How and Why Planned “Overtraining” is a Key to More Size and Strength At some point, “overtraining” became a bad word in the world of strength training and muscle building. Basically, or so the thinking goes, one of the keys to making continuous progress is ensuring that you never overtrain. Many of the greatest strength athletes, not to mention strength coaches, of all time, however, thought that not only is overtraining not bad, but that it’s also a necessity once the lifter reaches a certain level. My original strength mentor was the late and great strength coach Bill Starr. Starr wrote several articles on the need for overtraining. He believed that, in order to make continuous progress, you must do “too much” for a certain period of time—the so-called “overtraining” period—before backing off after that. It was during this “de-load” period when the athlete makes the most gains, but those gain...
Essays on Old-School Strength Training, Classic Bodybuilding, Traditional Martial Arts, and Budo Philosophy