Overtraining Discuss Your Experiances, Myths & Facts

[W. F. Guile]

There is alot of information out there about overtraining. Alot of us love the gym and hit it hard. So much information outthere is generalized and doesn't take in to account all the factors.

I started this to hear what others were/had experianced and discuss real world application.

[Physiologist]

no

[VaSA]

I am pretty sure i was overtraining myself last year. Like my routine was pretty good, but since i also had to work and go to school, my diet just wasn't pulling it. I felt really tired like almost all the time, i would sometimes just fall asleep while doing homework.

[Milimber]

truth-= most people who think they are overtraining are not even close

[John Hicks]

I have a lot of people ask me about grip training, grip strength and other questions... the one question that annoys me the most:

DOES WEIGHT TRAINING (lifting weights) STUNT YOUR GROWTH?

No, and anyone who tells you that it does is an idiot.

[PowerBuilder08]

I was overtraining once, back when I was 15, I was working a 6-day full-body, at the time I'd just started lifting and I had NO idea wtf I was doing. Once I lost a rep off my bench press pretty much every week I started to figure out I was f-cking something up.

[Milimber]

Originally Posted by SecretlyICry

You look like a fag in your avatar.

you look gay because you don't have an avatar

[W. F. Guile]

I apprecate it, I wasn't really refering to stunting growth or any of that. My concern was all the information that says to not train the same body part more than once a week as it interfers with the recovery process. Its the recovery process that seems to be the variable in people and can effect how often they should train.

I like the "most people who think they are overtraining probably aren't" (and if you don't squat, the terrorists do win.

I have a circut that takes about 2 hours with an average of 15 sec between sets and 60-90 seconds between excercise. I do it 2- 3 times a week and fill in the rest of the days with abs, which I am doing 5 days a week.

As far as the 'avitar'- I'm not sure thats what bodybuilding.com had in mind for forums and the like when they started this.

But if you'll read the profile I put that up knowing it didn't really belong here and it bothers me that its there, so I push out extra reps and extra sets. So it along with your comment about it are the motvitational factor. Thanks to the others for the defense.

[BigDreams21]

I learned that on bicep day, you don't need to do 9 sets worth of bicep work. A couple sets of db curls and a couple sets of barbell curls and I'm set. My bicep overtraining led to bicep tendonitis, and I've been out of the gym for 2 months because of it. Sucks.

[kmk25II45]

i originally started HIT when I started lifting which basically scares you to **** about overtraining, so I've always limited myself to 3 days a week.

HOWEVER, guys at the top of bodybuilding and powerlifting, lift hard every day (Mariusz Pudzianowski, Jay Cutler, etcc...) and usually multiple times per day.
I really don't know why they supposedly can and I can't (genetics, drugs) or if overtraining is bs.

[wangzson]

Originally Posted by kmk25II45

i originally started HIT when I started lifting which basically scares you to **** about overtraining, so I've always limited myself to 3 days a week.

HOWEVER, guys at the top of bodybuilding and powerlifting, lift hard every day (Mariusz Pudzianowski, Jay Cutler, etcc...) and usually multiple times per day.
I really don't know why they supposedly can and I can't (genetics, drugs) or if overtraining is bs.

lol buddy heard of steroids? they allow you to recovery and protect against overtraining. dont use juiced up professionals as an example.

[pineapple_guy]

Muscular overtraining is rare.

CNS overtraining isn't.

Do two widowmaker squats to failure in one day and unless you are genetically gifted, you will need at least 5+ days to recover before you can squat again.

Weight training is all about reaching muscular overload and minimising the systematic stress that can occur on your CNS.

[Beachbum1546]

I train chest, back, and arms twice a week for two hours each time and I still get results. I don't think I am overtraining, just training hard and smart. The smart comes in by having heavy and light days. One day I lift heavy weight with high volume and the second day I do low volume with different exercises.

I think if I trained high volume both days I'd overtrain but my light day is just enough to let me heal and enough to let me stimulate more growth.

[high psi]

I just lift weights a lot and eat like I weight 50 pounds more than I do. Works for me, I don't micromanage or fine tune.

[pineapple_guy]

I don't understand 'heavy' and 'light' days.

Why not just take the light day and turn it into a rest day? And focus on the days that you DO train, to add weight to the bar?

[Beachbum1546]

Originally Posted by pineapple_guy

I don't understand 'heavy' and 'light' days.

Why not just take the light day and turn it into a rest day? And focus on the days that you DO train, to add weight to the bar?

because it doesn't take me 7 days to heal.

If I trained chest every monday but I healed by thursday, why wait those three extra days? I could add another training day for growth. I'd heal by thursday so why not train it again? By the time monday rolls around I'm to be healed from thursday and now I have add another cycle of growth (2 growth cycles per week) versus just one cycle in one week.

Normal routine:
Chest monday- 1 growth cycle

My routine:
Chest monday- 1 growth cycle
Chest thursday- 1 growth cycle

Seems obvious to me


this is very similar to a 4 split that many pro-bb'ers follow. Train a bodypart once during the 4-day split, ie;

week 1
monday: chest
tuesday:legs
wednesday: back
thursday: shoulders
friday: rest
sat: chest
sun: legs

week 2
mon: back
tues:shoulder
wed: rest
thurs: chest
friday: legs
saturday: back
sunday: shoulders

etc...

[pineapple_guy]

Originally Posted by Beachbum1546

because it doesn't take me 7 days to heal.

If I trained chest every monday but I healed by thursday, why wait those three extra days? I could add another training day for growth. I'd heal by thursday so why not train it again? By the time monday rolls around I'm to be healed from thursday and now I have add another cycle of growth (2 growth cycles per week) versus just one cycle in one week.

Normal routine:
Chest monday- 1 growth cycle

My routine:
Chest monday- 1 growth cycle
Chest thursday- 1 growth cycle

Seems obvious to me


this is very similar to a 4 split that many pro-bb'ers follow. Train a bodypart once during the 4-day split, ie;

week 1
monday: chest
tuesday:legs
wednesday: back
thursday: shoulders
friday: rest
sat: chest
sun: legs

week 2
mon: back
tues:shoulder
wed: rest
thurs: chest
friday: legs
saturday: back
sunday: shoulders

etc...

How are you supposed to grow with a light weight?

[Number69]

Originally Posted by wangzson

lol buddy heard of steroids? they allow you to recovery and protect against overtraining. dont use juiced up professionals as an example.

You can still overtrain on steroids, quite easy actually.

I've overdieted and overtrained before. Everyone said I looked like I'd been awake for days, was I sick etc. I was losing up to 5lbs a week, prob half muscle, lifting way less and eating f all.

You learn from your mistakes though; if I didn't do it in an extreme way then I'd have probably done it in a a more convoluted fashion later on and not have known what was wrong.

In general, you should be fine as long as you take periodic breaks from lifting hard and eat loads.

[high psi]

I feel that my body knows best. I always try to do someone elses "routine", but end up doing my own thing because I listen to what my body tells me.

Works out well =).

[carrotguy]

a recent example would be for my abs. i started doing abs every day because everyone says abs can take it. after a week or so i noticed that i couldn't do as many reps. my abs respond a lot better if i do them only three days a week.

also, when i first started training, i didn't get enough sleep due to hours at my job (i averaged around six hours per night). i trained somewhat consistently for a year without making appreciable gains. sure, my lifts went up but it was at a very slow rate.

after getting laid off from that job, i was able to get a full eight hours of sleep. my lifts and measurements started to improve at a much faster rate.

for the three aspects of BBing: training, diet, and rest, a deficiency or excess in any of them can screw you up pretty good.

[Beachbum1546]

Originally Posted by pineapple_guy

How are you supposed to grow with a light weight?

it's heavy volume and light volume, it has nothing to do with weight.

"One day I lift heavy weight with high volume and the second day I do low volume with different exercises."

I never said I trained with light weight, just light volume.

[Camel Baron]

Originally Posted by pineapple_guy

Muscular overtraining is rare.

CNS overtraining isn't.

Do two widowmaker squats to failure in one day and unless you are genetically gifted, you will need at least 5+ days to recover before you can squat again.

Weight training is all about reaching muscular overload and minimising the systematic stress that can occur on your CNS.

interesting, tell me more

[pineapple_guy]

Originally Posted by Fiky

interesting, tell me more

5 x 5 is a good example of this style of training.

Enough sets to hit the muscle, and enough weight to really challenge it. But not even close to a 20 set per muscle group routine or a 1 set to past failure per muscle group routine, which tends to fry your CNS extremely rapidly.

[The Brotherhood]

It exist, in that if you dont give them sufficient rest (min of 48-72 hours), youll go into a state of overtraining.

However, the volume you can use during a training session without overtraining is VASTLY underestimated. You can use alot of intensity techniques and hit yourself with quite a few sets before you come close to overtraining. Your calories/macros and rest need to reflect the intensity of your workouts.

And the level at which everyone enters a state of overtraining is different for everyone, theres no fixed constant.

[pineapple_guy]

I feel that training to failure and using high intensity techniques like drop sets will lead to overtraining much quicker than doing alot of sets 2 reps or so from failure.

[Ruffian]

Over training as in getting out of bed and moving to the computer to play videogames? Cause thats the only training I ever do

[tranceaddict]

overtraining = when you do a million reps of light weighted dumbells

[AKR]

i did five hundred situps once. was that overtraining? i was 10. give me some slack.

[Guy Fawkes]

Originally Posted by Milimber

truth-= most people who think they are overtraining are not even close

Right on. Until you are spending > 10 hours per week in the gym or probably more, don't even use the word "overtraining".

[Guy Fawkes]

Originally Posted by SecretlyICry

You look like a fag in your avatar.

Where's your pic tough guy?

Originally Posted by payton34

that is true

U 2, where's your pic?

No avatar = STFU.