Skip to main content

Overtraining Doesn't Exist

Over at the "Iron Samurai" (see my "links" section), Nick Horton has a post that I wish I would have written myself.  It's entitled "Overtraining Doesn't Exist."

 I imagine the title alone would enflame many of your H.I.T. pundits or others who may think that Mike Mentzer was actually on to something.

 Here's a portion of the article:



I’m going to say something many people in the fitness industry will get pissed at me for. But I believe it to be true (within reason).
OVERTRAINING DOESN’T EXIST
That’s bullshit, of course. Overtraining is a medical syndrome that some people do get themselves into. But… it is EXTREMELY rare, and YOU have never had it.
I want you to avoid ANY thought of overtraining. In all of the years I have been coaching, I have not EVER overtrained a single athlete. Ever.
  • CNS fatigue is not overtraining.
  • Feeling tired is not overtraining.
  • A loss of appetite is not overtraining.
  • Being massively sore is not overtraining.
  • Watching your numbers and performance fall is not overtraining.
All of that is part of the adaptation process. You are SUPPOSED to feel like you are getting your ass kicked during a loading phase. If you didn’t, you weren’t loading hard enough.
Lifters always come up to me saying that they have been feeling tired and sluggish, and they wonder if it is time for a deload/taper. My answer is nearly always NO.
Why? Because feeling like shit is part of the point.
You don’t get stronger by only doing light weights that feel easy, do you? Of course not. You force your body to deal with weight that is actually TOO heavy to do comfortably to FORCE the issue. That’s what progressive resistance is all about.
Loading and deloading are simply applying those progressive resistance principles on a grander scale. A well-designed loading phase FORCES your body to adapt to a stressful situation. Without a massive amount of stress you don’t get to have massive gains. Sorry, that is just reality.
Slow gains are very common in the gym in large part because people don’t do enough work. My programs produce infamously fast gains because I make people do more. It’s not magic, it’s nothing special, it is just focusing in on the ultra basics in a big way.
Do work, son.
And here's a link to the full article:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave us some feedback on the article or any topics you would like us to cover in the future! Much Appreciated!

Popular posts from this blog

Marvin Eder’s Mass-Building Methods

  The Many and Varied Mass-Building Methods of Power Bodybuilding’s G.O.A.T. Eder as he appeared in my article "Full Body Workouts" for IronMan  magazine.      In many ways, the essay you are now reading is the one that has had the “longest time coming.”  I have no clue why it has taken me this long to write an article specifically on Marvin Eder, especially considering the fact that I have long considered him the greatest bodybuilder cum strength athlete of all friggin’ time .  In fact, over 20 years ago, I wrote this in the pages of IronMan magazine: In my opinion, the greatest all-around bodybuilder, powerlifter and strength athlete ever to walk the planet, Eder had 19-inch arms at a bodyweight of 198. He could bench 510, squat 550 for 10 reps and do a barbell press with 365. He was reported to have achieved the amazing feat of cranking out 1,000 dips in only 17 minutes. Imagine doing a dip a second for 17 minutes. As Gene Mozee once put ...
Post a Comment
Read more

More With Less

The Magic of High-Volume but Minimalistic Training      As I have pointed out more often than I can count, there are many ways and multiple paths to achieve your physical goals, whether it’s strength, power, more muscle mass, less bodyfat, or a combination of several of those goals all at once.  The key to achieving your goals, whatever they may be, lies in the proper balance of volume, frequency, and intensity, but some training plans are decidedly better than others, depending on your genetics, training history, and whatnot.  In my last essay on balance, I briefly mentioned that if I absolutely had to select one training methodology over anything else, it would be the “sub-maximal effort” method.  With strength and power roots in Eastern European countries, mostly countries from the former Soviet-bloc, this method basically involves doing multiple sets of low reps with weights that are not quite maximal—hence the name.  Almost completely ...
3 comments
Read more

Integral Bodybuilding, Part One

  A.K.A: Kenji in the Twilight My dogs Kiko and Kenji (left to right).  The reason for their picture at the start of this essay will make sense shortly. Conversations on Integral Bodybuilding Part One: A Somewhat Rambling Introduction to Integral Hypertrophy Training      I was tired.  I had spent the last hour cutting grass, running my weed eater, planting Asian lilies, and watering my gardens.  I was hot and sweaty, too.  If I still drank, I would have popped open a cold beer—porters and stouts were always my favorite—but I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in over a year.  I have a disease that robbed me of that particular joy, so I settled on a bottle of refrigerated mineral water.  It was refreshing, and what my body needed, anyway.      The sun was setting.  Twilight was upon the land.  The last vestiges of orange sunlight slipped through the canopy of trees at the edge of the rolling hi...
5 comments
Read more