What is the difference between overreaching and overtraining?

Are you an athlete with big goals and events planned for 2025?

If so, you need to be aware of overreaching and overtraining stress so you don’t compromise your performance.

Both concepts are associated with intensified and excessive training and can be your best friend or your enemy in terms of progress if you’re not careful. 

But while they both sound similar and have a similar root, you might be wondering... What is the difference between overreaching and overtraining? Well, to know that, dive right in. We’ll discuss these concepts, their differences, and ways to avoid them below.

Overreaching and overtraining explained

As we mentioned before, overreaching and overtraining are related to performance, but they are slightly different. Let’s compare the two in more detail below.

What is Overreaching?

In short, overreaching is a type of training strategy used by coaches to enhance strength and performance. It’s often used as an acute form of training, mainly in single-event sports such as powerlifting or running. 

The overreaching purpose is to place a lot of stress on your body during training, increasing fatigue and quickly jumping into a recovery block. During the recovery phase, your body adapts to the new load and slowly adapts to a normal level of fatigue.  

After recovery, the overreaching block is thought to help you train at a high fitness level, experience less fatigue, and achieve better performance outcomes. 

Two types of overreaching exist: functional overreaching and nonfunctional.

Functional overreaching

Functional overreaching is an intentional form of training that involves a planned increase in volume or intensity over a short period. The recovery period typically lasts two weeks or less before you return to training.

If you’re an athlete with a big event lined up, say a lifting meet or a race, these blocks can help you overcome a plateau. While performance declines, rest and recovery often help make you stronger or supercompensation. 

Non functional overreaching 

On the other hand, non functional overreaching occurs when you increase your training load, but it severely compromises your performance and does not improve your recovery. Non functional overreaching can be dangerous and take several weeks to months to recover from. If not careful, it can lead to overtraining—more on that below. 

What is classed as overtraining?

Overtraining is basically pushing your mind and body to the extreme, so much that it hampers your rest and recovery.  Overtraining can happen from training too much without giving your body sufficient time to rest and recover. It’s often a byproduct of unplanned increased intensity in sessions, causing a physiological response to overtraining and major setbacks.

Overtraining is different from burnout as it’s a physiological response, but if not managed properly, it can lead to psychological symptoms, thus triggering burnout. 

So, in other words, next time you hear phrases like…

“No pain, no gain.”

“Push yourself to the limits.”

Be careful!

So, what does overtraining look like? 

Well, let’s look at a couple of examples. 

Example 1: If you’re a runner, you might experience overtraining syndrome if you go for long runs every day, even when you feel sore or sick afterwards. It could also be if you sprained your ankle on a trail and you carry on to push through in other areas of exercise. 

Example 2: If you’re a weightlifter and you experience chronic muscle soreness in one muscle group and you continue to target that muscle group on other days, then you may be overtraining that muscle group. You could be putting it under stress from not letting it grow, repair, and recover from your lifting sessions. 

Overtraining symptoms and diagnosis in athletes 

Research shows that overtraining can lead to symptoms such as the following:

• Fatigue

• Disturbed sleep

• Weight loss

• Increased risk of infections

• Increased heart rate

• Increased blood pressure

• Muscle strains 

• Decreased motivation

• Lack of energy

• A decline in your athletic performance 

• Difficulty concentrating 

• Injuries or recurring injuries 

• Changes in skin, hair or nails

• Digestive issues 

If you have any of these, it’s a sign you may need to take a step back to recover from overtraining. 

Overreaching and overtraining differences 

 

Note: Overreaching is incredibly common in athletes worldwide. An eight-year longitudinal study of female athletes found that overreaching was a common issue among sportswomen. The study also found that many women experienced negative psychological states. . 

How to prevent overtraining 

Remember that overreaching isn't detrimental to your performance goals if you follow a plan and have the proper support. Non-functional overreaching, however, if not planned, may significantly affect your performance, leading to overtraining. Here are 4 tips to take on board to avoid your training overtraining:

Go for progressive overload 

At Go Nutrition, we're all about making the most of life and going after what we want. But you can't always go from 0 to 100 for that to happen. Instead, it's best to steadily increase weekly workouts' intensity, frequency, and duration to allow your body to adapt to the change slowly.

Progressive overload will enable you to handle increased loads in your training without your mind and body experiencing symptoms associated with overreaching and overtraining stress. 

Build periodisation and tapering into your training plan

Work on a training plan that rotates between different cycles of volume and intensity. This method helps carry your body through different periods of stress, with recovery phases following them.

When you build in different periods of training and recovery in your plan, you reduce fatigue and help your body adapt, repair, and become stronger. Again, when you have competitions and intense training blocks, always plan to taper the intensity down to prevent overtraining. 

Monitor your progress

Always keep a detailed log of your training sessions. Write down your workouts, intensity, volume, and recovery time. If you use a fitness tracker, write down additional metrics that help you track your workouts and review them to see any signs or trends that you might be overreaching or overtraining.

Listen to your body 

If you're asking yourself how to know if I'm overtraining? Then, one of the easiest signs to look out for is your body. Always listen to your body and be aware of your psychological and physical well-being. If you feel any signs of mood disturbances, fatigue or declining performance, you should take more time to recover or adjust your training.

Strategies to recover from overtraining and overreaching 

In addition to learning how to prevent overtraining, you should also focus on recovery strategies to avoid and help you manage if it occurs. 

• Sleep: Get at least 7-9 hours of high-quality sleep each night to help your body repair, synthesise proteins, and steadily release growth hormones. To learn more about getting a good night's sleep, check out our post-sleep for muscle gain. 

• Add stretching into your routine: Stretching may seem like a no-brainer, but recovery techniques like stretching can often be easily forgotten about without realising it. Making time for dynamic stretching before your workout and static after can aid your recovery, improve flexibility and blood flow, and reduce muscle stiffness.

• Take rest days: Rest is crucial for any training. It helps give your muscles time to grow and repair. Not just that, though, having sufficient rest can prevent injury, burnout, and mental fatigue, which can severely impact your motivation and performance.

• Active recovery: Sometimes, it's good to practice active recovery. This means on your rest days you engage in light exercise such as cycling, walking or swimming to stimulate blood flow and reduce muscle soreness without adding major stress on your body.

Wrapping up the difference between overreaching and overtraining 

To summarise, overreaching and overtraining are two different aspects of fitness, and have different physiological and psychological outcomes. Often overreaching is a planned form of training giving you options to recover and come back stronger than previously. 

Whereas non functional overreaching is unplanned intense training which can lead to overtraining if not careful. To prevent non functional overreaching and overtraining from happening, always set timeout to recover and rest. Aim to have a good night's sleep, add stretching into your routine and listen to your body!

If you’re interested in knowing how to optimize your recovery and get back into training stronger than ever try our Recovery Blend. It contains essential EEAs/BCAAs providing crucial support to your muscles helping delay the onset of soreness.