Most people that exercise are doing too much, because they become addicted or maybe they are not seeing any results from their hard work, so they train even more and harder.
Exercising too much has a negative effect on your body, because it takes it out of the ‘growth zone’ and into the ‘over-training zone’. When you over-train your body you place it in a catabolic state, which means that it is breaking-down rather than building, so the exercise you are doing is making your body weaker.
The way to avoid this happening, is to have a structured training programme that incorporates ‘rest days’, because your body only recovers, repairs and builds, when you are resting. If you train one day and rest the next, you give your body the chance to repair and build after one session, from which there is little to recover from. But, if you train all week and only rest at the weekend, your body has to recover, repair and build after a whole week of exercising, which places more demand on your body.
You don’t have to do one day on and one day off, but don’t exercise more than three days consecutively. You’ll find that you feel stronger and have more energy, which will help you train better and produce positive results.