Overtraining Thought

I read something today saying overtraining is a myth, it talked about how these bulgarian guys became very strong from training everyday and how the cns cant be really burned out. Well what about your muscles, they need rest. But it hit me, the body is meant to adapt, muscles get bigger and fire off more efficiently, tendons and bones get thicker and stronger, and your body becomes better at the task. So if the body adapts to the demands placed upon it wouldnt the body also adapt to lack of rest, the would be forced to repair faster and the cns would be made to withstand the stress being put on it dailey? Dont get me wrong im sure the first few weeks or months will be hell but wouldnt you be bigger and stronger faster than before,So long as you give 100% everyday.Just my idea, i love training and training everyday(not splits) would he sweet. What is your opinion?

I’m not especially knowledgable on the subject, but during my A-levels (UK education at age 16-18), in Biology I learned that overtraining only really occurs for elite athletes: people training 30+ hours a week like Olympic athletes and professional footballers who train 6 hours a day, five days a week.

This is the overtraining that concerns the immune system etc. If you were to train your biceps every day for two hours, that only comes to 14 hours but clearly you’re going to knacker them and that won’t be useful.

I don’t think that the body’s tissue repair systems (not sure what to call them, I don’t remember bio that well…) would adapt all that much.

Everything else certainly adapts.

Definitely give training every day a shot. I do multiple sessions a day (total about 2 hours generally), 6 days a week and I’m fine. Listen to your body though, after a month or so you’ll probably want to back off a bit for a couple days.

Just remember, the more you train the more you have to eat and sleep to make it work.

Look at the table in the bottom left: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jKrQrrAH3Xg/S3bVz-CVNyI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/Kg9QJrc97Lk/s1600/bulgarian+routine.JPG

I was reading Practical Programming recently, and as I recall Mr. Rippetoe and Mr. Kilegore, agreed with what our English friend was told at 13. That is, that overtraining is an extremely rare phenomenon that usually only occurs in elite athletes, or those who have reached their genetic potential and who are attempting to prepare for a sport ie. multiple hours of training daily.

The bulgarians are interesting…Notice, however, that they trained twice a day, and that was all they did, sleeping something like 12-14 hours a day. Also, they were Olympic lifters. So eccentric movement were limited (muscles tend to become sore more through eccentric). Third, there was a make it or break it mentality often attributed to the coaches. That is, individual who could not survive in that training environment went home. The program worked, but first you had to work in the program. Lastly, steroid (don’t kid your self on this)

It typically takes a novice lifter 48-72 hrs. to adapt to a stress. That said, Dan John wrote a wonderful little article called “The 40-day program”. In which he suggests that it is possible to become quite strong (ie. break PR) lifting every day for 2 sets of 5 reps on a limited number of exercises using feel to establish a loading pattern. This is not a beginner program, in that it requires a good knowledge of how you recover and a certain amount of control over your ego; however it might be a good read.

Just because the bulgarians train an obscene number of hours a week, or pro athletes train multiple times every day, does not mean they just jumped into it. You have to work up to that amount of weekly stress.

Imagine taking a guy who had never worked out a day in his life, and then making him lift twice a day, everyday, for 2 hours a session, at a high intensity. He would overtrain very quickly. If you had him work up to this over the course of a couple years, then yes he could handle it.

John Broz talked about a “dark period” his athletes go through. Basically this is when their body is still trying to adapt to the workload he expects them to be able to do. He said it can take several months to a year or more before they are out of this “dark period”, and these are guys that have been lifting for several years.

Chris you are a 20 yr. old athlete. IRONMAN37(or what ever) is a 14 yr old kid. 6’0" 167lb.

[quote]IRONMAN37 wrote:
I read something today saying overtraining is a myth[/quote]
Overtraining is not a myth. It is, however, a misunderstood and misused term.

Say I take an 5’8" 220 pound guy who’s never exercised before and I have him do 20 sets for chest, 20 sets for back, and 15 sets for shoulders on Monday, 15 sets for biceps and 15 sets for triceps on Tuesday, 35 sets for legs on Wednesday, and repeat it Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I also don’t tell him to change his diet, so he’s eating two or three crappy meals and a workout shake everyday. What’s going to happen to him?

If I give a three-time Mr. Universe that same training schedule and tweak his nutrition to deliver plenty of good calories, what’s going to happen to him?

It’s very difficult to legitimately overtrain a well-conditioned human body. It’s also relatively-easy to overtrain a deconditioned body. Common sense combined with a well-designed plan will go a long way. The problem is that those two things are hard to find in most people in most gyms.

Following your train of thought, can the body eventually adapt to sleeping only two hours per day? Nope. At some point, there will diminishing returns and you’ll be doing more harm than good.

And even before you get to that endpoint, there’s the trick of progressing up to it successfully. Even John Broz starts his guys off training just three days a week before gradually increasing the training frequency/volume up to 12 or 13 training session per week, then it gets knocked back down to three days a week at a higher intensity before gradually increasing back up to 12 or 13 workouts per week.

I’d love to be woken up by full body massage instead of an alarm clock. It’s not gonna happen though. Just because it’s sometimes effective to train everyday doesn’t make it the best plan for everyone or every goal. At your current level of development, you’ll benefit plenty from a simple, straight-forward, well-thought-out program.

[quote]mlupica wrote:
Chris you are a 20 yr. old athlete. IRONMAN37(or what ever) is a 14 yr old kid. 6’0" 167lb. [/quote]

I think I missed your point?

Also OP, just because a person trains more often, does not mean that it is more effective or better. I “train” just about every day, but I only lift weights and condition 4 days a week, the other days are recovery sessions. So you could say that I train 4 days a week. Just because I COULD go lift everyday, doesn’t mean that would be better.

Even when I am in season, I still have 2 days a week that are purely recovery sessions.

Recovery sessions for me = contrast baths, stretching, foam rolling, etc.

[quote]Chris87 wrote:

[quote]mlupica wrote:
Chris you are a 20 yr. old athlete. IRONMAN37(or what ever) is a 14 yr old kid. 6’0" 167lb. [/quote]

I think I missed your point?

Sorry, I didn’t read your post closely enough. I had you saying the opposite of what you were saying. My apologies.

[quote]mlupica wrote:

[quote]Chris87 wrote:

[quote]mlupica wrote:
Chris you are a 20 yr. old athlete. IRONMAN37(or what ever) is a 14 yr old kid. 6’0" 167lb. [/quote]

I think I missed your point?

Sorry, I didn’t read your post closely enough. I had you saying the opposite of what you were saying. My apologies.[/quote]

No problem, it happens

You also have to consider the risk of injury. The body only adapts so much. Your tendons cant keep growing or these oly lifters would have knees the size of pumpkins.

With the Bulgarian method, many lifters would get injured, but if 30 out of 100 lifters survived without injury, then it was worth it for the country. So for you personally it is likely not the best option especailly considering their lifestyle/supplementation/steroids

Pat mendes got extremely strong lifting this style, still is crazy strong, but hes in his early 20s and is already well past his prime as he went from squatting 800 to squatting in the 6’s after suffering an injury

Hey thanks a lot guys, lot of good info and help. Now that i know working out that much would be on the risky side and the body will need rest, would pavel’s idea work, it is training on bodyweight/kettlebell all throughout the day six times for up to six times a week. Thoughts on this?

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Following your train of thought, can the body eventually adapt to sleeping only two hours per day? Nope. At some point, there will diminishing returns and you’ll be doing more harm than good.
[/quote]

Not to sound like a troll but look up polyphasic sleep. I haven’t tried it while training, but you can certainly survive on 2 hours a sleep a day if your body adjusts to it properly

[quote]dreadlocks1221 wrote:

Not to sound like a troll but look up polyphasic sleep. I haven’t tried it while training, but you can certainly survive on 2 hours a sleep a day if your body adjusts to it properly[/quote]

I didn’t do an extensive search on this, but most of what I found pointed to a loss of productivity using these methods. Also, what I did find were studies involving naps of at least 45 minutes-2 hours each not total. Like I said, though, I didn’t review every study. I know the military has conducted multiple studies on the effects of sleep deprivation and fatique coupling that with personal experience I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with your statement.

There’s over-training then there’s under-recovery. Over-training would be spending 18 hours in the gym, pushing yourself to the point where your body can’t handle the stress and you’re fatigued to the point where your body can’t recover fully even if given the time. That’s really not going to happen accidentally in most situations. Under recovery would be not getting enough sleep, not getting the right nutrients or not allowing your muscles the time to rebuild with proper rest. Most of us have probably experienced this. I’m not really sure if this is something that can be adapted to eventually but I doubt that it would be worth it. You’ll probably see SOME gains doing this but it doesn’t seem like the best way to go about it.

In my (albeit limited) experience, at the start, I went for about 6 months doing about 2 hours a day in pretty shitty shape to begin with. About once every two weeks I would feel like I had the flu, take a day off and be better and back to it the next day. I didn’t get stronger (my programming was awful, thanks to some stupid iPhone app, though so that played a part) and I lost some muscle mass (along with a ton of fat). That’s what I think of when I hear about under-recovery or what a lot of people consider “over-training”.

I do a push pull split every other day now with a 6 rep/ 12 rep wave and add about 5 pounds to every lift every week (nowhere near impressive amounts yet) with about an hour of NEPA on the off days. I’ve been doing that for about 2 months now, feel great and manage to keep losing fat while gaining muscle eating 100% clean carb cycling. Maybe the under-recovery helped my body adapt to some extent and resulted in some improved recovery and performance now but I didn’t really start seeing positive gains until I gave myself time to recover.

Maybe I’m wrong and it’s due to switching to proper programming but it seems like a recovery day every other day works for me. I’m sure there are genetic exceptions to that rule though so your mileage may vary.

[quote]IRONMAN37 wrote:
Hey thanks a lot guys, lot of good info and help. Now that i know working out that much would be on the risky side and the body will need rest, would pavel’s idea work, it is training on bodyweight/kettlebell all throughout the day six times for up to six times a week. Thoughts on this? [/quote]

Almost everyone uses something like this to improve their pull-ups/chin-up. Personally I’ve used it twice. It’s fine, as long as you focus on one exercise. It’s best to choose something that is lagging or really important.

Also you can’t get greedy and do max reps six times a day, or you’ll open yourself up to injury. I know from your posts that your excited about working out, but what is your goal? Not that it isn’t great just to move, but you might be better served by something that is productive in a direction other than the desire to do something everyday.

[quote]dreadlocks1221 wrote:

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
Following your train of thought, can the body eventually adapt to sleeping only two hours per day? Nope. At some point, there will diminishing returns and you’ll be doing more harm than good.
[/quote]
Not to sound like a troll but look up polyphasic sleep. I haven’t tried it while training, but you can certainly survive on 2 hours a sleep a day if your body adjusts to it properly[/quote]
Ha, smart alleck. :wink: I figured someone would catch that, no prob.

Like ryno said though, the majority of info on limited sleep (like the “uberman” schedule, sleeping 20-30 minutes every 4-6 hours) is relatively short term and I’ve read a few instances where missing a single nap/sleep period throws off their system and ability to function. That’s a pretty fragile state of adaptation, at best.

Overall, I’d say it’s more a case of tolerating two hours of sleep per day for a while, rather than legitimately adapting to it.

All of you have really given me a lot of insight on training. To answer mlupica im training for wrestling season. The reason im more for bodyweight is because my back was killing me from doing squats, im sure form had to have been an issue and when i went to practice i felt slow and unconditioned. I read articles on bodyweight and thought why not. First few days huge difference, i did pullups(weighted), one arm push ups, pistols(weighted), and inverted sit ups; walked in to practice and absolutely owned, beat guys up in the 220 range with ease, speed, endurance, and more noticably strength. This is why im hooked on pavels ideas, let me know if you have any help on training that would imProve wrestling, thanks;)

My 2 cents, younger people including early 20s recover pretty well from any type of workout, but a major issue that may occur is overuse injuries such as “bench press shoulder”, which can become chronic. I train/ have workouts geared to meet different goals at different times of the year.

Your training needs to compliment your sport. Work on technique first on things such as squat, cleans, snatches, and presses, complement it with dumbells or kettlebells for more resistance because the technique is easier. If you like Pavel’s stuff, look at Ross Enamuit gymless workout. He has some things to get you into top shape. The most important thing regardless of what type of workout you do is be consistent.