I walk 10 km a day, spend five to six hours a week doing vigorous fitness exercises, and about four hours a week doing heavy resistance training. Is it possible to exercise too much? And how much is too much?
You’ve probably heard countless times that exercise is good for your health and fitness, and it’s tempting to assume that the more the better. But, as with so many other good things in life, there comes a point where the payoff diminishes, and it’s possible to overdo it.
Exactly what constitutes too much physical activity, however, will depend on each individual situation.
If you’re feeling like you’ve exercised too much, the first thing to ask yourself is “Why do I exercise?” said Benjamin Levine, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine. from Texas Health Dallas.
If your goal is to improve your health and reduce your risk for a range of conditions, from diabetes to heart disease and cancer, then 2.5 to 3 hours a week of moderate to vigorous exercise produces most of the benefits, Levine said. .
“Once you get past five hours a week, you’re not exercising for health, you’re exercising for performance.”
And when you exercise for performance — whether it’s getting stronger at the gym, running a marathon or improving your tennis game — you can stress your body beyond what it can recover from, said Kristen Dieffenbach, exercise scientist and director of the Center. of Applied Training and Sports Science at the University of West Virginia.
For athletes, the goal of training is to induce the so-called training response, she said. You exercise and the body responds by getting fitter, stronger and faster. These improvements don’t happen during the workout itself, but occur in the recovery period. This is when your body repairs damage caused by intense exercise, such as micro-injuries to muscle fibers, and makes adaptations, such as increasing the energy-producing mitochondria in your cells.
As long as your body is able to keep up with this repair work, the workouts will continue to improve your performance, Dieffenbach said. But when the stress of training builds up beyond your ability to recover, you enter the zone of excess, known in the sports community as “overtraining.”
What makes things tricky is that the line between training hard and overtraining is blurred. There’s no formula or number that can say what’s too much, Dieffenbach said. Instead, what matters is how your body responds to the exercise you do.
She suggested thinking of exercise and the physical and emotional resources it requires as if you were going to ask a bank for money. You only have that much in your budget, and if you try to spend too much, you’ll end up worn out or bruised and probably irritated. Over time, your exercise budget may change.
As you get older, your body requires more time to recover, so you may need more rest between hard workouts. It is also limited by the other things that happen in your life.
Spending long hours at work or traveling, or dealing with stressful situations at home, can eat up some of your energy budget and decrease your ability to recover from exercise, Dieffenbach said.
A 2016 study of 101 college football players, for example, found that their risk of injury nearly doubled during periods of academic stress (such as during midterms and finals).
The most reliable signs that you’re exercising too much come from your subjective feelings of well-being, she said.
If you’re suddenly tired all the time, or workouts that used to be easy seem hard, or your performance unexpectedly drops (your running times slow down without explanation, or your daily walk takes longer than usual), it might be time to slow down and rest, the scientist said.
Other classic signs of overtraining include trouble sleeping, feeling drained, and not being able to heal from minor colds and other respiratory infections. “Sometimes you have to step back to move forward,” Dieffenbach said.
If you find yourself pushing yourself to do exercises you used to enjoy, or feel guilty about not exercising enough, these are other signs that you’ve overdone it. This is especially true if the feelings last longer than a few days, the expert said. (Of course, these can also be signs of other health issues like depression, so it’s important to keep that in mind.)
On the other hand, if you’re finding your love of exercise becoming an unhealthy obsession, it’s something to pay attention to, too, said Szabó Attila, a health psychologist who studies exercise addiction at Eotvos Lorand University in Budapest (Hungary).
Exercise addiction can occur when a person feels compelled to do physical activity, even if they are in pain or injured.
There’s no specific number of hours of exercise per week that correlates with exercise addiction, according to one of Attila’s 2019 studies, but “it becomes problematic when it impairs other aspects of life,” he said. If you put exercise before your relationships, work and everything else, the doctor added, it’s a sign that you’ve become too much.
One of Attila’s colleagues, Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, developed six criteria for healthcare professionals to use when screening patients for exercise addiction:
1. Exercise is the most important thing in my life.
two. Conflicts have arisen between me and my family and/or my partner over the amount of exercise I do.
3. I use exercise as a way to change my mood (eg, to get excited, to escape, etc.).
4. Over time, I’ve increased the amount of exercise I get in a day.
5. If I have to miss an exercise session, I will be grumpy and irritable.
6. If I reduce the amount of exercise I do and then start over, I always end up exercising as often as I used to.
To be classified as an addiction, a person would need to meet all six criteria, which is rare, Griffiths said. But many people exhibit problems with exercise that don’t reach the level of addiction, she added. For example, someone who goes to work and functions normally, but then comes home and neglects the family to go to the gym to work out – this is still a problem.
Which brings us to the definitive answer to our question: yes, it’s possible to exercise too much. And you’ll know you’re doing it when you feel your body broken, making you sick or injured, or negatively affecting the rest of your life. When exercise stops making you feel good and enriching your life, it’s time to cut back.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
Chad-98Weaver, a distinguished author at NewsBulletin247, excels in the craft of article writing. With a keen eye for detail and a penchant for storytelling, Chad delivers informative and engaging content that resonates with readers across various subjects. His contributions are a testament to his dedication and expertise in the field of journalism.
