Barbarian Brothers: No Over Training

[Ahuae]

Are you against creatine and ATP supplements as well, for me they give me full recovery overnight (well the recipe is a little more complex and includes germinating full grains)

Namase !

[ukrainian]

Did anyone else notice that the weight on the bar in the original picture is 44 lbs? Random. Yes. Useless Observation. Yes. But all that is beside the point.

And over training is very difficult to find in the real world. I workout with more intensity and with more volume that almost everyone that I know (it’s not bragging because both areas are not impressive by any means on this site), and I am very far away from over training. And yes, that includes adults.

My dad used to work-out 6 days a week and 2 hours per day. He never over trained. Why? Maybe because his body was used to it from his days in the army and his lifestyle before he started.

But, the limit for most people is not how they act in the present day, but the factors that acted upon them with the greatest influence during their period of greatest growth. Basically, the boundary for over training, in my opinion (disclaimer), is created when in their younger years. Sure, people can work around that when they are older, but it is much more difficult.

Example: Olympic athletes. Their capacity for work is outstanding. Yes, they work hard presently, but when they were younger, they were probably not sedentary at all. Thus, it lead to their abnormal ability to exercise.

[Elaikases]

[quote]Der Candy wrote:
WHo are the barbarian brothers, if i may ask?

(nice OHP btw)[/quote]

What ever happened to them?

[inthego]

[quote]Elaikases wrote:
Der Candy wrote:
WHo are the barbarian brothers, if i may ask?

(nice OHP btw)

What ever happened to them?[/quote]

They were on no bull radio (not together) this year…

google it.

[JamFly]

[quote]jehovasfitness wrote:
JamFly wrote:

It’s not easy to physically overtrain with well planned training, diet and rest. How many people put these in place and manage to overtrain?

You sure about that?

I lift weights 4 x wk for 30-40 mins each time
1 night of Volleyball for 2 hrs
1 night of softball (1 game)
I take a recovery week of lesser volume periodically

I take ZMA, fishoil and eat 4500 calories a day of good food with plenty of fruit

I get 8-8.5 hrs of sleep every night and my GF gives me nightly massages.

There are times where my body just feels run down

I only exercise about 5 hrs a week as is. If I were to do much more exercise, I’m sure I’d end up suffering from over training.

But yes, over training does seem to be over blown at times, but it can be under emphasized often as well.[/quote]

If you think you are pushing your body to the limits of it’s ability (which is what you are suggesting) with the above weekly schedule you need to get a clue.

[NewPowerLifter]

To quote CT

If you ask me, “overtraining” is the most abused and misunderstood concept in the entire strength training community! Perform more than twelve sets for a muscle during a workout and you’ll undoubtedly be accused of overtraining. Train a muscle group more often than two times per week? Overtraining! Relying on set extending methods such as drop sets, pre or post-fatigue, or rest-pause? What are you doing? Don’t you know that’s overtraining and you’ll shrink faster than your masculine pride on a snowy Canadian winter night?!

Yes, overtraining can eventually become a problem when it comes to your training performance, injury risks, and growth. However, it’s far from being as common as most people would have you believe.

The problem stems from the term itself, which is composed of “over” and “training.” Because of that term, individuals are quick to equate it to “training too much.” So every time someone thinks that a routine has too much volume, frequency, or advanced methods, they’re quick to pull the “overtraining” trigger. When someone is tired and has a few bad workouts he’ll also automatically assume that he’s “overtraining.” In both cases this shows a misunderstanding of what overtraining really is.

Overtraining is a physiological state caused by an excess accumulation of physiological, psychological, emotional, environmental, and chemical stress that leads to a sustained decrease in physical and mental performance, and that requires a relatively long recovery period. There are four important elements in that scientific definition:

“Physiological state:” Overtraining isn’t an action (i.e. training too much) but a state in which your body can be put through. In that regard, it’s similar to a burnout, a medical depression, or an illness.

“Caused by an excess accumulation of physiological, psychological, emotional, environmental, and chemical stress:” Stress has both a localized and a systemic effect. Every type of stress has a systemic impact on the body; this impact isn’t limited to the structures involved directly in the “stressful event.” This systemic impact is caused by the release of stress hormones (glucocorticoids like cortisol for example) and an overexertion of the adrenal glands.

So every single type of stressor out there can contribute to the onset of an overtraining state. Job troubles, tension in a relationship, death in the family, pollutants and chemicals in the air we breathe, the food we eat or the water we drink, etc. can all contribute to overtraining. Training too much is obviously another stress factor that can facilitate the onset of the overtraining state, but it’s far from being the sole murder suspect.

“Leads to a sustained decrease in physical and mental performance:” The key term here is sustained. Some people will have a few sub par workouts and will automatically assume they’re overtraining. Not the case. It could simply be acute or accumulated fatigue due to poor recovery management or a deficient dietary approach.

A real overtraining state/syndrome takes months of excessive stress to build up. And when someone reaches that state, it’ll take several weeks (even several months) of rest and recovery measures to get back to a “normal” physiological state. If a few days of rest or active rest can get your performance back up to par, you weren’t overtraining. You probably suffered from some fatigue accumulation, that’s all.

Worst case scenario, you might enter an overreaching state (a transient form of overtraining). Reaching that point will normally take 10-14 days of rest and active rest to get back up to normal. Overreaching can actually be used as a training tool since the body normally surcompensates (with rest) following overreaching. Elite athletes often include periods of drastic training stress increases followed by a 10-14 day taper to reach a peak performance level on a certain date.

“That requires a relatively long recovery period:” As we already mentioned, reaching a true overtraining state takes a long period of excessive stress and requires a long period of recovery. The following graphic illustrates the various steps toward the onset of an overtraining state as well as the recovery period needed to get out of these different levels.

The spectrum goes from acute fatigue, which is the normal fatigue caused by a very intense/demanding workout, right up to a true overtraining state. In all my life, I’ve seen two cases of real overtraining. In both cases this happened to two high level athletes right after the Olympic Games (accumulation of the super intense training, the stress of qualifying for the Olympics, and the stress of the Olympics themselves).

Understand that most international level athletes will train close to 30-40 hours per week. Obviously not all of that is spent in the gym; they also have their sport practice, speed and agility work, conditioning work, etc., but these still represent a physiological stress. Yet rarely will these athletes reach a true overtraining state.

How could training for a total of five or six hours per week cause overtraining? Fatigue, yes, mostly due to improper recovery management, a very low level of general physical preparation (conditioning level), or a mediocre work capacity.

To paraphrase Louie Simmons, North American athletes are out of shape. Being out of shape (low level of general preparedness or conditioning) means you can’t recover well from a high volume of work. But the more work you can perform, without going beyond your capacity to recover, the more you’ll progress. So in that regard, poor work capacity can be the real problem behind lack of gains from a program.

By continually avoiding performing a high level of physical work, you’ll never increase your work capacity and will suffer from accumulated fatigue as soon as you increase your training stress ever so slightly. Obviously, the solution isn’t to jump into mega-volume training, but to gradually include more GPP work as well as periods of increased training stress that will increase in duration and frequency over time.

Ask any of my clients �?? they must all go through four-week phases of very high volume work interlaced between phases of “normal” volume training (or even phases of low volume). And as they progress through the system, the high volume phases will become more frequent (as their work capacity improves) or last longer.

All in all i doubt many people here would be guilty of over training if they slept and ate properly unless they have an absolute terrible hormonal setup.
Like the person above who said he “overtrains” on 5*5 … does it take you near a month to get back to the gym …

[NewPowerLifter]

Heres the whole article, very good one at that :

http://www.T-Nation.com/tmagnum/postMessagePrep.do?messageType=reply&categoryId=39&topicId=2190916

[Sliver]

Get these barbarian brothers doing drop sets of heavy deadlifts twice a day and see how long they last before they cave and admit they’re wrong.

[The_Mighty_Stu]

Overtraining is an individual thing. EVeryone has a specific threshold level that they can handle with their current sleeping and eating patterns. Sure you can improve your recovery techniques, eat better, get more rest, but that will only improve things to the limiting point set in your genetic coding. For those who look at the way BBers trained in the past (the barbarian bros in the 80’s), sure they got big and strong (forget the steroids for a moment), but could they have achieved their level of development (or more) in a shorter duration had they done a little less?

S

[derek]

[quote]Corkonian wrote:
Like the person above who said he “overtrains” on 5*5 … does it take you near a month to get back to the gym … [/quote]

That was me, and I have no idea what you are asking here (or even if you ARE asking anything… There’s no question mark at the end.)

I get about 3 weeks into it and find all the symptoms start creeping in, and I mean ALL of the classic symptoms. I have to say that I sleep pretty poorly but diet and supplementation is right on.

I take a week off and I feel much better. It’s really my low back that takes a beating. But I do get achy, lose MORE sleep, feel extremely run down etc.

I’m going to start it again and see if I can stave it off with some sensible adjustments. The only thing is that I hate to miss a squat workout and put off the 5x5 protocol.

[derek]

[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
For those who look at the way BBers trained in the past (the barbarian bros in the 80’s), sure they got big and strong (forget the steroids for a moment), but could they have achieved their level of development (or more) in a shorter duration had they done a little less?

S
[/quote]

I couldn’t agree more!

You need to find out the MINIMUM you need to grow, not how much you can tollerate.

[Joe_D]

[quote]Sliver wrote:
Get these barbarian brothers doing drop sets of heavy deadlifts twice a day and see how long they last before they cave and admit they’re wrong.[/quote]

I have a nice shiny 50 pence piece for anyone who can tell the difference between a literal statement and something that should be taken as inspirational.

Threads like this remind me of why the Alpha cell was created.

[TheDudeAbides]

[quote]derek wrote:
I get about 3 weeks into it and find all the symptoms start creeping in, and I mean ALL of the classic symptoms. I have to say that I sleep pretty poorly but diet and supplementation is right on.

I take a week off and I feel much better. It’s really my low back that takes a beating. But I do get achy, lose MORE sleep, feel extremely run down etc.

I’m going to start it again and see if I can stave it off with some sensible adjustments. The only thing is that I hate to miss a squat workout and put off the 5x5 protocol.[/quote]

After your week off, are you able to resume training at your previous weight levels are do they slightly decrease? Just plain old curiosity.

[supabeast]

I don’t give a shit how big some guys can get on crazy training schedules, I really don’t want to spend ten hours a day asleep and another three preparing meals.

[Sliver]

[quote]Joe D. wrote:
Sliver wrote:
Get these barbarian brothers doing drop sets of heavy deadlifts twice a day and see how long they last before they cave and admit they’re wrong.

I have a nice shiny 50 pence piece for anyone who can tell the difference between a literal statement and something that should be taken as inspirational.

Threads like this remind me of why the Alpha cell was created.[/quote]

Wow. Of all the inspirational statements in the world, you chose to defend one that was wrong in the literal and metaphorical sense at the same time.

[inthego]

[quote]jdrannin1 wrote:
inthego wrote:
jdrannin1 wrote:
goya wrote:
jdrannin1 wrote:
goya wrote:
It’s hard to overtrain on steroids.

Over generalized statement.

It’s a generalization that is true.

Steroids > sleep + nutrition. Obviously if you do all 3, the results will be much better. But steroids can make up for poor sleep and poor nutrition, at least for a certain time.

Note that I am neither condoning nor endorisng them. But I would take any thing the Barbarian Brothers say with a grain of salt.

Steroids are not greater than sleep and nutrition.

yawn.
Try it sometime…
repost after you get some real world experience…

Yawn.
I have and do…
Try again…

Don’t lecture me on gaining real world experience when it’s clear YOU have none of your own.[/quote]

Well… got your goat, hu?
I don’t post on the steroids thread for good reason…
G men are looking into who says what…
So ok I am ignorant… but the truth is those who really know what they are doing don’t post in great detail or not at all…

[Bodyguard]

[quote]shizen wrote:
I disagree, some people make better gains NOT going excessive volume or ‘over training’

[/quote]

Those people are not overtraining which is the point. There is no such thing as overtraining only under recovery.

People have an issue with thinking of the volume of their weight training or cardio when thinking in terms of recovery.

But in fact when you speak in terms of recovery you are speaking of recovering from your entire days effort capacity IE your 8hr or more job, your 2hr gym time, your yard work your, house work, your hang time with the ladies, your hang time with your bro etc. etc it is all cumulative.

So having said that you could do the 20 set per bdy part ala Arnold, Priest and be just fine if you recovered from that and all your daily activety. Or you could do three sets of push ups and three sets of pull ups and that ontop of your night school and 12hr day job might bury you because you couldnt recover.

So there really is nothing to disagree about, in a perfect world if you could eat 10,000 clean calories a day and train like Ronnie and recover we’d all look like Ronnie and wouldn’t need anabolics! Ok being a little tongue in cheek but the point is regardless of what your work capacity is on a daily basis recovery is the key.

It doesnt matter is you are a high volume trainer or a low volume trainer the key is finding the right balance of your recovery abilities.

When some one isnt making gains it isn’t directly correlated to their training soley although it might be rather its something in the equation which may include several micro factors sleep, nutrition supplementation, stress etc adnauseum.

Having said that the standard holds true there is really no such thing as over training only under recovery.

[jdrannin1]

[quote]inthego wrote:

So ok I am ignorant… but the truth is those who really know what they are doing don’t post in great detail or not at all…[/quote]

Really? And, how would you know that?