With that logic, tearing muscles would be optimal. It is debatable whether or not muscle damage is actually promotes hypertrophy, it’s quite likely that it is just an unavoidable consequence of training. You want to do enough to stimulate gains but not so much that you can’t recover within a reasonable time, that basically sums it up.
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I experienced deja vu by reading the first two posts in this thread. I can’t even muster the energy to offer an intelligent post.
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Just don’t go to the point of rhabdomyolysis.
Anything prior to that is fine though.
You need to see a bunch of those charts together (run back to back) and understand dimishing returns to understand that there is a sweet spot for the amount of work you do.
Imagine one chart that looks like the one you posted. Let’s say that’s the crazy volume one.
Now imagine a lower volume one. Let’s say the lower volume one takes 75% of the time (because you recover faster) but delivers 90% of the results (because of diminishing returns).
If you ran 10 cycles of this, you should see that your “fit” line is much higher at the end in the lower volume approach.
Factor in motivation/stress and risk of injury and the lines blow out further.
Slay, I would say your theories and methods are just as correct as all other points made here on this topic. There are many resources out there that have proven all sides. In offering my opinion, I would answer with, it depends. There are many variables that go into improving fitness. I think it’s important that we start with defining what you’re trying to accomplish. Once that’s drawn out then we can map out the next step of, how much and how often. I’m not saying anything that’s new here. I’m just trying to give a little perspective.
Your particular theory of overreaching with long recovery such as 5 days, showed great results in: The New High Intensity Training : The Best Muscle-Building System You’ve Never Tried
by Ellington Darden
Has this thread been ended/answered yet? I’ll try to add something to the discussion. Dunno if anyone has mentioned functional overreaching yet but it kinda sounds like what OP is trying to get at.
TLDR dis tho:
So like some of the guys were saying there’ll be a theoretical MRV (Maximum Recoverable Volume) that someone has at any one time/environment. If you’ve exceeded your recovery capacity you’re overreached and the longer and harder you go at it the worse it gets e.g. overtraining syndrome, rhabdo etc.
Purposefully and strategically exceeding MRV followed by a recovery period e.g. deload to continue to make more gains over time is a common thing also known as functional overreaching(have a google of it mane). It’s usually pretty conservative tho. A little bit over to get a little boost on the comeback. Push too far and your recovery powers might not be enough to make it back to zero or it may take weeks in which time you’d go backwards/decondition or waste time you could’ve used to make regular gains training within your recovery means, never mind functional overreaching (also injury, feeling shitty etc.)
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I don’t have much to add here, but a rough Wendler quote: “more is not always better - better is better.”
You should always be able to justify what you’re doing in the gym (dumb challenges aside). If you’re getting better with 5x5 squats, there is no need for doing 10x5.
Wendler? You are living in the past maaan, live in the now!
Probably never a good idea to engage in masturbatory topics like this one, but just this one time i will b/c i think there’s a pretty clear answer.
You’re right that overreaching/deloading has been used and some people believe in it. Verkoshansky talks about it a lot, for instance, and there’s evidence many of the Soviets believed it was far superior to pursuing full recovery between training sessions of the same character.
The problem is in the implementation. Fitness and fatigue are not closely related, and grow and decay on different timeframes independent of what is going on with the other factor. Many people who have tried to build a big fatigue debt and then slingshot to gains will tell you that once you’ve dug out of the fatigue hole, the fitness you built is totally decayed and you get nowhere. That has been my experience.
Building up an incidental fatigue debt that is easy to pay off is one thing, but building your training around constantly overreaching is just not effective, because it it unreliable and you are very unlikely to have the tools and intuition to get the timing right.
I dont get it.
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