Is It Possible to Exercise Too Much? (Published 2022) (2024)

Q: I hike seven miles per day, spend five to six hours per week in vigorous fitness exercise, and about four hours per week performing heavy resistance training. Is it possible to exercise too much? And how much is too much?

You’ve probably been told countless times that exercise is good for your health and fitness, and it’s tempting to assume that more is automatically better. But as with so many other good things in life, there comes a point of diminishing returns, and it’s possible to overdo it.

Exactly what constitutes too much physical activity, however, will depend on your individual situation.

The first thing to ask yourself if you’re wondering whether you’ve exercised too much is: “Why are you exercising?” said Dr. Benjamin Levine, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Dallas.

If your goal is to improve your health and reduce your risk of a range of conditions from diabetes to heart disease to cancer, then 2.5 to 3 hours of moderate to vigorous exercise per week gets you the vast majority of benefits, Dr. Levine said. “Once you get past five hours per week or so, you’re not exercising for health, you’re exercising for performance.”

And when you’re exercising for performance — whether it’s to get stronger in the gym, run a marathon or improve your tennis game — it’s possible to stress your body beyond what it can bounce back from, said Kristen Dieffenbach, an exercise scientist and director of the Center for Applied Coaching and Sport Sciences at West Virginia University. For athletes, the purpose of training is to induce a so-called training response, she said. You work out, and your body responds by getting fitter, stronger and faster. These improvements don’t happen during the workout itself, but occur during the recovery period. That’s when your body repairs the damage brought on by hard exercise, like micro tears in your muscle fibers, and makes adaptations, like increasing the energy-producing mitochondria in your cells.