Overtraining vs. Undertrain Training: How to Find Your Sweet Spot

The Coach's Dilemma

This conversation happens in coaching constantly:

Athlete: "Coach, I feel great. Can I do more training? I want to speed up my progress."

Coach: "Actually, I'm going to reduce your training this week."

Athlete: "What? Why? I'm feeling strong!"

Coach: "Exactly. That's the problem. You're too fresh. You're not creating enough recovery stimulus."

This is the fundamental tension in training: progress comes from the edge between stimulus and recovery.

Too much stimulus without recovery? Overtraining. Performance tanks. Injury risk skyrockets.

Too much recovery without stimulus? Undertraining. You're not challenging your body. Fitness stagnates.

The sweet spot is neither. It's the balance.

The Overtraining Trap

Overtraining is more common than you'd think, especially among self-directed athletes.

The logic seems sound: If training hard creates fitness, training harder must create more fitness.

So they:

• Increase volume week-to-week without adequate recovery
• Do high-intensity work too frequently (every day instead of strategically spaced)
• Skip recovery weeks
• Don't listen to their body's warning signs

The result: Performance collapses.

Here are the signs you're overtraining:

Physical Markers:

• Elevated resting heart rate (5+ bpm above baseline)
• Trouble sleeping or excessive fatigue
• Frequent illness or getting sick easily
• Persistent muscle soreness or aches
• Declining performance (running slower despite training harder)
• Elevated heart rate during easy efforts
• Loss of appetite

Mental Markers:

• Loss of motivation or enjoyment in training
• Irritability or mood changes
• Difficulty concentrating
• Anxiety about training

Performance Markers:

• Decreased ability to complete workouts
• Power/pace declining despite effort
• Workouts that felt easy last month now feel hard
• Can't hit target intensities despite trying

Any of these alone isn't a problem. Several together? You're likely overtraining.

The tragedy: overtraining doesn't just mean slower progress. It often means injury. Burnout. Complete fitness loss after forced recovery.

The Undertraining Problem

Less common than overtraining, but equally problematic:

Some athletes are so conservative with training that they never create enough stimulus for adaptation.

Signs you're undertraining:

• Training volume is very low (under 300 TSS/week for endurance athletes)
• Intensity is never challenging (no workouts above Zone 3)
• You take recovery weeks but skip the hard work weeks
• Your fitness is the same as last year
• You rarely push hard

Undertraining feels good. You're never sore. You never feel exhausted. But you're not improving.

This often happens because:

• Fear of injury (training conservatively to avoid getting hurt)
• Lack of structure (doing random workouts, nothing systematic)
• Insufficient duration (training less than 5 hours/week for endurance goal races)

The problem: you're investing time in training but not getting results.

The Sweet Spot: Progressive Overload with Recovery

The magic formula combines two principles:

1. Progressive Overload: Gradually increasing training stress over time
2. Strategic Recovery: Built-in recovery weeks to allow adaptation

The pattern:

Weeks 1-3: Increasing TSS

• Week 1: 500 TSS
• Week 2: 600 TSS
• Week 3: 700 TSS

Week 4: Recovery

• Week 4: 350 TSS (50% reduction)

Weeks 5-7: Higher Progressive Overload

• Week 5: 600 TSS (higher than Week 1)
• Week 6: 700 TSS (higher than Week 2)
• Week 7: 800 TSS (higher than Week 3)

Week 8: Recovery

• Week 8: 400 TSS

This pattern: ✓ Progressively challenges your body ✓ Includes recovery weeks for adaptation ✓ Avoids chronically high training stress ✓ Prevents plateau through systematic progression

The Key Metrics to Monitor

How do you know if you're in the sweet spot?

Track These:

1. Resting Heart Rate

   • Baseline: Measure your heart rate first thing in the morning, before getting out of bed
   • Normal variation: 1-3 bpm up or down is fine
   • Red flag: 5+ bpm elevated suggests overtraining or illness

2. Perceived Exertion

   • Does the training feel appropriately hard for the intended effort?
   • Easy runs should feel easy (conversational)
   • Hard runs should feel hard but doable
   • If easy runs feel hard, you're overtraining

3. Performance Trends

   • Are you hitting target paces/power in workouts?
   • Is performance improving week-to-week?
   • Or declining despite effort? (sign of overtraining or undertraining)

4. TSS Management

   • Most endurance athletes can handle 600-1000 TSS/week sustainably
   • Above 1000/week for extended periods = overtraining risk
   • Below 400/week = likely undertraining

5. Recovery Indicators

   • Can you hit hard efforts while maintaining easy intensity in other workouts?
   • Or are all efforts feeling similarly hard? (overtraining sign)

The CADENCE Advantage

Balancing stimulus and recovery is complex. CADENCE handles it:

1. Automatic TSS monitoring - The app tracks your weekly TSS and flags when you're approaching overtraining thresholds
2. Recovery week scheduling - Built into your plan every 3-4 weeks
3. Adaptation based on feedback - Overextending? The app backs off next week
4. Resting heart rate tracking - Optional integration tracks your recovery status
5. Performance monitoring - Declining pace/power triggers volume reduction

You don't have to guess if you're in the sweet spot. The data tells you.

The Bottom Line

Progressive improvement requires both stimulus and recovery in balance.

Most athletes either train too hard consistently (overtraining) or too conservative (undertraining).

CADENCE automatically balances stimulus and recovery, ensuring you're progressing without getting injured or burned out.

Start your free trial and let data guide your training.