I've been working out for about two and a half years and have been mostly using Fitness Blender (which is wonderful). I had reached the point where I could comfortably do one of their 40 minute level 5 workouts for five days a week (upper body, lower body, kickboxing + abs), then one of the 1,000 calorie workouts one day, and then a rest day. I was on this routine for about two months.
But now for the past three weeks my legs have been sore and achy, to the point where I can't do jumping jacks for more than twenty seconds because the pain is too much. It was worse in the first week. I have tried toning it down and took three days off at a stretch once, doing only a brief warm up every day. Otherwise I've gone down to 300-400 calorie workouts (instead of the 500+ I normally did) and have tried taking an additional rest day in a week. Hasn't improved. I went to a doctor as well, who did a series of blood tests, said he thinks nothing serious is wrong and prescribed painkillers and a multivitamin.
I think I match some of the features of overtraining (unusual pain, low rate of improvement, excess fatigue, am going through a lot of personal stress) but not others (not much irritability or reluctance to exercise - in fact I want to).
I am reluctant to simply stop working out. So my question is, should I simply leave off lower body and do upper body and core for a week or two? Might that resolve the issue? Upper body doesn't seem unusually sore. Or should I leave off training entirely for a week?