9 Reasons you’d need to limit your training days per week😭

Once you’re bitten by the training bug it’s easy to become consumed by insatiable hunger to train more.

 

A lot of people have been there at one time or another.

 

While the mind is willing the body is soft & squishy.

 

Doing too much too soon won’t get you to your destination any quicker, contrary to popular belief.

 

In fact not allow sufficient time to recover will hold you back from your potential because fatigue masks fitness, as Charles Poliquin used to say.

 

I’ve been one of these people, an in truth I still am.

 

The addiction to doing more, it will always hold me back in regards to my athletic ability and overall progress from training.

 

It’s honestly not the best place to be in mentally, however once you’re stuck there it’s difficult to get away from it.

 

You’ll find yourself creating ways to do more because you fee the need to do so.

 

This is addiction.

 

You may laugh, although it can cause as many issues as some that fall into that realm which are more nefarious and less accepted by the public, such as train spotting for example.

 

Anyway, here are the 9 reasons why you need to limit training, ideally to 3-4 days per week.

 

1 – Recovery & Adaptation

 

You adapt, overcome & progress when you recover, not when you train.

 

2 – Hormonal Health

 

Keeping your foot to the floor will have you run the risk of creating hormonal issues due to constantly elevated cortisol/adrenaline.

 

3 – Planning is easier with less

 

Having less time means you’ll strip away the faff and focus on that which will yield the most bang for your buck, as opposed to adding in junk to your training.

 

4 – Mental Health

 

Too much training and a lack of results, because you thought doing more would mean faster results when that’s not really true, will destroy your mind. This will cause unwanted stress and a whole host of other things.

 

5 – Life

 

People swap out one life for another, spending all their time in the gym to find that they eventually lose their true friends, and sometimes even their family because of their neglect.

 

6 – The Desire to Train

 

Training less often begets people wanting to do more, yet this is where you must resist the temptation because it’s better to do say 3 sessions where you give it 100% and go beyond in 45-75min, than have 14 lack lustre sessions.

 

7 – You’ve Not Earned More

 

Training at a high volume and high frequency takes YEARS to work towards, so unless you’ve been training 10+ years well and are nearly maxed out in terms of your genetic potential then 3-4 days will be plenty.

 

8 – Nutrition Suffers

 

More training means less time to prepare wholesome meals and also affects the types of foods you can eat due to being constantly in a state of sympathetic dominance.

 

9 – You Don’t Need More

 

In all honesty you will find people often make far more progress by doing less better than more poorly.

 

A hard truth to accept, even for me, yet it is a such.

 

As an average person, because let us be honest, if you’re reading my drivel then like me you’re pretty average and we’re not going to break any world records or leave marks in the history of training.

 

So why take it too seriously?

 

By all means have a laser like focus and discipline to achieve a goal and desire to better yourself, just remember that you’ll need to go through periods of climbing to a peak and then willingly stepping back down to tread another trail.

 

If you don’t accept this it will be forced upon you.

 

After all, there’s more to life than being really really ridiculously good looking 👀

 

Enjoy,

Ross