How much is too much?

If you've ever read a training article, then you've undoubtedly read something from the author that went something like, "And be careful not to do more than 4 sets or you'll overtrain." 

I'm sorry, but I have a problem with such a ridiculous and general statement. Maybe it'll be overtraining if you're planning on training that same movement pattern in 48 hours, but what if you have 120 hours until you train it again? You'll have to do more in that first workout, or you'll probably miss your supercompensation point. And then some people recover more rapidly than others. If you can safely do more work without causing issues, then you probably should. 

There's a lot more to it than that, but you should keep to things in mind from now on:

1. Overtraining is a real thing, but you would have to do so much work without ever taking a break for an extended period of time. I'm talking months here. The truth is that I can almost guarantee that anyone reading this is not, nor will they ever be at risk for overtraining (and that's a good thing!). Unless you're training 25-30 hard hours a week at least, you're not even close to overtraining. If you are feeling unmotivated, fatigued, stressed, sore all the time etc., then it is possible that you are in an overreaching state, which is quite common. In that case, skip your next scheduled workout, take some naps, eat some food and relax. That will take care of it.
2. Take everything you read about training with a grain of salt. There are thousands of people out there, whether it's on the web, newspapers, magazines, TV or any other form of medium, talking about fitness or training. Unfortunately, a lot of them are often badly misinformed, and unknowingly, are dishing out useless information to the masses. So, whenever you're reading something about training, don't just take the message as the truth. Question everything, talk to people that you know are knowledgeable in the field and be weary!