Take recovery days seriously.

Take recovery days seriously.

These days are just as important as eating right and exercising.

Give yourself one to two days a week for active recovery.

Take a walk.

Do some gentle stretching.

Just engage in something that’s less intense than what you do for exercise the other days of the week.

If you train too much you could get a condition called over-training syndrome.

Over-training syndrome is a condition that occurs when the body is pushed (through exercise) beyond its natural ability to recover.

Importantly, it's not to be confused with mere tiredness, which is to be expected whenever you are engaged in a comprehensive workout regime.

So how do you know when this occurs?

Basically it's the same as having the flu: you feel rundown, and getting out of bed in the morning is tough.

In extreme cases, when the body’s requests for recovery continue to be ignored, long term neurological, hormonal and muscular symptoms could occur.

The balance between training hard and resting is always going to be a juggling act. It takes time to get to know your body and what its capable of.

A good rule of thumb is to workout every other day with light activity in between; such as walking or light stretching.