156: How Overtraining Impacts Muscle Growth and Fat Loss
More Reps, Fewer Results? Let's Talk About Overtraining
There's a version of "hustle culture" that lives inside the gym, and it sounds a lot like this: if you're not exhausted, you're not trying hard enough. Six days a week. Sometimes twice a day. No rest, because rest feels like falling behind.
Tara's been there. For a long time, she believed training more meant training better, until her own body forced her to stop and rethink everything. In the latest episode of the Broads podcast, she breaks down exactly why "more" isn't the flex we think it is, and why the women who are constantly fatigued, stuck at the same plateau, or nursing weird injuries that won't quit might actually be overtraining, not undertraining.
If you've ever felt guilty skipping a workout, or wondered why your results have flatlined even though you're pushing harder than ever, this one's for you.
What Overtraining Actually Looks Like
Overtraining isn't just "being tired." It shows up in sneaky, cumulative ways, and Tara walks through the signs that most women brush off or misread as just needing to push through:
Constant fatigue that doesn't improve with a good night's sleep
Stubborn plateaus, where strength and body composition stall no matter what you change
Mood swings and irritability that seem to track with your training volume
Nagging little injuries that linger instead of healing
The tricky part is that these symptoms often get read as motivation problems ("I just need to try harder") instead of what they really are: your body asking for recovery.
Why More Training Can Actually Work Against You
This is where the episode gets into the physiology, and it's the part Tara wants every woman lifting weights to understand: excessive training doesn't just wear you out, it can directly interfere with the results you're chasing.
She explains how chronic overtraining messes with:
Strength - your nervous system needs recovery time to actually express the strength you've built, not just accumulate fatigue
Metabolism - under-recovered bodies don't respond to training the way well-recovered ones do
Hormones - the stress of nonstop training adds to your overall load, and that matters more than most fitness content admits
The takeaway isn't "train less and hope for the best." It's that recovery is a legitimate, active part of the process, not the thing you do after the real work is over.
Rest Days Aren't a Break From Progress, They're Part of It
Tara makes a point that's simple but genuinely reframes how a lot of us think about training: real progress happens in the recovery, not just in the reps. Muscle isn't built during the workout, it's built in the hours and days after, when your body actually gets the chance to adapt.
That means skipping rest days isn't a shortcut to faster results. It's often the exact thing standing between you and them.
Training Smarter, Not Just Harder
The episode also digs into a few practical pieces that tie directly into training smarter:
HIIT and mobility, where high-intensity work fits (and where it doesn't) if your goal is sustainable strength and fat loss
Footwear for strength training, a small detail that actually affects how well you can lift and how your body absorbs load
None of this is about doing less for the sake of doing less. It's about building a training approach that actually holds up, one where hard work and recovery are working with each other instead of against each other.
The Bottom Line
If you're stuck, exhausted, or just not seeing the changes you expected despite putting in the work, it might not be a "try harder" problem. It might be a "back off and recover" problem, and that distinction can completely change your trajectory.
Training smarter beats training more, every time. And learning to actually listen to your body isn't the soft option, it's where the real gains live.
Want a training and nutrition approach that's built around this exact philosophy instead of working against it? Apply for BroadsCOACH and get a coach who integrates the two the way they were always meant to work together. Curious how your food intake fits into all this? Check out the macronutrient guide to see how nutrition supports (or sabotages) your recovery.
So, be honest with yourself: are your workouts pushing you forward, or are you stuck in a cycle of more-for-the-sake-of-more? What would it look like to build one real rest day into your week, and actually stick to it?
