Question: what will happen if you work out too much and your muscles cant handle it?

LauraAnne Furlong answered on 7 Nov 2016:

When we exercise, muscle gets tired and there’s usually small amounts of damage after each session. It needs time to repair and recover; if we don’t give it enough time to do so, the muscle will get very damaged and very tired and you simply won’t be able to do the task you want to do. e.g. if I lifted heavy weights with my arms every day for two weeks, by the last day, instead of being able to lift heavier than when I started, I wouldn’t be able to lift even the same as the start of the two weeks and I wouldn’t be able to do as many repetitions of it either.

When a muscle gets damaged, it triggers what we call an inflammatory response. Two stages happen, what we call the destruction/injury phase, and the repair/regeneration phase. When the damage first happens, bits of the muscle will break and there will be bits of muscle debris all around the area. The first thing the body does is create a blood clot in the area, to try to stop the damage spreading further. There will be blood rushing to the area which will make it red and hot, and it will be sore as when the muscle gets damaged it releases chemicals which irritate the nerves around the area. If you have done a really hard training session, or done a new form of exercise, you will ache the next day (and sometimes the day after that too), and this is result of this damage to your muscles. The release of the chemicals is like a emergency call to what we call lymphocytes and macrophages to get them to come to the area and help fix the muscle. When these arrive, the cleanup of the area can start of the debris left by the injury removed. About 3-6 days after the injury, the muscle starts healing and fixing itself, and it is important in that stage that it gets repaired in the way you will later use it so that when it is fully healed, you don’t accidentally reinjure it.

If you were training very hard every day using the same muscles every time, your muscle would never get the chance to have this recovery stage and it would be continually sore and damaged. This is why when you get an injury, its very important to give it some time to heal before you head off exercising on it again.