Alright here’s the back story. I’m a 19 year old college kid so my T levels and health are both excellent. With that said, this weekend, I went home to study for a biology exam I had sunday night. Now obviously no one was around in my hometown, and it’s impossible to maintain focus studying for hours on end. I love to weight train so I did double sessions of training friday and saturday nights, using different loading parameters (eg 5x5 squats, 4x12) during day and night. Some would definatly consider this overtraining, but I figured if I out ate my expenditure (4k+ calories), it would lead to greater hypertrophy.
The main debate here I’m trying to raise is: can you out eat over training, why or why not?
You’re doing this. You’re building a home, so you bought an surplus of supplies. However, you fired most of the workers. You expect, since you now have more supplies to build with, you’ll see a big ass home. However, without the adequate work force, the building won’t get done and may even result in injuries.
In other words, sleep. You got the nutrients, now sleep to grow.
[quote]Fulmen wrote:
No. You repair/grow during sleep.
You’re doing this. You’re building a home, so you bought an surplus of supplies. However, you fired most of the workers. You expect, since you now have more supplies to build with, you’ll see a big ass home. However, without the adequate work force, the building won’t get done and may even result in injuries.
In other words, sleep. You got the nutrients, now sleep to grow.[/quote]
Exactly, eating is only “half” the equation, sleep is the other half (the more important half).
Over-training is a very real and very serious thing that can happen to somebody. I would also be willing to bet a substantial amount of money that over-training happens to less than 1% of people that go to the gym on a regular basis.
If by overtraining it’s meant that you worked past the point of diminishing returns, you may have done that. If it’s meant that put yourself in the state of being overtrained then has been said, no you didn’t do that.
All that said I don’t go for the “this or that aspect is this or that percentage of training progress” idea.
ALL of it has to be in place. How you train isn’t more or less important than nutrition or sleep or any combination therein. You must train, eat and recover, all three, for optimal progress over time.
I both agree that most people who use the word put it out there as an excuse to not work as hard as they could, but for the serious athletes who truly are busting their ass, it should not be a major concern but at least on the radar.
While the answer to the question is no, you cannot just eat a load and never over-train, I think a better question is: Why the hell are you doing squats twice a day two days in a row?
GENERALLY you dont over train by working to hard, you do it by working to much. any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. just cause you are making progress does NOT mean you are not over training. if you are capable of gaining 20lbs of muscle in 6 months but gain 10 you are over training (you COULD be under training but that is rare as hell)
1- everyone has a different threshhold of how much work they can endure before they cross over the line into being counterproductive.
2- you can probably get away with doing more than you should for a brief period of time before it actually catches up with you and prodsuces negative effects (I think Poliquin wrote an article a while back about intentionally doing too much for a short duration).
I’ve been lifting for a very long time. I’ve done all kinds of crazy splits that most would consider overtraing, but I’ve only actually overtrained a few times. For me overtraining almost feels like the flu coming on. I get body aches and have no energy to speak of.
[quote]jstreet0204 wrote:
I’ve been lifting for a very long time. I’ve done all kinds of crazy splits that most would consider overtraing, but I’ve only actually overtrained a few times. For me overtraining almost feels like the flu coming on. I get body aches and have no energy to speak of.[/quote]
Exactly. I have done this a few times too. It wasn’t a long term cumulative effect either, I could bring it on in a week to 10 days of hard work if I don’t have recovery time.
[quote]tonyc wrote:
While the answer to the question is no, you cannot just eat a load and never over-train, I think a better question is: Why the hell are you doing squats twice a day two days in a row? [/quote]
See Stripped Down Hypertrophy.
Anyway, I agree with the majority of you that motivation is one important factor to look out for when overtrained. I remember doing John Beradi’s growth surge, and practically have to drag myself over to gym in order to do the second session. I was also pretty irritable.
[quote]mycat225 wrote:
<<< any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. >>>[/quote]
Oh now I cannot go along with this. If someone’s training is to blame for lagging progress nowadays it’s almost always due to not working hard enough. I’m not referring to volume or frequency, but effort. That and eating like a hamster are the biggies
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
mycat225 wrote:
<<< any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. >>>
Oh now I cannot go along with this. If someone’s training is to blame for lagging progress nowadays it’s almost always due to not working hard enough. I’m not referring to volume or frequency, but effort. That and eating like a hamster are the biggies[/quote]
now dont you think you should have quoted the whole post;
“GENERALLY you dont over train by working to hard, you do it by working to much. any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. just cause you are making progress does NOT mean you are not over training. if you are capable of gaining 20lbs of muscle in 6 months but gain 10 you are over training (you COULD be under training but that is rare as hell)”
as you can see I stated that “GENERALLY you dont over train by working to hard” now you are correct about diet and I should have maybe been more specific but my comment was just on training. my main point was that people believe they are NOT over training just because they are making regarless of how slow it is and that is incorrect.
[quote]mycat225 wrote:
Tiribulus wrote:
mycat225 wrote:
<<< any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. >>>
Oh now I cannot go along with this. If someone’s training is to blame for lagging progress nowadays it’s almost always due to not working hard enough. I’m not referring to volume or frequency, but effort. That and eating like a hamster are the biggies
now dont you think you should have quoted the whole post;
“GENERALLY you dont over train by working to hard, you do it by working to much. any training that gives less then optimal results is most likely over training. just cause you are making progress does NOT mean you are not over training. if you are capable of gaining 20lbs of muscle in 6 months but gain 10 you are over training (you COULD be under training but that is rare as hell)”
as you can see I stated that “GENERALLY you dont over train by working to hard” now you are correct about diet and I should have maybe been more specific but my comment was just on training. my main point was that people believe they are NOT over training just because they are making regarless of how slow it is and that is incorrect. [/quote]
Emphasis mine:
I disagree, not training hard enough is much more common than any version of overtraining.