Can one do too much weight training?

Fact Check: Can One Do Too Much Weight Training?

Is there such a thing called too much weight training? (Image via Pexels/Photo by Andrea Piacquadio)

There's such a thing as ‘too much weight training’, but it’s not all that simple to understand at which point it becomes 'too much'. Ideally, whenever you train, your goal should be to increase your strength and muscle endurance.

While adding muscle mass may not be everyone’s goal, weight training essentially helps with muscle endurance and strength. How you moderate your diet after that determines how much muscle mass you'll add. However, if you overtrain, it will have an adverse effect.

What happens when you do too much weight training?

You need to give your muscles enough time to recover. If you do not do that, your muscles will never heal from fatigue. So it's important to know when to draw the line and ensure your muscles get enough rest.

Signs of overtraining:

Here are some signs of overtraining:

Decrease in strength
Increase in fatigue
Increase in Resting heart rate
Constant muscle soreness
Irritation and troubled sleep.

When you experience such symptoms, it's a sign of your body slowing down, so you need to give it time to recover. To avoid overtraining, you need to listen to and understand what your body is trying to tell you.

How do you end up with too much weight training?

When you start resistance training, you have a goal in mind. Whether it's weight loss, strength addition or growing muscles, they all include lifting weights. It's important you constantly increase your resistance to maintain your progress, i.e., progressive overload.

However, if you constantly lift too heavily, your muscles will give up after a point. It’s completely fine to have an intense workout session with heavy weights, but you need to switch to lower weights to allow the muscles to recover.

It’s not ideal to lift your maximum weight all the time. In fact, switching the pattern once in a while will help you attain the best results.

How to avoid too much weight training?

When you start your training, you are motivated to go too fast. The idea of adding muscle mass or increasing muscle endurance acts as the catalyst for overtraining. That is when you need to consider a few things.

You want to avoid injury: If you continue to train yourself with heavy weights all the time, your muscles will support you for the first seven days, but on the eighth, they'll give up. When you push through with heavy weights using sore muscles, you’re opening the door to injury.

Once you’re injured, you will have to wait a considerable amount of time before you can lift heavy weights again. It’s better to give yourself two days rest for your muscles to recover than taking two months off to recover from an injury.

Give at least 48 hours: Once you train a body part such as chest, back or legs, give yourself at least 48 hours for that muscle group to recover. You can train the same set of muscles after resting it for two days. That should be enough, but in case you still feel sore, avoid using very heavy weights for your next training.

Mix your weights: When you train a muscle group, for example, chest, you can mix weights throughout the session. Therefore, you can use heavy weights for compound movements, such as bench press, incline press and others. Alternatively, you can use smaller weights to do isolation movements, such as cable flyes. That will help you avoid too much weight training.

Bottom line

There is indeed something like ‘too much weight training’, but there is also a way to avoid it. Ensure to follow the above mentioned steps. Keep yourself hydrated, and focus on your diet,