If you’ve been wondering how to recover from overtraining, you’re not alone. For years, I lived in a cycle of overtraining, and I didn’t even realize it. To the outside world, I was thriving: leading training teams, training clients, working long hours, and squeezing in my own intense workouts before or after (let’s not forget earning and MBA and countless certifications in my “spare time”). It looked like discipline. It looked like success. But underneath? My body was constantly in fight mode. My nervous system was fried. I was exhausted, anxious, and detached from myself.
And it didn’t stop there.
Even as I stepped away from the gym floor and into entrepreneurship, I brought that same overtraining mentality with me. Hustle harder. Sleep later. Keep pushing. Build, build, build. The workouts shifted, but the mindset didn’t. It took me years – literally years – to truly recover, not just from overtraining my body, but from overworking and overextending myself in every part of my life.
Back then, I didn’t know what true recovery was. I thought it meant taking a vacation with friends. Our girls trips were filled with shopping, drinking, partying, and escaping the daily grind for a few days. I’d sleep in on the weekends and call it balance. But nothing about that pattern was restorative. I’d come back from those trips even more depleted, dive back into the job, save up, and do it all over again. It was a cycle of burnout dressed up as self-care.
If you’re nodding along, feeling like you’re always running on empty even though you’re “doing everything right,” I want you to know: you’re not broken. But you may need to start listening to what your body has been trying to tell you all along.
How to Recover from Overtraining Isn’t Just About the Gym
When we think about how to recover from overtraining, we usually picture someone hitting the gym twice a day, seven days a week. But overtraining can show up in subtler ways, especially for high-achieving women. It’s skipping rest days because you feel guilty. When you are pushing through fatigue because you think slowing down means falling behind. Or you layer on life stress (work, caregiving, perfectionism) and then you try to balance it with intense workouts.
Your body doesn’t separate these stressors. It just experiences cumulative overload.
Why Women Need More Recovery
Here’s where things get even more layered: biologically, women often require more recovery; not less. A growing body of research shows that women need more sleep and strategic rest due to our hormonal rhythms and the way our bodies regulate cortisol and other stress hormones.
One study from Duke University found that women suffer more physical and mental consequences from sleep deprivation than men, including increased inflammation, higher blood pressure, and greater risk for heart disease.
Add to that the rollercoaster of perimenopause or the impact of chronic stress on adrenal health, and it becomes even clearer: we were never meant to push like this forever.
But society still sells us the narrative that hustle equals worth. That we should be able to do it all. That rest is lazy.
The Real Cost of Putting Yourself Last
It’s no surprise then that heart disease is the #1 killer of women in the U.S. This isn’t because women don’t care about their health, but because we’ve been conditioned to care for everyone else first. We skip doctor appointments, ignore symptoms, brush off fatigue, and keep pouring from an empty cup.
And we praise ourselves for it.
Recovery isn’t just about taking a day off the gym. It’s about reclaiming your energy, your peace, and your sense of self. It’s about getting quiet enough to hear what your body has been trying to say for years.
What Recovery Actually Looks Like
For me, learning how to recover from overtraining looked like:
- Prioritizing sleep as a non-negotiable part of my training plan
- Learning to move in a way that nourishes my body, not punishes it
- Working with my nervous system, not against it
- Taking intentional breaks from content, strategy, and business building
- Rewriting the story that progress only counts if it’s fast and hard
And perhaps most importantly, it looked like doing the internal work. Letting go of old patterns. Getting honest about what I was chasing and why.
I talk more about that in this blog: Fitness Entrepreneur: How I Balance Business, Health, and Wellness. Because true recovery isn’t about giving up. It’s about coming home to yourself.
Ready to Break the Cycle?
If this resonates, you’re not alone. I see this every day in the women I work with; especially former athletes and high performers who were taught to override their bodies in pursuit of success.
But you don’t have to keep living in survival mode.
You can start by questioning the old fitness rules you’ve been taught. This Substack is a great place to begin: The Lies We’ve Been Told About Fitness.
Let this be your reminder that rest is not a reward. It’s a requirement. And the longer you fight your body, the louder it will scream.
Recovery isn’t a setback. It’s the way forward.
If you’re feeling stuck in burnout or unsure where to start, let’s map out your next steps together. My Fitness Roadmap Call is a free 30-minute session where we’ll talk through your goals, what’s holding you back, and how to create a sustainable path forward.
👉 Book your free Fitness Roadmap Call here
References
https://lizrodriguezcoaching.com/fitness-entrepreneur-how-i-balance-it-all/
https://lizrodriguezcoaching.substack.com/p/the-lies-weve-been-told-about-fitness
