I just looked at the OVT article and my eyes bugged out looking at the recommended number of sets and exercises. Maybe I’m a softy now after doing Ian King programs for the last year or so but good lord 20 sets of chest exercises alone in 1 day?!
How in the world does this program not cause extreme overtraining? To me it looks like the thing that’s special about it is that it demands incredibly high volume but I associate that with overtraining. Does it really work for people not on roids and how is this possible if it does?
Obviously you didn’t read the article correctly. Each set is a superset. You do 10 sets total per body part (10 sets total of 2 supersets). NOT 5 sets of bench then move on to 5 sets of flys. Its 5 reps of bench then immediately do 5 slow reps of flys. Go back and reread the article.
It is a planned overreaching cycle lasting 4 weeks. To goal is to place such a high demand on your body thatit will force an overreaching state (short term overtraining) which will then trigger a superadaptive response once you get back to a lower volume approach after the cycle.
That’s why OVT should only be performed for 4 weeks, then followed by a low volume routine. What typically occurs is that the first two weeks of low volume training you have a HUGE rebound effect in both sie and strength. Some trainees mistakenly believe that it’s the new low-volume routine that’s causing these gains while in fact it’s the delayed gains from the high stress OVT cycle.
This method has been used in sport training for a long time. Short “shock” training cycles would be followed by restorative cycles to help an athlete bust through a plateau.