 Rider: Carter Gray Photo: Zachary C. Bako Joel YounkinsHigh Performance Coach You can outwork your competition, but if you outwork your body, the season is over before it starts. In this blog, I’m going to cover a big and complex topic that comes up every so often in motocross: overtraining.
It’s one of those dark conversations that stays hidden beneath the surface—until it shows its ugly face and everyone starts talking. We just came off a Pro Motocross Outdoor National season where Aaron Plessinger had to pull out early, reportedly showing symptoms of overtraining. Now, whether that was truly the case or not, I can’t say for sure. But it’s the obvious bench-racing talk around his situation, and it brings the conversation back to the spotlight. The reality is, people typically fall into three camps on this subject:
In this post, I’m going to break the topic down in a way that makes sense for motocross racers, so you can clearly understand what it is—and more importantly, how to avoid it. What is Overtraining—and How Do You Know It’s Happening to You? Simply put, overtraining happens when your body accumulates more stress than it can positively adapt to. At this point, instead of getting stronger or faster, performance starts to decline. The tricky part? Most riders don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Early symptoms are subtle and easy to miss. But if left unchecked, they can snowball into frequent illness, nagging injuries, or in the worst cases, systemic burnout that requires months of recovery. It’s worth noting that “overtraining” actually exists on a spectrum:
Understanding where you are on this spectrum is key — most racers only deal with overreaching, and with the right plan, it can actually work in your favor. But push too far, and that’s where things go sideways. You Have to Train Hard Enough to Even Overtrain Here’s something most people miss: you can’t overtrain unless you’re actually training hard enough in the first place. If you’re new to training and feel run down after a tough week, that’s not overtraining—it’s just your body learning to handle stress. That’s called fatigue, and it’s a normal part of the adaptation process. True overtraining shows up after long periods of chronic overload, when the balance between stress and recovery has been broken for too long. Head Games A lot of riders mistake mental fatigue for overtraining. Here’s the truth: your mind usually gives out before your body does. Feeling tired, unmotivated, down, or just “over it” is extremely common in high-level training. This can happen to anyone—from C-Class weekend warriors to elite pros. Most of the time, the solution isn’t months of recovery—it’s just a reset. Taking 1–3 full days off training or racing is usually enough. Sometimes a week is needed, but in many cases, just a short break clears the fog. The real danger is when riders ignore both the mental warning signs and the early physical red flags and try to push straight through. That’s when fatigue evolves into true overtraining. The Proactive Approach The real goal of training is to push the edge as much as possible--while still recovering enough to improve. That balance doesn’t happen by accident. It requires a proactive system:
I break this down in detail in The High/Low Model for Motocross and in my piece on Recovery for Motocross. The big takeaway: you can’t just think about recovery, you actually have to do it. When training stress and recovery are in sync, you get the best possible version of yourself on race day. That’s when performance becomes sustainable and repeatable—week after week, season after season. Final Thoughts Overtraining isn’t a myth, but it also isn’t something most riders need to fear if they’re training intelligently. What most call “overtraining” is usually just normal fatigue or under-recovery that could be fixed with a smarter plan and consistent recovery habits. Motocross is a brutal sport, and pushing to the limit is part of the game. But remember—racing takes the biggest toll not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. If you don’t respect recovery as much as you respect the grind, you’re setting yourself up to burn out before you ever hit your true peak. So train hard. Recover harder. And keep yourself in the game for the long run.
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