There is a certain point where too much of a good thing actually becomes detrimental.
If you're concerned that you may be overtraining, that's a good sign that you probably are. Experience has shown that the best muscle building, fat loss and body composition results come from hard work, sufficient recovery, supportive nutrition with muscle recovery supplements - all as part of a periodized resistance training program that has built in stages of rest and recovery. For motivated athletes and exercisers the words rest and recovery are probably the last words that you want to hear.
Here's the good news: if you rest strategically you will improve your performance and have more time for developing skill in your sport or for other hobbies and interests.
In fact, it would be in your best interest to think of exercise, food and sleep as a drugs. Why? Because your body is a biochemical factory. It is powered chemically. Your food intake, amount of exercise or lack thereof and your levels of stress will determine how quickly you progress or regress during your fitness training program.
In pharmacology, a term frequently used is, "minimum effective dose" or MED. The minimum effective dose of something is the amount of something necessary to achieve a desired result. Why is this important? Because if you exceed the minimum effective dose, you get something known as side effects.
Side effects, in this case, are usually not good.
So how do you know when you're overtraining and what are some tell tale signs and symptoms of overtraining.
Performance
The first and most obvious sign of overtraining is a decrease in performance. According to Hans Selye's general adaptation syndrome, when a stressor or stimulus is too great, performance will suffer. This is due to chemical changes in the body. The power of all human activity is first initiated chemically. If the body is overtrained the biochemical response is essentially a fight or flight reaction.
Fat
If you're overtraining, you may notice that your body is actually storing more fat. The fight or flight response is hard wired into people. This response to stress is meant to save your life if you're in a life or death situation. For example, if there is insufficient calories in the diet the body thinks that it is starving.
Pre-workout and post-workout supplementation with muscle recovery supplements like whey protein, in liquid form help to diminish this problem.
This reaction probably saved our ancestors lives at times when food was scarce. Now, when there is an abundance of food, storing calories during times of stress doesn't help.
Unfortunately, the body is programmed for these biochemical reactions. The good news is that if you know what your minimum effective dose of exercise is, you can get all of the benefits of your exercise program, build of lean muscle tissue, decreased body fat and improvements in other biological and psychological markers of good health - all without overtraining.
So here's one trick to build as much muscle as possible, without overtraining.
Continually, progressively and gradually escalate your exercise dosing until signs of overtraining appear. Strategically, on a periodized schedule, alternate high intensity days with rest and recovery days to let your body and mind grow stronger.
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