Thread: "overtraining" Answere This

Originally Posted by Tough Old Man

I here a lot about overtraining. In 1970 I took a construction job that required workers to climb 30" ladders. Each day I climbed over a mile high by ends day. I weighed 183 lbs when I started that job and left it a year later to go back to school. When i quit that job i weighed 194 lbs. Here's what happened though. My thighs ended up measuring 29 1/2" when i left that job causing me to have to have all my pants altered. How come my thighs grew so large. Why weren't they overtrained from using them 5 days a week, preventing them from getting that big.

Now do you think I believe in overtraining?

Sending your body weight (190ish) up ladders a bunch of times is not too much different from running bleachers or doing the stair master for 2 minutes and taking long rests inbetween. It does not really break down the muscle like anaerobic weight lifting to the point of overtraining.

I think there are more than just workload factors that account for Overtraining. As with most things in our life out side factors play a role. In this case. Diet, Sleep, Stress

Originally Posted by Tough Old Man

Now do you think I believe in overtraining?

Many variables are involved in overtraining, that example certainly does not disprove it.

Diet & nutrition, sleep, age, recovery ability, hormones levels, etc.

I should of added, I wasn't just climbing ladders for my health, I was carrying crap up them

I believe in overtraining. I overtrained my right shoulder this week.

Originally Posted by Tough Old Man

I should of added, I wasn't just climbing ladders for my health, I was carrying crap up them

oh well, now that you added that I am convinced there is no such thing as overtraining.

lol, there is such a thing as overtraining, just, its harder to get to when you take gear...

IMO u were not carrying heavy crap up them. You did not produce an overload, instead you were endurance trianing. Heavy endurance training is a factor that contributed greatly to your hypertrophy.

on a similar note:
everything time u overload the muscle, fibers frey. This is where the building happens. further freying freyed fibers is called overtraining.

sweet alliteration 4 times COMBO!!!! i gotta get some sort of award here...

Originally Posted by Machher

IMO u were not carrying heavy crap up them. You did not produce an overload, instead you were endurance trianing. Heavy endurance training is a factor that contributed greatly to your hypertrophy.

on a similar note:
everything time u overload the muscle, fibers frey. This is where the building happens. further freying freyed fibers is called overtraining.

sweet alliteration 4 times COMBO!!!! i gotta get some sort of award here...

50 points to you.

Think backwards TOM. How big would your thighs have been had you been able to control the workout frequency and duration? Add sup's and the right amounts of rest ... you mighta gotten way more bigger if you had been able to control those factors. Instead you had to work your ass of and overtrain so you could only gain a little ... JMHO.

Heck guys I wouldn't of wanted any bigger thighs. Hell my waist then was 34. with 29' thighs it cost me a lot of monet to alter my pants as it was. Hell i was only about 18-19 years old then.
Quote from our admin.
oh well, now that you added that I am convinced there is no such thing as overtraining.
Robert Sorry I wasn't trying to be funny.

I understand where you all are coming from.

One only has to open a book with so much as a page of stress physiology to prove that the body can only tolerate so much stress, viz. the General Adaptation Syndrome: (1) alarm state (2) resistance or adaptive state (3) exhaustive state.

If exercise where NOT a stressor, then the body would NOT have to adapt to it, and your body would remain in homeostasis (eg. you wouldn't get bigger or stronger). So unless the GAS is wrong, then you can overtrain (that is reach a point of complete regression as the body can no longer handle the stressor).

One can argue many points as to how long it takes for one to be overtrained, and frankly that's a conversation that most people won't even pay attention to because they're set in their beliefs. Regardless, overtraining is very real.

The whole overtraining scenario confuses me greatly.

You have to work hard to get gains, yet there is such a fine line between working hard and working too hard? I wish overtraining didn't even exist, lol

another thing that should be mentioned is that when most people overtrain they typically overtrain their CNS (working to failure on all sets with many workouts a week), then comes endocrine system OT, and after all that is when your muscles actually get overtrained. You will not overtrain your CNS by digging holes or climbing ladders or anything as you are not working anywhere close to failure and are instead working aerobically (leading to sarcoplasmi hypertrophy).

Originally Posted by Duncans Donuts

One only has to open a book with so much as a page of stress physiology to prove that the body can only tolerate so much stress, viz. the General Adaptation Syndrome: (1) alarm state (2) resistance or adaptive state (3) exhaustive state.

way to elaborate on what i said in spanish

Originally Posted by Machher

way to elaborate on what i said in spanish

Spanish? I thought you were rapping.

You made a great point though.

Another thing to keep in mind is people train for different goals and different expressions of muscularity.

Bodybuilding, for instance, is primarily concerned with size and aesthetics.

Many sports emphasize other factors, such as strenght to weight ratio (powerlifting, wrestling, martial arts, gymnastics) where the goal is to accumulate massive strength while keeping bodyweight and even size low.

When I ran track and cross country in college, our workouts would be considered overtraining by anyone on this board. However, this is accepted practice if you want to run very fast. I had crazy striated quads and calves that were abnormally strong for their size, yet I had never touched a weight, save repping leg extensions to show off or something.

Point is, it depends on what you want. Personally, I want to be very strong in an agile package for sports. My routine is probably going to vary, and what would be "overtraining" for you might be warming up for me.

And of course, there are a million things you can do, not in the gym, that increase your ability to train and endure longer sessions. Number One is lots of sleep and a midday nap. Number Two is ultra clean lifestyle--as in zero alcohol or recreational drugs (how many Olympic sprinters smoke a spliff or have a beer the night before a race?).

I think what TOM is getting at is that there sometimes seems to be an overabundance of "overtraining" paranoia, and this sometimes looks like people are just being babies and afraid to workout hard, the same way that 90's softy pseudo-psychology made people afraid to have an opinion for fear of bothering their neighbor.

Genetics depending, I think unless you're lifting to the point of puking (or nearly puking) for more than 1:15 for 5 days a week, you're not overtraining. Most of the people I hear talking about overtraining don't train hard enough, IMO. Not disagreeing that OT exists, just referencing the simple fact that the people who rise to elite levels generally don't worry about overtraining constantly.

Allright man try this split.

M-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

T-hams,shoulders,tris,bis

W-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

Th-hams,shoulders,tris,bis,chest

F-chest,quads,back,calves.abs

S-hams,shoulders.tris,bis

SU-chest,quads,shoulders,tris,bis,abs

Hah...who's split is that? That's retarded.

Did you grab that from FLEX magazine?

Originally Posted by njc

Allright man try this split.

M-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

T-hams,shoulders,tris,bis

W-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

Th-hams,shoulders,tris,bis,chest

F-chest,quads,back,calves.abs

S-hams,shoulders.tris,bis

SU-chest,quads,shoulders,tris,bis,abs

Your joking right?

Originally Posted by njc

Allright man try this split.

M-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

T-hams,shoulders,tris,bis

W-chest,quads,back,calves,abs

Th-hams,shoulders,tris,bis,chest

F-chest,quads,back,calves.abs

S-hams,shoulders.tris,bis

SU-chest,quads,shoulders,tris,bis,abs

Oh yeah, and forearms everyday.

Preceding each workout, you do a three mile jog for warmup and a 1-1/2 mile cooldown afterwords.

Originally Posted by brodus

Hah...who's split is that? That's retarded.

Did you grab that from FLEX magazine?

wtf? That split is bloody insane.

He's making a point, he doesn't really train like that ( I now realize) If you think that a routine like that is over training, he proved his point.

When I ran track and cross country in college, our workouts would be considered overtraining by anyone on this board. However, this is accepted practice if you want to run very fast. I had crazy striated quads and calves that were abnormally strong for their size, yet I had never touched a weight, save repping leg extensions to show off or something.

Point is, it depends on what you want. Personally, I want to be very strong in an agile package for sports. My routine is probably going to vary, and what would be "overtraining" for you might be warming up for me.

What kind of track did you do? Because it makes a big difference. The best ways to get fast are to drill specifically to perform that which you hope to achieve (eg. sprinters don't train like cross country runners) while using general strength training to increase force potential.

However, this is accepted practice if you want to run very fast.

You didn't properly define what exactly this practice is, and likewise, who specifically accepts it. The fact that some belief is widely regarded as truth does not verify it.

what would be "overtraining" for you might be warming up for me

You may be right, but the range to which one can tolerate stress is limited, period. We all can come to a point of diminishing returns in relationship to the amount of exercise performed, wherein there is a cessation of progress and a likely regression to follow. Again, one might be interested in discovering this for themselves, but I really don't think enough thought or gauging take place in terms of the measurements of exercise (eg. intensity, volume, rep range, time under tension, sets, exercises performed, etc.) for any average trainer to figure out what that level is for him.

I would suspect that most people either underestimate (Mentzer style every 10 day HIT) or overestimate (Weider) what they need and, typically, the average physique will demonstrate this reality. From my observations, the best physiques are typically the ones held by:

a) genetic freaks
b) steroid abusers
c) intelligent, hypothesizing trainees

Chances are you'll want to fall into the last category..