Overtraining from excessive exercise can elevate your cortisol and suppress testosterone. Find out which tests can alert you that your body needs more rest.
Regular exercise is great – but overdoing it without proper rest can backfire. Overtraining happens when your body doesn’t get enough time to recover between intense workouts. You might feel constant fatigue, declining performance, irritability, or frequent injuries. Internally, overtraining triggers a stress response: cortisol (the primary stress hormone) can become chronically elevated, which in turn disrupts your sleep, immunity, and moodmy.clevelandclinic.org. In men, excessive training without enough recovery may even drive down testosterone levelsinsidetracker.com, undermining the muscle gains or performance improvements you’re working so hard for.
Biomarker testing can help active individuals find the sweet spot between pushing hard and overdoing it. A blood or urine cortisol test can reveal if your baseline stress hormone is abnormally high – a red flag for accumulated fatigue. Likewise, tracking testosterone (and related hormones like DHEA-S) can indicate whether your body is in an optimal anabolic (building) state or sliding toward burnout. If these markers show signs of overtraining, it’s a cue to dial back intensity, prioritize rest and sleep, and nourish your body with proper nutrition. By listening to both your symptoms and your biomarkers, you can train smarter and maintain a healthy hormonal balance for the long run.
💡 Practical Takeaways:
Test for these Biomarkers: