~ If I can’t do 400 push-ups, I’ll hit the dummy 800 times! If I can’t hit the dummy 800 times, I’ll do 2000 jump ropes! ~
Rock Lee

If only it were that simple. Rock Lee is a lovable character from the manga and anime series, Naruto. He was unable to do any ninjutsu (ninja tricks), so he focused, under the guidance of his master, on taijutsu (physical fighting ability). To beat ninjutsu, he had to gain speed and strength beyond a normal human’s ability — so he trained almost all day, every day. In the series, it worked. He became the greatest taijutsu master, surpassing his own sensei, in the village, and maybe even the world. In real life, however, it is simply not to simple.

What Rock Lee would have come across is a syndrome known as Overtraining Syndrome. Many people who are serious about training suffer from this without even knowing. Overtraining is defined as training beyond the body’s ability to recover. One may train as hard as one wishes, provided you give yourself the right recovery formula.

What causes overtraining? The body needs two things to recover; fuel/raw materials (the right nutrition) and rest. Many of us are very focused on eating a diet that supports our training. Enough carbs to give us the energy we need, enough fats to support organ function, cell creation, etc. and enough protein to support muscular development, a strong immune system and many other thing. Without these things, the body won’t recover properly and, as such, one may experience overtraining.

The other, bigger issue is that we don’t allow our bodies a sufficient amount of rest. There is a certain amount of rest that our bodies require to recover from certain workouts and, the truth is that progress is made during rest. Muscle is built, depleted resources are renewed, our mind gets clearer. Everything that we hope to gain from exercise happens during our resting phase. There are two ways in which this is compromised. Either we train a relatively “average” amount but simply do not rest as we should or we get so hard into training that we train longer than we should and no amount of rest possible (due to schedules and other things) is enough to recover from the workout.

How do you know when you are overtraining? You lose the ability to focus, you feel tired all the time, soreness may last for a prolonged period of time, you get sick more, you start to feel depressed, you keep getting injured and, most notably for gym buffs, progress slows or is halted.

Clearly, despite what manga and anime would have us believe, more is not always better when it comes to exercise. It is important to figure out the perfect amount of exercise that is necessary to achieve your goals. As you exercise more and the body becomes more efficient, this may change so it is important to keep track of your progress so that your training intensity can be modified as needed. This also allows you to see when your progress slows down or is halted so that you may need to focus more on rest.