Saturday, January 14, 2012

overtraining

Overtraining

by Bill Starr
Overtraining


Sooner or later every serious strength athlete learns about overtraining. It’s a natural phase of getting stronger – sort of like falling on the ice while you’re learning to skate – and it’s bound to happen. Contrary to what most people think, however, I don’t believe that overtraining is always a bad thing. Some degree of overtraining is necessary in order for you to move to a higher level of strength. Even so, these bouts of overtraining should be limited, as problems occur when you remain in a state of overtraining for a long period of time. At best, chronic overtraining causes progress on all lifts to come to a grinding halt. More likely, the poundages slip backward. Eventually, unless you make changes, injuries rear their ugly heads.



Simply defined, overtraining is the condition that occurs when you’re doing more work than you can adequately recover from. How much is too much? As with so many other facets of strength training, this is a very individual situation. That’s one reason you should consider any routine you find in a book or magazine to be strictly a guide. For one thing the person suggesting the program may have the advantage of an almost perfect training environment, while you have to contend with a great many variables that are not at all conducive to it.

People who are engaged in jobs that require a great deal of physical or mental labor have to train differently form those who are not. People who have family responsibilities cannot be expected to follow the same routines as college students who have nothing to do but study and train.

Contrary to popular opinion, age is not a factor in overtraining. Older men can handle a considerable workload if they have a history of doing manual labor, and that, not age, is the key point. Young men who have done hard work can always handle a much higher workload almost immediately as opposed to those who spent most of their early years in front of the television and believe that carrying out the garbage is physically demanding. I’ve put 50-year old men on strenuous programs, and they thrived because they had a background of doing hard work, while the same routines often stopped teenagers in a short time because they never had to extend their body and force it to do something severe.

Genetics is certainly a major factor when it comes to overtraining. Having strong, healthy parents is a genuine plus, but that’s one variable no one can control. In the long run, genes aren’t nearly as important as desire. Most of the people who make it to the top in any strength endeavor start out on the low end of the strength scale. Hard work and determination can always overcome genetics – with the obvious exceptions of those inherited conditions that cause physically debilitating injuries.

At a certain time of the year there are other factors that intervene and cause overtraining. Weather is one. I do my summer training at Sam Fielder’s gym. There’s no air conditioning, and when it gets East Coast muggy, the routine that I was able to work through easily suddenly becomes most formidable. If I don’t adapt my routine to compensate for the heat and humidity, I become overtrained. All I really have to do is eliminate my auxiliary exercises until I get used to the oppressive weather, and then I’m fine.

Stress is perhaps one of the biggest factors in overtraining. When stress steps in, a productive routine can suddenly become too much. College students can appreciate this concept more than most. My athletes at Hopkins will be rolling along nicely, making gains at every workout, until midterms or finals arrive. At that point at least half of them become overtrained right away. Adaptations have to be made or the vast majority of them will get sick or injured. It doesn’t matter why you become stressed out. What’s important is that you recognize that the stress is there and deal with it by adjusting and altering your strength program.

Overtraining is directly linked to recovery. Again, individuals differ greatly in their ability to recover. Some become overtrained from a relatively small amount of work. For that group progress comes very slowly, but it will come if they’re persistent. Others are able to manage rather huge workloads from the very beginning. The people in that group typically have good genetics and a background of doing lots of hard work when they were young. Even so, the rules are the same for both groups. No matter who you are, do too much work for too long and eventually you’ll become overtrained.

Overtraining is not always easy to spot. Being sore isn’t the same as being overtrained. Merely being tired at a workout is also not a sure clue, because everyone has a day in which he or she just doesn’t want to be in the gym. Overtraining isn’t the same as being completely spent after a grueling session. That’s the idea behind a heavy day. The reason you schedule the light day after the heavy day is to enable you to do some work when you’re still sore and tired.

When Olympic weightlifting was the primary strength sport, everyone did snatches and clean and jerks. Whenever lifters became overtrained they lacked snap in those quick movements. This effect was fairly easy to see and feel. On exercises that you should perform more slowly, however, it’s not quite so simple. I can usually spot it because I see my athletes regularly. If I see their form breaking down even when they’re concentrating fully, I know they’re overtrained.

Another clue is sleep. When trainees tell me they’re so tired, they unable to get to sleep, then I know they’re in a state of chronic overtraining.

There are, of course, degrees of overtraining. People who have pushed their workload up for several weeks may find themselves slightly overtrained. All they need to do is pull back their load the following week and they’ll be fine. On the other hand, people who have slipped into an overtrained state, not recognized it and continues to push on will have to completely revamp their program in order to recover properly.

Too often, when people believe they’re overtrained, they stop going to the gym completely, taking a long break in order to recover.

Then there are the experts who advocate programs that are designed to allow athletes to take several days off between sessions so they’ll always be fresh and rested when they train. I don’t like either of those concepts. I believe the body has to be placed in an overtrained state in order for it to become stronger. It’s much like the principle of overloading: The body will respond positively only when it’s put under more stress.

The physical plant has to be placed under increasingly more pressure or it won’t get stronger. The body is inherently lazy. Given a choice, it would always prefer to lie on a couch in front of the TV and be fed. Going into a hot gym and defying gravity is never a preference, but our egos override the physical sluggishness and make the body work so we can look and feel better or play some sport proficiently.

I compare the process of getting stronger to that of going through the rigors of boot camp. At some point you become so fatigued that you can actually fall asleep while standing, but when the orders come, the body responds and does the required work. This is motivated by fear, but it proves that everyone is sitting on a giant reservoir of energy he or she seldom has to tap. In time all servicemen and women experience that breakthrough, when they can suddenly do more and not be nearly as tired. If they were allowed to rest between exercise bouts, that would never happen.

This idea is particularly applicable to athletes. Contests are won in the final minutes, when the body is the most tired and battered. Those who have prepared themselves for the final push by conditioning their bodies to handle stress and gain a higher strength level will always come out on top.

So how should you go a bout dealing with overtraining? You know that too much is a negative, but never becoming overtrained at all is also not conducive to long-range progress. The trick is to slide into a state of overtraining, then pull back slightly. You can do this not by skipping a workout but by lowering your workload for the following week. That’s why I believe it’s critical to calculate the weekly workload, which is the only way you can really know exactly how much total work you performed in a given session or week. Experienced lifters can do this without figuring the numbers because they know all they have to do is lower the top-end weights, drop some back-off or eliminate a few auxiliary exercises. Those who don’t have the background of long years of training, however, would be wise to take the time to figure their weekly workload.

After the lighter week push forward again, perhaps exceeding what you did on the heaviest week. Then pull back slightly and repeat the process. The principles in strength training are much like those followed by distance runners. Runners know that if they want to run a marathon, they must log 50 or more miles in a week of running. They certainly cannot expect to do this right away or they’d become overtrained instantly. They start with a distance they can handle, such as four runs of five miles each. Once these become easy, they add slowly, perhaps only a half-mile per session. Slowly but steadily they extend the distance until they’re eventually doing the necessary mileage. Like strength athletes, runners also stagger their distances, using the heavy, light and medium concept.

If runners find that they’re pushing out too fast, they cut back on their distances until they’re able to recover. Note that they don’t stop running; they just cut back. That’s the point I’m trying to get across. Just because you’re overtrained doesn’t mean you should skip a workout. All you have to do is alter the program. Skipping sessions builds bad habits and establishes a pattern. Before you know it, any day in which you have low energy becomes a reason for not going to the gym.

Contrary to what most people think, the biggest reason hat they become overtrained isn’t the work they did on the heavy day but rather what they did on the light day. Once again, figuring the workload can prevent this problem. There has to be a light day after a heavy one – no exceptions. As I’ve discussed in previous installments of this series, a light day refers to the relative amount of weight used in exercises for the various bodyparts. For example, for the shoulder girdle I have my athletes do bench presses on their heavy day. If they’re on a three-day-a-week schedule, they do inclines at their next workout. They work the inclines just as hard as they did the flat benches, but the natures of the two exercises are such that the inclines will be much lighter. A 300-pound bench presser will be able to use 205 to 215 for reps, and that puts the exercise right in the 70 percent range – exactly where it needs to be for the light day.

If they’re doing a four-day routine, Tuesday should be lighter than Wednesday, and overhead presses satisfy this requirement. Our 300-pound bencher will have to work to use 175 on the overhead press, but since that’s only about 60 percent of his bench, it fills the bill.

You also have to consider tonnage on these light days. All too often people add extra movements, trying to hit weak spots. Since they’re rather easy exercises, the lifters assume they won’t have an adverse effect, but the weight all adds up. It’s similar to what happens when distance runners start doing an extra mile of sprints after their regular runs.

Keeping track of training time is one of the best ways to accommodate the heavy, light and medium principle. As a general rule 1 ¾ hours is adequate for the heavy day, an hour is fine for the light day, and 1 ½ hours works for the medium day. More-experienced strength athletes can stretch out the times some, but if they cheat too much, they’ll become overtrained for sure.

When I see that people are overtrained, I have them make some adjustments. First, I lower their workload. I don’t always cut back on the intensity, since in many cases they’re still able to deal with heavy weights. They just can’t train hard for as long a session as they were doing previously. I have them eliminate all auxiliary work. I switch them off all high-skill exercises, for if they do these while they’re overtrained, they’re going to pick up bad form habits. Instead of a high-skill movement like power snatches, I switch them to bent-over rows or wide-grip shrugs. This is also a fine time to introduce some new exercises into the program. New exercises hit some different muscle groups, and the bodyparts respond favorably. They also generate enthusiasm because gains come quickly, which is great for motivation. Finally, I make certain they shorten their workouts. Often it’s the extra beach work that’s the culprit.

In many situations lifters can avoid becoming overtrained in the first place if they’re simply aware enough of their body’s limitations in a given situation. For example, all students have weeks in which most of their energies are applied to actually learning something. All-night study sessions leave them drained, mentally and physically. To attempt to do the same heavy workout the next day that they’d do it they hadn’t pulled an all-nighter is a disaster waiting to happen. By substituting a light workout in place of a heavy one, however, they accomplish two positive things. They keep their rhythm of consistent training, and they leave the gym feeling good about themselves because they were able to do what they planned on doing.

Since overtraining is directly related to recovery, it follows that nutrition and rest are two key variables. Rest tops the list in my book. Nothing is as critical to my training as getting enough rest. In my case that’s a lot of rest. Others don’t need nearly as much, but the fact remains that whenever people become overtrained, they need extra rest. How much extra depends entirely on individual requirements, but it’s far more important than most people believe.

When I know I’m overtrained, I up my supplement intake, giving special attention to protein, minerals, vitamin C and the B-complex group. The protein aids the recovery process tremendously, as do the vitamins and minerals – especially during hot, humid weather. Often, it’s just a matter of taking more minerals or another gram of C. I also find that when I’m overtrained, I have difficulty getting to sleep, although I’m tired to the bone. Magnesium-calcium tablets work like magic for this, and they’re perfectly safe, even in large doses.

Becoming overtrained is a natural part of getting stronger. In fact, some degree of overtraining is absolutely necessary if you want to move on to a higher degree of strength. It only becomes a negative when you don’t recognize it or when you ignore it. If you continue to attempt hard and heavy training when you’re in a chronically overtrained state, your progress will cone to a halt. More serious, however, is the fact that your overtrained body will be very vulnerable to injury. In order to get extremely strong, you must learn to recognize the signs of overtraining and make the necessary adjustments.

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