One of the trickiest questions to answer in sports training is: how much?
When does that extra set of [insert exercise here] help, and when does it hinder? Where is the line between enough and too much when it comes to training volume and intensity?
It is rare to meet a training-oriented athlete who undertrains. More often, performance plateaus arise from overtraining. Too many “on” days in a row, too many reps, too many sets, and too many hours spent “getting wrecked” are common causes of stagnation (or regression!).
At the same time, progressive overload of training volume and/or intensity is required for improvement. This means that in order to get better, you do have to increase the difficulty of your training program over time. The hard part is knowing when to make things harder (and how much harder to make them).
So how do you know when you’re ready to progress? And how do you know if you progressed the intensity a little too much?
Perhaps the simplest way to calibrate your training intensity is to follow the 2-day rule: if you are still sore or tired two days after a workout, then you probably overtrained!
While it is normal (and to some extent, beneficial) to experience lingering fatigue after big performance days (like races, competitions, and mountain objectives), training days should be relatively self-contained. If your legs still feel like noodles two days after a long training run, you probably went too far or too fast. If your chest is still tired from the push-ups you did two days ago, you probably did too many.
What I like most about the 2-day rule is its simplicity. Other signs of overtraining (such as trouble sleeping, mood changes, and general fatigue) may be hard to tease apart from other causes (like stress at work or medical conditions). The 2-day rule provides an easy way to reflect on individual workouts and will help you appropriately adjust the intensity for next time.
This week, I encourage you to take some time to check in with your body in the two days that follow a training session. Do you feel refreshed and recovered by day two? Or does the soreness stick with you for the rest of the week? How can the 2-day rule make your training more effective, efficient, and fruitful?
