[–]nteachey 2 points an hour ago  Do you track heart rate? If so, you can tell a lot by how long it takes you to return to something resembling a resting heart rate after a piece. That's a slightly more concrete indicator than fatigue. The main thing to remember, though, is that, provided you gradually increase volume, the problem is rarely overtraining so much as under-resting. Focus on optimizing your recovery and you can get away with a lot of smart, focused training. permalinksaveeditdisable inbox repliesdeletereply [–]Christo5150[S] 1 point 39 minutes ago  Yes I do have a heart rate monitor. So if I am doing too hard of a workout, my heart rate would stay at a high level for how long? permalinksaveparentreportgive goldreply

formatting helpreddiquette SAVE [–]acuncTarheels 2 points an hour ago  Check your resting heart rate at wake-up - that's probably the best way to check. Next best way is to, as mentioned by /u/nteachey, track how long it takes your HR to recover between intervals. Not all the way to resting, however. Either way if you're overtrained or tired you should take a day or two off. permalinksavereportgive goldreply [–]Christo5150[S] 1 point 38 minutes ago  When I check my heart rate in the morning, what am I looking for? Should it be a certain amount of beats higher then my normal resting? permalinksaveparentreportgive goldreply

So with heart rate there are a lot of variables that can contribute to differences between numbers during and between workouts (the time of day in which you're working out, what you ate before a workout, how long ago you ate it, the air temperature, etc.). To use HR as an effective recovery indicator you should be looking at trends. As acunc mentioned, you can keep track of your HR when you wake up in the morning, the dip in HR between intervals, and the amount of time it takes you to reach resting after your workout (or the lowest HR you can attain within 5 minutes of the end of a hard workout). If numbers increase over time while all other variables remain equal then you need to do something about your recovery. You can also perform the same workout every once in a while from week to week to see whether average HR increases or decreases over time on the same workout. Everybody is different, of course, so looking for concrete numbers isn't all that useful at this point, but watching trends will give you an idea of how effectively you are recovering between workouts.