Thread: What exactly is overtraining?

If you do too many sets for you personally, your body won't recover for a long period of time, like more than a week, and if you are having too litle rest between training the same muscle twice it's like driving a car with a faulty engine and not letting the mechanic have a enough time to repair it fully :P I know one thing, it varies from person to person, some people do 4 sets for muscle and its enough, some do 20. A professional bodybuilder once told me that something like 80% of bodybuilders overtrain 90% of the time.

Not allowing a muscle group to recover before training it again.

You should perform the precise number of sets necessary per bodypart to realize growth. Even though many people have made gains using multiple sets, you should perform no more than 1-3 sets per bodypart. You may do this type of training using either full-body or split routines, with 4-10 days between workouts. Once you have trained at most three cycles witout progress, you are overtrained. At that point, stop all training for 1-2 weeks, preferrably 2 weeks; whereupon you resume training with reduced volume, significantly reduced!

Effects

Mental and Physical performance.

Originally posted by plouffe
Not allowing a muscle group to recover before training it again.

overtraining is much than that.

Here, lets just do a break down:

The Effects of Overtraining can lead to:

Weakened Immune System:
Why? : High performance athletes have chronically lowered immune systems. The high level of training leaves their immune systems frequently depressed so that, for example, if a group of athletes is training together, a flu bug will rapidly make its way around. It is said that, in immunological terms, high-performance athletes are some of the least healthy people around.

Amenorrhea:
Why? :Many young female athletes in training experience absent menstrual cycles due to low body fat content. Exercising women with regular menstrual cycles and amenorrheic women who do not exercise excessively demonstrate a clear diurnal rhythm of leptin levels. Exercising women with amenorrhea lose this normal rhythm, which raises the possibility that this cycle is important for the maintenance of reproductive function. Leptin levels normally rise during the afternoon and reach a peak in the early hours of the morning, then decline towards dawn.

For some women, simply explaining the need for adequate calorific intake to match energy expenditure results in increased intake and/or reduced exercise, and their menses resume. For those women in whom no other cause of amenorrhea can be found, but who are unable or unwilling to either increase food intake or decrease the amount of exercise, estrogen replacement therapy is strongly indicated. Appropriate therapy consists of any estrogen replacement regimen that includes endometrial protection.


I'm sorry. I just don't have time to do this. I usually try to be so helpful but, given I'm on a timeline here with year end, I really need to stay focused on technology vs. health. Please accept my apologies. I'm sorry.

Cont'd

Signs, Symptoms & Indicators of the Effects of Overtraining.

Vision Disturbances
Irritability
Being Anxious/Nervous
Individual Weak Muscles

Risk Factors for The Effects of Overtraining.
Excellent HDL Levels:
Very vigorous exercise and regular long-term heavy aerobic exercise can cause HDL levels to become especially elevated. This is in keeping with the fact that exercise raises HDL levels, and demostrates that overexertion produces further elevations. It is unlikely that there are any negative effects from this elevation, only cardiovascular benefits.

Treatment:

REST REST REST!!!!!!

Even if muscles are recouped, your CNS may not be!

You may want to complete a break down on CNS for those who do not know or understand what that is and how it impacts......


You owe me an email.........

Originally posted by dg806
Even if muscles are recouped, your CNS may not be!

true dat!

i think i'm overtraining

i just need more sleep + rest, just went from 3 to a 4 day split and have worked 2 8hour shifts over the weekend (at a new job... when normally i'd be resting)

today i've felt real weird, i've been burning up a bit, nervous, not standing straight, totally brain-dead, very stressed... its weird, i'm in no pain so 'm not ill just blatently exhausted

so after writing that i'm off to get my cottage cheese and hit the sack, very very tired!

peace

Get some sleep and be sure to listen to your body. If you're moody, etc......take a couple days off. Go back when you feel good, physically and mentally.

Learning to read your body is probably one of the hardest, but definitely most important things you can do. I was so used to sticking to a schedule of working out, that I wouldnt miss a day for anything, when in all honesty I should have been going to the gym when my body was more recovered. Now I workout about every 3 to 4 days, and Im making much better progress. To each his own, but learn to listen to your body

I agree with the post above

Overtraining is different for everyone. I have friend that started working out aoubt 4 years ago when he was 17. He now weighs around 180 at 5'9. I think he started out around 150 or so. He can now bench 360. He training routine seems like overtraining to me but he continues to improve and the only thing he takes is cell-tech. He works each body part twice a week, Monday thru Saturday. Its the amount that he does each workout that dumbfounds me. He is doing 9 or more sets for each body part per workout. So he is doing 18 or more sets per body part a week. I dont see how he can do that without burning out, unless he was juiced up. But once again, he is young and is not being affected like others might be.

Its simple. Our bodies have a limited amount of recovery ability...this is both local (individual muscles) and systemic (our whole nervous system). Doing too many sets will cause a myriad of negative reactions within the body, which is what we call overtraining.

When a muscle is hit with too many sets, you will tear down fibers to the point that they will not properly recover.

Doing too many sets will begin to overtax the nervous system and without systemic recovery, their cannot be growth.

Doing too many sets will keep you in the gym longer and will cause a negative hormonal balance...too much cortisol and not enough testosterone. This means zero growth, and maybe even muscle atrophy.

We must have some reserve energy in order to recover from training because it is during THIS time that growth occurs. Think of it like this...when we train we dig a big hole (a negative state)... when we recover we fill in this whole (a neutral state)...when we overcompensate (our goal) we put some dirt on top of the hole to make a mound and we are now in a positive (read: bigger muscles/more strength) state.

So, we need to split our energy between 3 things:

-training
-recovery
-overcompensation

I agree 100% gopro, just find it odd that my friend can go at it the way he does and still see results the way he is. I have never had an easy time at gaining the mass or strength, guess Im just jealous.

Originally posted by flexster
I agree 100% gopro, just find it odd that my friend can go at it the way he does and still see results the way he is. I have never had an easy time at gaining the mass or strength, guess Im just jealous.

GENETICS is a huge part of all this. Some people have advantages that we could only dream of.

If you need alot of rest would it be ok if lets say you have a weeks vacation from work/school and all you did was sleep. Just slept like 14 hours a day and relaxed for a week with a proper diet. Would that be a bad thing or a good thing?

It's not always a matter of too many sets alone; what's too little or too much is different for everyone.

Rather, too many sets taken too close (if not to) failure. And if you live a stressful life, it's that much worse.

If you train GVT-style or ROB-style, you can get away with more sets than you're accustomed to--assuming you're not doing a ridiculous number of sets to begin with.

If just about every set is taken to failure, or close to it, then you have to either reduce your number of sets, or decrease your intensity.

Thanks everyone for your responses, has been really helpful.

Also, its not just your muscle that you could be overtraining. Studies suggest muscles actually could be ready for another workout anywhere from 24 to 72 hours (depending on your genetics and such), but your CNS (central nervous system) usually takes much longer to fully recover, making most of us have to wait more days than people who have extremely fast recovery rates, usually due to genetics, anabolics, or both.

And perhaps that should lead one to think:

What can I do to minimize the impact on my CNS? Do I have to constantly lift with the greatest instensity in order to stimulate growth?

dammit, you can't just ask a question like that without answering it

LOL

Fair enough

Avoid failure, or rather, cycle volume and intensity.

And, yes, one doesn't have to train with high intensity----for the sake of this argument, defined as a set taken to either momentary or absolute failure---in order to gain strength or size.

If you're powerlifting, does any or every set have to be taken to failure in order to gain? No.

If you're bodybuilding, does any or every set have to be taken to failure in order to make progress? No, for if that were the case, GVT and other volume oriented approaches wouldn't work at all.

As they say, variety is the spice of life.

I do mix up my workout, as far as reps and exercises... but the one constant is that I typically do 3-4 sets per exercise... I always take the last rep of the last set to momentary failure... I'm working each bodypart about once every 5-6 days... Is this going to impede my progress?

Originally posted by Dante B.
LOL

Fair enough

Avoid failure, or rather, cycle volume and intensity.

And, yes, one doesn't have to train with high intensity----for the sake of this argument, defined as a set taken to either momentary or absolute failure---in order to gain strength or size.

If you're powerlifting, does any or every set have to be taken to failure in order to gain? No.

If you're bodybuilding, does any or every set have to be taken to failure in order to make progress? No, for if that were the case, GVT and other volume oriented approaches wouldn't work at all.

As they say, variety is the spice of life.

Once you reach a certain level, I respectfully disagree. Or at least firmly believe the most effective approach is total failure training.

If overtraining was meerly performing too many sets per week or per session then people like John Defendis would never be a big as they are. Read the "Intensity or Insanity" articles here: http://www.defendis.com/html/hardcore.html
Overtraining comes from not allowing your body sufficient time to rest before submitting it to the stresses of an intense workout. The amount of time it takes for ones body to prepare itself for the next routine varies from person to person. Typicaly it takes between 24-72 hours. We each have to determine that time frame on our own. I found a simple method of determinig your optimum rest period in a booklet called X-adaptation starting on page 40. PM me and I'll e-mail it to you. The security settings would not allow me to copy/paste the info into this page.