What is the difference between overtraining and overexertion during workouts?

Author: Mikhail Ziborov - author of the site makefitness.pro.
2020-08-09

Many people confuse overstrain with overtraining. It's like confusing two different banknotes of the same currency (for example, 50 and 100 rubles). Yes, both phenomena in sports are negative, but their manifestations (symptoms) are fundamentally different.

What is Overtraining and Overstrain During Training

“Overtraining” is a decline in performance, unwillingness to train, constant fatigue, and even apathy toward everything. This does not happen instantly: overtraining cannot result from one or a few workouts. It develops over a long period (especially when individuals are using pharmacology with enhanced recovery capabilities). However, once you enter overtraining, it will also take some time to eliminate its effects.

In brief, overtraining occurs when the volume of training exceeds recovery (you simply don’t have enough time to rest properly before the next set of stress hits). Internal resources are gradually depleted, the body becomes tired, and it can even lead to illness and a decline in immunity.

“Overstrain” is a one-time occurrence. That is, you simply took on too much of a burden that your body was not prepared for at all. Overstrain can occur even after previously successful workouts, when you had performance gains, recovered well, and did everything correctly. But during one of the sessions, you pushed too hard, excessively increased the intensity, or simply didn’t rest enough.

The Difference Between Overstrain and Overtraining in Workouts

In short, “overstrain” has a localized character (it's felt here and now, and may not be present in the next session), while “overtraining” is global (it persists now and later as well if nothing is done).

Key Differences:

1. Overstrain negatively affects life for a short period (max until the end of the day, before you go to sleep). Overtraining lasts until the end of the recovery period (which can be several weeks).

2. Overstrain manifests sharply: you may start to feel nauseous or even throw up, experience significant dizziness, trembling of the limbs (when the hands shake wildly), or a greenish complexion. Even if you lie down, the dizziness, nausea, and feeling unwell may not pass. It can even escalate to losing consciousness and having severe seizures!

Overtraining, on the other hand, is concealed: you may think you’re just fatigued from work/studies, that your reluctance to train is caused by a tough period in your life, and that your drop in performance is due to insufficient training loads. In other words, it could either be due to overtraining or the described reasons. In short, identifying overtraining can be difficult, especially for beginners.

3. With overtraining, you can continue to train. The main thing is that recovery must prevail over training (muscle destruction). In other words, you can recover from it with light workouts (how to build muscle with light weights). BUT! In my humble experience, complete cessation of workouts restores the body faster than light training. Even if they are simple home exercises.

With overstrain, you cannot continue training; otherwise, you risk “dimming” yourself significantly. In simple terms, dizziness, nausea, and all that are signals from your body that it cannot handle the assigned loads and tells you that you are being unreasonable by pushing it that hard!

4. “Treatment” for overtraining takes a long time (potentially several weeks of rest and recovery).

To prevent overtraining, people often use supplements to improve recovery. These same supplements may be used to help with eliminating overtraining. For a list of supplements: https://makefitness.pro/sportivnie-dobavki/

“Treatment” for overstrain consists of immediate assistance:
- for nausea and dizziness – a cold shower (adrenaline, norepinephrine, and other stress hormones will get you back on your feet);
- for loss of consciousness – ammonia.

5. Typically, overtraining has a broader character: it involves physical, emotional, moral, and nerve exhaustion. That is, it affects all levels.

Overstrain, most often, is merely a physical phenomenon (the other levels may be more or less okay).

To avoid both types of fatigue, your training program should be well-structured. You can select a program HERE!

In reality, what I've written is a significant simplification of both phenomena. You can learn more about overtraining in the video:

More details about the differences between these phenomena are here: