Are You Actually Recovering?

Under-recovery arrives as a drift, not a collapse. Everything is slightly harder than it should be, and each piece gets blamed on something else — a busy week, a bad night, the weather.

Read them together and they are one signal. Ten questions, answered honestly about the last two weeks.

1 Has your resting heart rate been higher than usual for several days?

Yes No

2 If you track HRV: has it dropped and stayed down for a week or more?

Yes No, or I do not track it

3 Are you sleeping worse despite training hard?

Yes No

4 Is your warm-up taking noticeably longer than usual?

Yes No

5 Has your motivation for training dropped off?

Yes No

6 Has performance plateaued or slipped on unchanged training?

Yes No

7 Do you have niggles that are not clearing in the usual few days?

Yes No

8 Have you been getting ill more often than normal?

Yes No

9 Has your appetite shifted noticeably in either direction?

Yes No

10 Do you now need caffeine to get through a session at all?

Yes No

See my result

Common questions

How many signals mean I am overtrained?

Three or more at once, sustained across a week or two, is worth acting on. One or two in isolation usually mean nothing — a single bad night or an elevated morning heart rate has plenty of innocent explanations.

How long should a deload be?

One to two weeks of genuinely reduced load with easy aerobic work usually resolves ordinary under-recovery. If three weeks of that changes nothing, the problem is probably not training load.

Can I be under-recovered without training hard?

Easily, and it is more common. Recovery capacity is spent by everything — sleep debt, work stress, illness, travel, alcohol. Training load can be perfectly reasonable while total load exceeds what you can absorb.

Not medical advice. This is a self-assessment for general information, not a diagnostic test. If you snore loudly, have witnessed pauses in breathing, gasp awake, or feel exhausted no matter how long you sleep, see a doctor — those warrant a proper assessment rather than a questionnaire.

← All 24 North quizzes