[quote]Damici wrote:
…
That said, though, I think the whole fear of overtraining has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion, mainly by Mentzer and his disciples in the 90’s. Overtraining, by its very definition is a bad, counterproductive thing, but I think a lot of people underestimate how much training their body can take and can adapt to and grow from. I’ve always been natural and actually made the most progress when I was working out six days per week, hitting each bodypart 3 times per week, albeit for only 3-5 sets per bodypart. If you’re eating enough and getting enough sleep, my hunch is that you’re more likely to be undertraining than overtraining.
[/quote]
But you haven’t been using that much volume in total. For instance, when I overtrained like I described in my previous post, I alternated two full body days, with A - Squat, Bench, Row and B - DL, OH Press, Chin-up. Plus some 1-2 assistance exercises. I started with 5x5, increased volume AND weight, and ended-up doing 12x1 on all exerices in one week. Now that was obviosly too much, and in no way could have I offsetted that with more food or rest. Steroids, maybe.
Bottom line is that for everyone who made great progress working 5-6 days a week, there’s at least one person who made zero progress with that approach, and actually felt like shit all time. The rationale of routines on T-Nation that CW or Dan John popularized is that they have seemed to work for majority of people.