I have always thought these two components were the most crucial to training. If one always trains at the exact appropriate intensity for the appropriate number of sets I believe training can continue near indefinately. Anyhow, what do you guys notice as signs you are overtraining, in terms of autoregulation when do you terminate a rep, set, workout what do you keep track of. How do you know you are not just wimping out and being lazy on your sets?
Personally, I get an anxiety like emotion that can best be described as stress when I believe I am overtraining. Lifting becomes miserable and I do not look forward to it. I become irritable, and am quick to snap.
The problem with the riding the line of overtraining is that there are many variables- some of which have nothign to do with easy to measure things liek volume and intensity. Recovery is a very complicated part of the puzzle and in addition to time between workouts, diet, sleep, mood, infection/immune systme issues, and to some extent supplementation all combine to muddy the water.
Plus, there is a great deal of individual variation in recovery, your recovery needs will change (they will increase), as you get stronger and your traingin weights go up, and they will change as a function of your age. Because of this one of two things will usually happen in your training- less than optimal workloads or overtraining.
The key in measuring if you are crossing the line and your efforts are wasted is in observation and experience. Are you making mistakes in form that you don’t usually make because your coordination is fucked? Is your speed on lighter weights way down? Are you missing singles you should be tripling? These are things usually indicate overtraining. You or coach can spot this pretty easily.
You can also usually anticipate very roughly where the line between too much and less than optimal is based on your past experiences with overtraining. In short, you have to learn how your body reacts and constantly observe to see how if those assumptions contnue to be true. However, the fact remains that no matter how well you know your body, you will always be a little over or a little under.
When you start to feel over trained, you already are. It’s too late to prevent it. I deload every 4th week and most of the gym follows that. I got it from a Louie Simmons article. He talked about how it was originally 5 week waves and they switched to 3 week, because they found that after 3 intense weeks they didn’t get any stronger or faster in weeks 4 and 5. Sometimes they even got weaker or slower.
The other big way to prevent it is to look at your training as a whole. You can’t look at each training session in isolation. Sometimes on a DE day I work up on my squat or bench. I don’t do that if my next ME lower day is a squat day. That’d be silly. I don’t do it if my next ME bench day is in a shirt. You always need to be aware of what you did last week, what you’re doing this week, and what you’re doing next next.
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
I usually stop when the internal thoughts of me killing myself become louder than the metal through my stereo… usually…[/quote]
hahahah. Knowing how loud my music gets when lifting the thoughts in my head would have to be screaming.
Same thing for me though. I feel like i’m overtraining when training just becomes this chore, I can barely hit weights i was smashing the week before, i’m feeling lethargic the music is annoying me rather than psyching me up.
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
I usually stop when the internal thoughts of me killing myself become louder than the metal through my stereo… usually…[/quote]
Why, for me it’s when I can hear only two or three of the voices in my head.
One thing that has been consistent when I am underrecovered or overstressed is sleep. My sleep quality suffers and I will wake up in the middle of the night w/ the pillow covered in sweat. I also alternate between fits of rage and depression. I’ve also never been overtrained to the point where it takes a month to recover which scares me.
One thing I am interested in using bar speed as a measurement to determine training effectiveness. For example a set of 5 at 80% in the squat or so should move at XX velocity, the next set a little less, until a cut off may be reached where the bar speed is too slow, indicating sufficient stress has been applied for that workout; Any more would be over stressing the body and any less you didn’t work hard enough to invoke a training response.
It seems like something that a Soviet or somebody else may have studied. Does anybody have any information or comments on this?
I know the Prilepin tables were based on the olympic lifts as an experimentally derived optimal rep/set range, but it seems often enough they are applied to the powerlifts. I’d say there is a large enough difference in the dynamics between the lifts, and even between bench/squat/dead, where perhaps a different optimal set of reps/sets may exist for each lift.
Does anybody know if this has been studied or have any input here as well?
there are far too many variables for us to monitor ourselves accurately.
thats why people use unloading phases, as a safety.
i dont know about overtraining, but i’ve found resting pulse in the morning to be a really good way to monitor getting sick… 2 days in a row with the pulse 5 beats or so above average and its a pretty good indication your system is struggling with something and needs a break.
Interesting, I appreciate the responses guys. I have hear some lifters monitor resting pulse to determine an overtrained state. If it is elevated, they may be overtrained.