Too Much Exercise is Bad For You.

For 4 of the last 6 days, I have subjected my body to one of the most enjoyable stresses on this planet (at least in my eyes) – training in Brazilian Jiujitsu.

Above: Harai Goshi is now my new favorite throw.

Most health and fitness professionals would look at my activity level from this past week and think, “Well, that’s great!” While from a skills-acquisition POV I’d agree, I’d immediately chastise any client of mine who did that “for the sake of being active.” You see, I advocate applying exercise as you would medicine, i.e., use the minimal dosage needed to achieve the required response.

Professional organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine would have you believe that daily or near-daily exercise is a good thing. However, new findings from the folks at the University of South Dakota suggest otherwise.

Published in the journal Hypertension, Dr. Rebecca Schultz and colleagues found that “excessive amounts” of exercise in hypertensive rats resulted in a hastening effect towards heart failure. In other words, rats with high blood pressure made themselves worse by regularly exercising.

Too much exercise isn’t a good thing, it seems, but this isn’t breaking news. Other research has found that mortality increases when exercise activity goes past a certain point. Exercise loses its protective effect if carried on too long, too often.

What guidelines should you use?

Well, there is one thing that is correlated with living longer: muscle strength. The stronger your muscles, the longer you live – and you don’t have to worry about getting too strong (too much strength doesn’t increase your chance of dying, unlike too much exercise). And luckily, the amount of strength training required to improve strength levels isn’t much – at most 2-3 hours a week (to put it in researcher language, less than 1000kJ of exertion per week).

I’m not saying don’t pursue activities if you like them and derive pleasure from them. Whatever your chosen sport is – rock climbing, running, competitive tango – if you enjoy it, then do it. But if you do it because you think you need to, then don’t. Do something you enjoy and stay off the hamster wheel, ok?