CNS Burnout: Myth or Truth?

Training Powerlifting
61

I don’t really have anything to add, and I haven’t been training for a long time but I discovered than my progress are better if I train only 4 days a week as opposed to 5 or 6 days like I did in the last 3 years. I try to never grind anything or go too heavy.

I do steady progress almost every week even if my hormones are shit. I don’t remember that I ever progressed like that. I would say my weak CNS was always burned.

It feel pretty good to do the best progress of your life while on easy mode.

62

This is probably the most informative and interesting thing I’ve read on T-Nation in months… Thanks for providing us with those studies as well, Tim Henriques.

63

I call it cumulative fatigue. It’s when trainees lift before they are recovered. They can get away with it for a while, but if you never let the fuel tank top off you’ll get burned out.

64

[quote]QE4 wrote:
I call it cumulative fatigue. It’s when trainees lift before they are recovered. They can get away with it for a while, but if you never let the fuel tank top off you’ll get burned out. [/quote]

Nearly a full month. Damn, you did some digging.

65

If overtraining does not exist then why not just spend the entire day squatting, eating and going to the bathroom.

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[quote]casperthegst wrote:
If overtraining does not exist then why not just spend the entire day squatting, eating and going to the bathroom.[/quote]

That sounds like the old Bulgarian training system, lol.

67

[quote]black_angus1 wrote:

[quote]QE4 wrote:
I call it cumulative fatigue. It’s when trainees lift before they are recovered. They can get away with it for a while, but if you never let the fuel tank top off you’ll get burned out. [/quote]

Nearly a full month. Damn, you did some digging.[/quote]
?

68

If overtraining didn’t exist we could pull max deadlifts all day every day according to some. Raise your “work capacity” then eat a ton of food. The body can keep up. Biological processes don’t need any time. Raise your burnout capacity.

69

I don’t know of any tissue or system in the body that can take constant abuse without adequate recovery. The nervous system is composed of tissues. When one trains in extremes - maximal weight training, maximal speed, competitions like NFL games, etc. - it STRESSES the nervous systems a ton (more so than muscles). Your body has a finite amount of stress it can handle before breakdown. If you’ve stated that the CNS cannot be fatigued, you’re postulating that it is the one system that has an infinite amount of stress it can handle - never breaks down.

If you stress your immune system to extremes without giving it adequate recovery, you get sick.
If you stress your organs to extremes, such as drinking heavily everyday, you get liver diseases.
If you work in high stress jobs like overseas military, police officer, etc., you often see colleagues drink heavily, have marital problems, suicide, stress disorders, etc.
This can go on and on.

It just boils down to stress. You cannot handle high levels of constant stress without recovery. The levels that individuals can handle (their stress limits) vary. Some are very small, others are very large.

If this weren’t true, soldiers could be in constant, perpetual combat, only taking time to eat, drink, etc. Never stopping. NFL players could play games everyday at the highest level. Andy Bolton could deadlift 1,000 pounds 7 times a week. I could see my friends shot everyday without any negative side effects. I believe it was Alexeyev that stated something along the lines of how stressful record attempts were (not positive).

There is a great video interview series on youtube (from Elite Fitness) where Dave Tate and Jim Wendler discuss training with Buddy Morris. They discuss the difference between and importance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, as well as stress and other things. You can’t stay in constant “fight or flight” mode. In one way or another, it all resorts back to the brain and nervous system.

70

YES, you can over-stress your nervous system, or “burn out.” I’m certainly no pro, but I’ve been guinea pigging my own body for some time across a variety of sports (wrestling, running, triathlons) and now competitive powerlifting. When doing sets of 1-2 reps on the squat every day for 4 weeks as compared to doing 3X5 every day adding 5 pounds every day, there is a totally different type of “fatigue.”

With the heavy 1-2 rep sets, all of a sudden one day in the gym the max stops coming. You can’t fire any more. Your body feels fine, but for some reason the weight just isn’t going up, weight that you’ve already done and are confident on (comparative to the “Dark Stages” in the Broz article).

Your muscles can no longer contract in the manner they once did. We all know the first 2 weeks of strength gain (hell, could be alot more) of any lifter who’s starting after some time away are a product of the nervous system. Getting things to fire in synchronization with each other.

Getting those fibers to twitch all at the same time, smooth and instantly. The lifts that rely on the nervous system the most, the high weight explosive single reps (not slow grindy reps, and not outrageously fast. Just a good quality rep) wear you down quick. You can eat alot, but it doesn’t matter. You start getting sleepy during the day, you sleep longer at night, and finally your body just can’t fire, can’t activate all the muscles to perform work.

To create force. 3X5 adding 5 pounds every day wears you out in a more physical sense. Sore, tired, achy, more food helps less food hurts type of thing. The nervous system can be conditioned however, just like Average Broz do and other professional athletes. That’s what it’s all about. Both types of training are important and have merits. But the question was can you “burn out” your CNS.

In my opinion/experience, YES. If you are training your CNS, there is a level you can reach that pushes it too far, and you will need to recover. Then begin again baby, “cause somewhere in China there’s a young girl warming up with your max.”

71

I get this too when i train heavy. I stay irritated for two days after.Its mostly from leg workouts.
Look up the symptoms of high cortisol and you will find the answer.

72

It seems the a wide variety of PEDs have the ability to “enhance performance” even over time frames too short to elicit physical changes large enough to account for their effect. Some have direct effects on the CNS, like stimulants, and some, like tren/halotest, seem to have direct strength effects that may not be well understood but real nonetheless.

Is it possible to “stimulate” the CNS, yet impossible to fatigue it? We obviously don’t know that much about the subject yet, as there has been little research. Research itself may be complicated by many factors, including that if some type of CNS fatigue is happening it could likely effect most other major systems as well.

As for “CNS fatigue” vs local muscular fatigue - if your bench goes down the day after pulling a max deadlift, it’s hard to attribute to local fatigue.

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MOST CERTAINLY REAL and POSSIBLE. People who say its broscience or fictional are not to be taken very seriously at all. I have experienced it first hand and I definitely know when I have it. Psyched up low reps heavy weight pr attempts bring it on much faster than anything else. I could eat all I want but still the only thing that fixes it is time and just plain ole rest, no way around it.
PED’s most certainly affect CNS recovery. Androgens in general have a profound impact on the nervous system.

Now what exactly is behind it, I am not sure either but I assume it must be Ach depletion at neuromuscular junctions and/or an inhibitory effect in a more central part of the brain e.g. motor cortex that deals with muscle coordination and such. Very noticeable the days after a heavy pr of deadlifts for example.

CNS ability to recover is indeed trainable but within limits of course. I am more amazed that people argue its existence more than anything else.

74

I feel an experiment coming on…

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I like how everybody is all “in my opinion blah blah blah”. Well, sorry, science doesn’t operate on opinions.

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[quote]black_angus1 wrote:
I like how everybody is all “in my opinion blah blah blah”. Well, sorry, science doesn’t operate on opinions.[/quote]

Man I was just about to make up some good ole opinionated scientific nonsense and then you gotta go and titty sprinkle all over my experience!

Damn you Angus! Lol

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I titty sprinkle all over dis sheeit right hurr.

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Hold on, let me find a toothbrush!

79

lol wat

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This thread didn’t answer my question.