If you’ve ever felt tired, sore, unmotivated, or a little achy after a string of hard workouts, you’ve probably wondered:

“Am I overtraining?”

Let’s clear that up:

You almost certainly aren’t.

True overtraining, the kind that wrecks your performance for months, requires an absurd level of training stress.

For example:​
Squatting your 1-rep max for 10 sets... every day... for two weeks straight.

Yes, that's been studied. And no, I'm not volunteering. 😜

Most people who think they're “overtrained” are actually:

• 🥱 Under-slept
• 😫 Overstressed
• ❤️‍🩹 Under-recovered

…and maybe one bad night away from quitting the gym to take up competitive pickleball. We all know pickleball is for the old and unathletic. Not serious, former D3 athletes like myself. 😉

This doesn’t mean you’re weak. But it does mean we need to be clear on the definitions:

🧠 Overtraining vs. Overreaching

Overtraining

A chronic and persistent drop in performance that lasts for weeks or months. You rest, but don’t rebound. You just feel flat.

Overreaching

A temporary dip in strength, motivation, or recovery that lasts days or a few weeks. When followed by proper recovery, it often leads to a rebound effect: super-compensation, where your performance actually exceeds your previous baseline.

📉 My Experience With Overreaching

Below you’ll see my WHOOP Recovery stats.

During week 5 of a challenging 6-day-per-week training block, my recovery tanked. I felt stiff, sluggish, and honestly didn’t want to train.

I tweaked my neck and hamstring: clear signs my body needed rest.

But my strength was still improving. So, I wasn’t falling apart. I was just on the edge.

Then I took a deload week, and my body snapped back.

🧘‍♂️ What My Deload Looked Like:

• 3 full rest days
• 1 Zone 2 cardio day
• 3 short 30-min strength workouts
• ~50% of my usual volume and weights
• No failure, no burnout, just movement

Deloads are about stimulation, not annihilation.

And they work better than taking a full week completely off (unless you’re sightseeing in Europe, snowboarding in Breck, or hiking in the mountains).

In those cases, just stay active and enjoy life.

This rebound confirmed it wasn’t overtraining, it was planned overreaching.

If I hadn’t pulled back, though, it could’ve turned into a serious injury (like when I tore my hamstring 2 years ago) or burnout, especially with a newborn at home and less sleep combined with more stress than usual.

Here’s the difference in plain English:

• Overtraining is a chronic problem from doing too much for too long.
• Overreaching is a short-term stressor that can be useful when applied strategically.

Inside our coaching, we intentionally push clients into planned overreaching phases after several training blocks. It’s a calculated way to force adaptation and growth, not by accident. Then we always follow it with a deload week.

⏳ How Often Should You Deload?

For most people training 3–5x/week, a good rule is every 8–12 weeks, depending on:

• Volume & intensity
• Sleep quality
• Stress levels

Sometimes you can stretch it to 16 weeks if your first week of a new training phase acts as a natural taper. For more, read this article I wrote about how increase intensity over a single 4-week training phase.

In my case, I needed one after 5 weeks due to a significant jump in training volume from 3 to 5 strength workouts per week, business, broken sleep, and baby chaos.

🤔 Not Sure if You’re Overreaching or Just Under-Recovered?

Here’s a simple test:

Take 2-3 days off or run a deload.

And no, that doesn’t mean playing beer pong till 2am, crushing Natty Light, and watching reruns of the early-2000s Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

(Although it might be fun to do once a year on a boys' snowboarding trip to Breckenridge, not that I'd know anything about that. 🙈)

But if, after a few days of real rest and active recovery, you feel stronger, more energized, and less achy... then you were likely just overreaching.

If not? You’re probably just under-recovered and need to fix your sleep, food, or stress before you think about pushing harder.

(And maybe cut back on the beer pong.)

📈 WHOOP HRV: More Proof

You’ll see in my WHOOP HRV stats that my numbers kept dropping through my overreach week… and then rebounded hard after I deloaded right back into the upper end of my normal range.

That’s how you know your body is adapting, not breaking down.

🛠 Do You Need a WHOOP to Track This?

Not at all. Your body gives you plenty of signals:

• Dreading workouts?
• Motivation crashing?
• Sleep disrupted?
• More sore or achy than usual?

Those are real signs. WHOOP just gives you the data to confirm what your body’s already telling you.

But if you don't have WHOOP to show you this level of detailed data, I recommend using Jocko Willink's philosophy on rest:

You might find that your desire to rest was just temporary weakness and not necessarily overreaching or even overtraining.

In other words: procrastinate your rest.

Push today.
Reassess tomorrow.

🔁 Training Hard Is Only Half the Equation

If you’re training 3–4 days a week, have a demanding job, a normal family life, and aren’t doing two-a-days like David Goggins…

You’re probably not overtraining.
You’re likely just tired or overreaching.

So before you second-guess your program, ask yourself:
😴 Am I sleeping enough?
🥗 Am I eating enough to recover?
⛔️ Am I under chronic stress?

Fix those first.

And remember: growth doesn’t happen during the workout.

It happens after when you rest, eat, and recover.

That’s why inside my coaching program, we don’t just train hard.

We recover hard.

We plan strategic overreach blocks…
Then follow with deloads to let your body catch up.

✅ Lower volume
✅ Lighter weights
✅ More recovery

You come back stronger. Every time.

👉 If you’ve been grinding for months without a break, consider this your sign:

You might not need a new program.
You might not need to panic about aging.

And you definitely don’t need to call some sketchy “clinic” in Florida and get saucy. 😅

You might just need a strategic deload.

Recover hard.
Then go again.