How much exercise is too much

There is no doubt that exercise is a great way to improve your health and wellbeing. It improves your strength, cardiovascular fitness, mental health and gives us an opportunity to become part of a community. This may be is through a gym membership, run club or swimming at a local pool, or any other sporting team. It’s also true that in order to maintain optimal health & wellbeing, that we need to maintain consistency of our exercise routine. If you are currently aiming to become healthier or really challenge that ceiling of how fit you can be, you may be asking yourself:  can I exercise too much? And if so, how much exercise is too much?

Can you exercise too much?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is it depends on your current tissue load and tissue capacity.

Tissue Load

Tissue load is the weight or forces going through your body as you perform an exercise. For example, performing a squat with a barbell loaded to 50Kg would equal a 50Kg load on your legs. The same way a push-up uses your body-weight as the load for the exercise. Your tissue load can change on every set of any exercise you do. If you are increasing the weight you are lifting in each set of the same exercise, the Load on the tissue is also changing. Load=weight lifting

Another example: Walking would be considered a low load exercise for the legs, whereas sprinting would be a high load exercise on the legs.

Tissue Capacity

Tissue capacity is the maximum amount of load your body can tolerate before it becomes a risk of injury. The easiest way to imagine your tissue capacity is to think of it as a ceiling with an adjustable height. Each day your ceiling may change based on how well you slept, your diet, hydration levels and many other factors. The easiest way to find your Tissue Capacity is to complete a strength assessment where you can determine your 1RM (1 Rep Max) or 3 RM (3 Rep Max). There are other tests to give you your answer and the common theme is determining how much weight you can lift before you can’t lift any further. This is usually your point of fatigue.

So how much exercise is too much?

Again, the simple answer is when your tissue load is higher than your tissue capacity. If you are training for a 20km run and the furthest you had run in the past few months was 10Km then your tissue capacity (ceiling) for running is 10km. If you push yourself and try running 15Km, your tissue load (running 15Km) is higher than your ceiling. The same goes for weight training. A deadlift personal best of 80kg would be your ceiling and pushing for a higher weight would be increasing your load above capacity. This does not mean you can’t push above your ceiling though. To increase capacity, you need to push your load to capacity or just above. This is how you get stronger and fitter. The fine line is that when you go far above and beyond your capacity, that is where you increase the likelihood of injury.

A simple metric for increasing load capacity is the 5% rule – this is: progress your physical activity (ie running, weighted squat etc) by 5% per week. So, if you are running 10km one week, increase to 10.5km the following week, and 11.025km the week after that. This should allow you to progress gradually while still minimising your risk of injury.

If you need help with programming, or are concerned over exercising too much, make contact with one of our physios here at Instinct Health who can help to point you in the right direction!