It really only suggests your programming is off
Ever try full fat adaptation?
I think it can be an intentional part of your programming. It’s not necessarily a flaw if the program is designed for you to overreach and deload. I don’t know how many are doing that.
I liked how Thibaudeau used to think about it where he’d say the first week of any new phase of training is a functional deload, anyway, because you aren’t able to push all the unfamiliar exercises/ schemes to their max.
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Ding ding ding
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Thats a major pet peeve of mine. From my experience a majority cant. If asked most will look at you with a glazed look and just mumble about thats how it was wrote when the picked the routine.
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I have not.
I used to believe doing cardio (at all) would kill my gains. So I spent years doing absolutely none. As I have added more and more cardio, the reality has been that I’ve kept my muscle mass and nearly all of my strength. I look lots better and am certainly much healthier for it now.
I also used to believe that anything less than three lifting sessions per week would mean I was heading backwards – that I’d lose size and strength. The reality has been that two full body sessions per week has been just fine to maintain and at age 47 with many years of consistent training under my belt and the accumulated injuries that have gone along with that, maintaining strikes me as an almost best case scenario regardless of the number of sessions I put in per week. I’m sure if I got everything 100% dialed in and trained with the perfect split four times per week, I might be able to eke out another 3-5 pounds of muscle before I turn 50. Realizing that isn’t worth it to me has been very freeing as it has allowed me to spend more time doing endurance training, which I have come to realize I love and where I still have potential to improve since I neglected cardio for so long.
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Consider trying it. I’ll never look back.
What would you consider overreach and or what results would it produce? Curious to hear your opinion
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I’m glad it has worked well for you. I doubt I will ever try this, in large part because I simply love carbs and they work very well for me.
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I did carbs for years…switched over and my performance went up. MMA sparring for an hour zero rest… feel great. Steady energy.
Really good point. But sometimes it’s fun just do random stuff without any good reasoning behind it.
I tend to do training blocks where I get really focused and have zero fluff in my training. Sometimes it’s fun to be less serious and do stuff I don’t usually do or explore a little.
So I guess there’s a reasoning after all. Physical and mental break and exploration. Hahah.
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Well enjoying something is valid.
Ironically a friend of mine just came complaining because a routine hes using has hand stand push ups in it.
Asked him what his goal was which was just weight loss. Told him to sub something else in if he didnt like them.
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From my experiences it seems that most people have their IQ drop 50 point when they walk through the gym doors
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Guilty! This is why I found having training partners or a coach so helpful. They mostly prevented me from doing stupid things.
It’s not that deload is silly, its that PLANNED deload is silly.
I used to think pump stuff was stupid.
Now I do them as a recovery type day, love them!!! I’m building bullet proof shoulders from it.
How are my haters’ shoulders doing???
@burt128 my, and I would imagine many of us, cardio evolution followed closely to yours! First it was evil, then we realized it didn’t make us suddenly atrophy, then we find it helps!
On the flipside, there’s definitely been weekly marathoners wondering why they’re struggling to gain weight. Know thyself and all that.
@marine77 that’s a really fair question about why overreach, but it may a little broad for me to adequately answer. I think of it more as a tool in the kit… something akin to why bench press or why fast kind of thing. Something to use if it fits.
One example is if I had someone with a defined off season (like a football player), I would certainly work him into an overreaching phase in the summer, let’s say 6 weeks before camp, for a few reasons:
- I’d want to find where our limit actually is, so I can manage the season better
- I want him to need some real time off, so he’s hungry to crack some heads when the time comes
- I don’t want to go into camp dead, but I want a hard training phase; the over reach should allow us to recover, compensate, and coast into camp neither sore nor sluggish
- I do believe it can set up a periodized approach, where I come back to higher volumes with lower weights before really tapering for track work
- Most importantly, it sounds smart
At the end of the day, I’m definitely not arguing it’s necessary and it’s not really something I try to do or think most of us need intentionally, so it’s not a generic recommendation. It’s a method to ensure someone is actually finding their limits though.
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Personally and many may or may not agree.
A few things pop into my mind that are holding allot of people back. Especially your new younger lifters.
- The over abundance of information and view points.
- Lack of patience .
- No established specific goals.
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Surely.
Maybe I did approach the question from my personal bias, since some years ago I was one of those guys who thought everything beyond big 3/4/5 is a waste of time and having fun was somehow forbidden in training.
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