Achieving fitness goals: Overtraining and training frequency

_{Training frequency}

Let’s start with how many times a week you should workout to achieve your fitness. Of course this depends on your goals, which makes it complicated very quickly, but we’re going to try and keep things practical and simple. Let’s start with the basic principle that all movement that does not harm you, can be useful for health. Going for frequent walks in the park, strength training, cardio and yoga can all have their own benefits.

Guideline 1

Have an active lifestyle. Move frequently throughout the day, even just something like a short walk at lunch break, and find a sport that you like enough to do consistently. The training program and training frequency only matter if you do it consistently!

Guideline 2

If you want to build a solid base, start with twice a week – for anything. Although anything more than 0 can be useful for health, strength, or any other goal, twice a week can give you A LOT more benefits than once a week. After that, the efficiency drops off a bit. What does that mean? Well, if I train twice instead of once (100% more time investment), I might get 50% more benefits. But if I train four times instead of twice (again, 100% more time investment) I might get only 25% more benefits.

The numbers are fictional, of course, but it should give you an idea of why for many goals, training twice can make an immense difference compared to not training. Want bigger shoulders? Train them hard, twice a week. Want better health? Do CrossFit class twice a week. For those that have higher set goals, twice a week may not be enough beyond the beginner stage. You’d have to add a third or fourth session at some point. In some cases, people may train twice a day, ending up with many sessions a week. Luckily, for most ‘basic fitness goals’ that’s not necessary at all! Just keep in mind that the more often you train, the more important a solid training plan becomes when it comes to preventing overtraining… But what is that really?

_{What is overtraining?}

There are actually several scenarios that people can refer to as overtraining.

Overtraining syndrome

The first one, ‘overtraining syndrome’ is a situation where you’ve been pushing your body (and mind!) way too hard for way too long. This does not happen in the person who does a bit of cardio and lifting two times a week and otherwise lives a reasonably healthy life. This is something that happens with people who train many, many hours a week up to the point that they cannot recover from it. The risks increase if you are mentally so fatigued from stuff in your life that you recover even worse. Do that for months on end, and you may end up with overtraining syndrome, where your performance goes down, you’re constantly tired and may have weird symptoms like a change in appetite. This can take several weeks to months to fix! This is rare and usually only happens with very high level athletes, so we’re going to go with a less formal, more common type of ‘overtraining’.


Underrecovering

Luckily, for most people when we talk about overtraining, we just mean that you’re just doing a bit more than what your body can handle. Perhaps you do more biceps curls than your biceps can handle or run more miles than your knees can recover from. That has nothing to do with overtraining syndrome, so some people will say that perhaps ‘underrecovering’ is a better term. Even if you do not hurt yourself, it’s possible that you do slightly more than you can recover from and your progress in training stalls!

_{Signs of overtraining… And undertraining}

The above are examples of signs of overtraining, but of course there can be many reasons for an achy joint or a lack of progress in training. We can generally say that if progress stalls for a long time, you’re either overtraining or undertraining. Sometimes people ask me how to get stronger on pull ups, since their pull up progress is so slow. I always ask them, “When was the last time you practiced pull ups hard for 16 weeks, 2-3 times a week without interruption?” Most people have a hard time doing things consistently for more than a few weeks, and that easily leads to undertraining.

Sometimes it’s hard to say whether a lack of progress is a sign of overtraining, undertraining or something completely different. Perhaps in terms of training hours you’re doing a lot. Let’s say 3 CrossFit sessions, a lifting session, a shorter run and a long distance bike ride in a week. But perhaps on pull ups you’re only doing them once every two weeks, and you’re undertraining your pull ups despite working out many hours a week.

As for other signs of overtraining (or underrecovering), like achy joints or persistent soreness that doesn’t go away over time, that also counts as a symptom of overtraining – assuming there’s no other factor. Sure, falling off your bike can make your knee hurt too, some chronic conditions may make you prone to joint pains and so on. However, we can generally say that for the majority of people, sports-related pains and progress stalling are signs that it may be good to re-evaluate your training plan, as well as recovery factors like nutrition and sleep quality.

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_{How often should I train?}

In summary, here are a few guidelines for training frequency and preventing overtraining while reaching most fitness goals

• Train the thing you want to improve at least once a week, preferably two. Beyond a beginner stage, move up to three and for serious performance goals – maybe (!) move up to more than three.
• Monitor your progress. Beyond a beginner stage, you won’t set Prs every workout, but if you feel like you’ve been spinning your wheels for months on end while putting in a lot of hours consistently, it’s worth revisiting your training frequency as well as recovery factors like nutrition and sleep!
• Monitor injuries. They happen, even if you don’t workout at all, but if something is nagging – go visit a good physical therapist that understands the sport, like our friends at Fysiofabriek. Sometimes there may be something weird going, and sometimes you just need to take it easy for a week or two in terms of training to prevent overtraining.

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_{Example: Henry does CrossFit three times a week}

What does all that look like in practice? Here’s an example based on the many times UnScared members asked me how to perform better in CrossFit. Basic strength helps immensely with almost everything in CrossFit, so emphasizing that might already help.

Meet Henry. Henry enjoyed CrossFit three times a week, but had trouble using heavier weights in barbell lifts. He simply lacked strength, so his goal was to get stronger. He did the following:

• He kept doing CrossFit on Friday with a friend simply because he enjoyed it and wanted to maintain his conditioning while practicing soms CrossFit skills. He’d have the weekend to recover.
• Then on Mondays and Wednesdays he’d do strength class so he could have a specific focus on building his overall strength.
• Progress was fast in the beginning, as is often the case when it’s new to you. After a month or four, when his progress slowed down and he got a bit bored. He added many kilos to his squatting, deadlifting, pressing and pull up strength.
• He decided to go back to CrossFit three times a week, and with his improved strength, was able to perform WAY better than before.

In this example, Henry didn’t have to do MORE. He first had to make sure that he did the RIGHT things. His training frequency did not change – he just worked smarter, instead of just harder. I have also seen many situations where people trained CrossFit twice a week, and just added 1 strength or weightlifting class per week to improve their strength levels or skills with a barbell. That’s about one hour extra of training per week, but often with serious progress being made in the first months of training – and sometimes well beyond!

_{Get tailored advice based on your needs}

Of course you may not be Henry. You may want to train more often – or not. If you really want more concrete advice that fits your specific situation – find a coach. Follow classes with knowledgeable coaches that can advise you on the matter or, if you want to be thorough, request 1-on-1 training so we can help you figure out how often to train, whether you’re doing enough (or too much!) for your fitness goals and what you may have to adjust.

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