7 Signs You're Overtraining (and What to Do About It)
Cora Editorial Team
Reviewed by Cora coaching staff for practical training and recovery guidance.
Overtraining usually shows up as a pattern, not one bad workout. The biggest warning signs are persistent fatigue, declining performance, elevated resting heart rate, poor sleep, irritability, and slower recovery between sessions. If you notice several of these together for more than 7 to 10 days, reduce training load immediately and prioritize sleep, fuel, and recovery.
Hard training should make you fitter, not chronically exhausted. If your workouts feel harder at the same pace, your motivation is dropping, and your recovery metrics are trending the wrong way, you may be under-recovered or drifting into overtraining territory.
What is overtraining?
Overtraining happens when training stress consistently exceeds your ability to recover. In practice, most people first hit "functional overreaching" (short-term fatigue that can improve fitness if you recover), then slide toward non-functional overreaching when recovery never catches up. Use your daily readiness trends and not just willpower. A low recovery score for multiple days in a row is a clear signal to back off.
7 signs you may be overtraining
- Performance drops at normal effort. Easy runs feel hard and your output falls despite trying just as hard.
- Resting heart rate trends upward. A sustained increase above your baseline can indicate accumulated stress. Check your trend in our resting heart rate evaluator.
- Heart rate recovery worsens. If your heart rate does not drop as quickly after effort, recovery is often compromised. Test it with our heart rate recovery tool.
- Sleep quality declines. Trouble falling asleep, more nighttime wake-ups, or waking up unrefreshed are common red flags.
- Persistent soreness and heavy legs. Mild soreness is normal. Day-after-day heaviness is not.
- Mood and motivation shift. Irritability, low drive, and "dreading" training often appear before injury.
- More frequent minor illness or niggles. When recovery debt builds, immune function and tissue tolerance can drop.
What to do this week if these signs appear
Do a 7-day reset. Keep moving, but reduce intensity and total load.
- Cut volume by 30 to 50 percent for 5 to 7 days.
- Replace hard sessions with Zone 2 or easy walks using heart rate zones.
- Sleep 7.5 to 9 hours and keep a consistent bedtime.
- Increase carbohydrates around sessions and hydrate aggressively.
- Track daily readiness with the recovery calculator before deciding session intensity.
How to prevent overtraining long term
Build a repeatable weekly rhythm: 2 hard days, 2 to 3 easy aerobic days, and at least 1 lower-load day. Every 4th week, reduce total training load by roughly 20 to 30 percent. This simple deload pattern prevents small recovery deficits from compounding.
Key Takeaways
- Overtraining is usually a trend of multiple warning signs, not one bad day.
- Watch objective metrics: rising resting heart rate and weaker heart rate recovery are high-signal indicators.
- Use a 7-day load reduction before fatigue becomes injury.
- Plan deload weeks and recovery days in advance, not after burnout.