Is Overtraining Real?

“Is overtraining a real thing?”

The short answer is yes—but it’s a bit more nuanced than simply “training too much.”

Overtraining occurs when your body doesn’t get enough recovery time between intense training sessions, leading to decreased performance, persistent fatigue, and potentially injury. 

The real key to long-term training success is to carefully balance our overall training volume against our recovery capacity (e.g. sleep, calorie balance, rest days).

However, what’s often mistaken for overtraining is actually a natural part of the training process: structured fatigue and recovery. In a well-designed training program, fatigue is built into the plan as a way to stimulate growth and adaptation.

A typical mesocycle (in the case of our gym, that’s our standard four-week program), for example, is designed with progressive overload in mind—each week’s training intensity or volume increases, pushing your body closer to its limits.

This accumulation of fatigue over several weeks is deliberate and crucial for making progress. But here’s the key: it’s meant to be temporary.

After this phase of hard training, a deload week might be programmed. A deload is where volume or intensity is reduced, allowing the body to fully recover from the accumulated fatigue and adapt to the previous workload.

In the case of our four-week JMF programs, our “deloads” actually occur at the front of the program – the first week of a program where new exercises often mean “working up” or figuring out what weights we might need.

It’s this recovery period that leads to the actual strength, endurance, and performance gains.

In some cases, if you’re prepping for a competition, the final weeks before the event are structured to reduce fatigue through what’s called a taper. This helps the body shed excess fatigue and be at its peak when it matters most.

So yes, overtraining is real—but when managed properly, fatigue is a feature, not a flaw. The key is balancing hard work with strategic recovery. Listen to your body and respect the process, and you’ll find yourself making progress without burning out.