Over training? advice please!

[Luigi]

besides from that its been an interesting discussion, i dont think theres any need to look at graphs etc. to find out what you should be doing, just eat and train according to how you wanna look and you will achieve this in time. keep it simple and you cant go wrong.

in saying that, if your at the top of your chosen sport then you need every advantage you can get so can see it being useful in that respect.

[musclenz]

I for one appreciate the input we see on here from people like HP & Phedder who apply their knowledge of the science & physiology to questions like this, as much as I do from my friend Dr Squat & many others who have a huge amount of practical experience to base their advice on. Thats what makes these discussions interesting & informative. Although much of the information we see is subjective, it provides for great reading & quite contemplation. Sometimes the Teacher, Sometimes the Student.

[ThePman]

Sound explanation HP. This might help some people visualize it better.

Do you have any references for the research behind this? I assume it is more than just a theory?

Not likely. It's very poorly studied in the Western nations, with most of this either being a holdover from very (very) old research or just lifted from Selye's abstracted GAS model (which was never meant to be more than an idea on how things adapt in concept). This is changing in recent years but still not a lot to draw on.

The contemporary outlook is that you can't look at recovery as a simple wave of stress -> compensation -> supercompensation because there's not one "thing" that is stressed when you train. What's supercompensating? The nervous system? Downstream hormonal signals? Protein synthesis? Mechanical damage to the connective tissues? This model doesn't make any kind of distinction; it just says "hit, recover, the end". Too many things are being stressed and have their own recovery time-scales for that to be relevant. Overly simplified to the point of useless.

Even sports science doesn't think much of that original model any more; the updated model uses a "two factor" or fitness-fatigue approach which is still oversimplified but at least accounts for the fact that the positive gains of a workout are different from the negative after-effects of fatigue, and that the positives will outlast the negatives by some degree (which is why you can still improve over time).

Blah blah blah, long story short, looking at recovery as a short-term workout-to-workout process isn't very useful. Recovery is a summation of a lot of variables; you're virtually never fully recovered, even with 1-2 weeks off. If you bother to concern yourself with this at all (most people probably shouldn't), then you'd do better to zoom out and look at things over a span of multiple workouts or multiple weeks of training.

Also: overtraining in the real clinical sense of the term isn't likely to hit anybody who's tooling around in the gym for 1-2 hours 3-6 days a week. Most of the negative effects of that are in your head.

[Jigga]

In essence this makes sense but I think it dramtically over-simplifies things. How can someone like Pat Mendes thrash himself with 1RM squats everyday and be squatting 350kg at 20 y/o? This graph implies he shouldn't be able to squat the bar.

There is so much that sports scientists can't explain comprehensively. If they could there would just be one workout that everyone in the world would do. The best you can do is keep experimenting. Try training with different frequencies, intensity, volume and keep an eye on your progress. Stick with what gives you the best results and mix it up when you plateau.

[EMC]

articles please...

[Phedder]

I originally posted that graph to help provide a visual for what HP had explained. I by no means believe it to be all inclusive, and it is a gross oversimplification of the many processes at play, of which I don't claim to know the complete ins and outs (one day I hope) But it is just a graph, used to aid in the basic understanding of a basic concept. In relation to the OP it may have helped him understand what HP was saying about perhaps waiting too long between trainings, and if so it served the purpose. I understand that there are far too many factors at play to possibly provide a simple and accurate image of how the body responds to training. Pick one, not both.

I most definitely support sticking to the 'basics' of training, but as PD said the basics are subjective. What's basic to one person may be rather complicated to another. Once you've mastered the typical 'basics' of train, eat, sleep, repeat why stop there? Why not continue learning and refining your training regime, diet, sleep patterns etc. Things can always be improved, and improvement takes greater knowledge. Personally I've always been too curious for my own good, I can accept that some things work and some things don't, and that they can work better for some and not at all for others, but I also always want to understand why and how things work or not.

As to the whole science versus experience debate which seems to have popped up, why choose one? They compliment each other perfectly. Obviously you won't make any progress just by reading about research, but if you understand the anatomy, physiology, biochemistry etc behind training and diet, you're likely to be able to train much more effectively than someone who just grabbed a program off the internet and followed it to the letter. What happens to that person once their progress slows or stalls, randomly pick another program and hope it works? Having the knowledge allows a person to assess what's going on and what needs to be changed to start progressing again.

[PeterDolan]

Good post Phed

[nate225]

As to the whole science versus experience debate which seems to have popped up, why choose one? They compliment each other perfectly.

Well said :clap:

[funkyfly]

Until recently I trained 6-7 days / week, and was training each body part every 5 days. For the last 3 weeks I have cut back to 5 days per week (sat and sun off) so each body part gets trained every 7-8 days. Ive noticed ive been getting way more sore (DOMS) than before due to the bigger gap between workouts. :grin:

In your opinion will this result in more gains??

Feedback please!!!

Wow a lot of interesting discussion on this one. Ive been reading and devouring muscle mags for a year now and have never come across this "supercompensation" theory before, very interesting.

On the graph above it shows "too hard workout" in red, yet we are told to kill our legs, even to the point where you can only crawl out the gym, so then what is a "too hard workout"? Do your legs have to fall off before its considered too hard?

[JOSEF RAKICH]

Pfft, over-training by high volume is no such thing, you cannot over-train a muscle in a single workout.

If anything you are just under-eating and under-sleeping. Over-training IMO is a myth (except for over-training of the CNS, thats different) but over training a certian muscle group with high volume workouts.. Come on seriously..

"but hey if you do more than 9 sets for biceps you will be over-trainnig them"

Do 1000 sets if you really want, it will not be "over-training" using high volume is fine. Volume is actually one form of over-load. Over-load is a principle of muscle hypertrophy, for the muscle to grow you need to over-load it, either with weight/reps/stress/volume/etc.. using high volume is a form of over-load.

Training biceps everyday however though, training the muscle again before it has time to recover/grow, then you could possibly call that "over-training" but its bullshit when people say only do X amount of sets for this muscle group because its small.