you're literally dragging yourself to the gym and you have low energy every single day before your workout.
👉Your performance plateaus or declines, meaning, when you lift weight you cannot increase your volume from one week to another and some days you might even lift less than the previous week.
👉You're irritable - overtraining has a direct impact on your hormones. You might be moody all the time or have sudden mood changes.
👉You're getting often mild infections (sore throat or respiratory infections).
Does the weight you lift matter? Overcome the obsession of lifting too much too soon.
I have seen this a million times in the gym, most of the time at beginners, but not only. You can notice that they are not familiar with the proper form of exercise, but they use a huge amount of weight. Unfortunately, they miss the entire point of exercising.
Things you should take into account when it comes to the volume of training
👉What matters instead is the correct form. I have said this before and I will say it again: never compromise form. Never.
👉The second thing that matters is the number of reps, depending on your goals. Do you need to grow your muscles (hypertrophy)? Then you should be in the 10-12 reps range. Do you want to increase your strength? Then go with 5-8 reps.
👉Do you want to grow your muscles? Start small. Progress slowly. Add more weight over time, but don't go from squatting 50 kg to 100kg. Your body won't benefit from that.
👉Keep in mind: in the gym, no matter how much weight you lift, there will be someone else that lifts more than you. It's not a competition. Change your mindset. You are your only real competition.
👉Good news: Even if you don't try extremely hard, at some point you will progress anyway. It's science. Your body adapts to a specific level of effort. And then lifting a certain weight that one month ago seemed hard will seem easy. Then you will know that it's time to increase your weight.