What works for some (another overtraining rant)

[jjjd]

Vanilla Gorilla, I agree completely. And I am not slagging IA's routines. for all i know, they are beyond the valley of brilliant (tm). however, you simply cannot see linear progression repeatedly over time. and some posters here seem to think that this is going to be a guage of an effective routines, or more importantly, that if one DOES NOT see incremental gains workout to workout, that something is wrong, or one is "overtrained". fwiw, a good indication of overtraining is LOSS of strength - not stagnant strength levels, generally speaking. the body simply does not adapt that way. there is this myth (especially among HITTers I might add- and no i am not claiming anybody here is a HITTer) that recovery works in this way also. it does not. for example, if you worked chest on Friday and then do chest again 7 days later, a Hitter would claim this is good timing because you are completely recovered. well, recovery does not work that way. some adaptations occur over WEEKS, others - within minutes. and Doctor, as long as you are adding 5 lbs a workout - KEEP DOING it. just don't think it will last. that's not a problem with routines, or hardgainers or overtraining. it's simply a matter of adaptation and the body working at its own pace. I trained with OLers, for instance who would BUST ass day after day, week after week, and since they were at such a high level, they might not even see a 2.5 kilo increase for a month or two or more. then, BOOM - increase. all at once.

and dave tate makes some really good points. as you get closer to your (theoretical) "limit", it becomes harder and harder to make gains.

and JMweave, if you think you are FULLY recovered from a workout, a week later, you are not. that is the fallacy behind much of the HIT/Hardgainer etc. philosophies. in some respects, you are still seeing a training effect and adaptation - a week later. workout are like pulses and you are trying to raise the baseline by continuing to pulse and seeing an overall upward trend.

the vast majority of the most successful strength athletes do not train any sort of protocol that is based upon so called complete recovery - not the bulgarians, the Poles, or most powerlifting programs. it is neither necessary, or frankly - even possible to train that way. whether for strength or hypertrophy.

 

[Doggcrapp]

Good god I would love to get into this argument, as I got a whole slew of information, examples and a training stable of people that would make some of the posters on this thread look like the "idiot of the month"--but alas IM pressed for time.

 

[size]

Good god I would love to get into this argument, as I got a whole slew of information, examples and a training stable of people that would make some of the posters on this thread look like the "idiot of the month"--but alas IM pressed for time.

Come back and do it later. I enjoy reading you advice.

 

[maggmaster]

Interesting I just read through this thread and I think that the people who are trying to refute what IA says in pretty much all of his articles are looking at the medical definition of 'physical' overtraining. This definition looks at the way the body reacts when a stress to large is put on it for a long period of time Corey says he was special ops if he remebers his training period I believe it is currently a year of hard physical trainig goes into becoming an SF in the US service most people come out of that in the medical state of overtrained. Testsoterone IGF1 and T3 levels are all low faty storage would be high if teh caloric deficit wasnt so huge cortisol is through the roof you are physically dying your body is abandoning ship. Im sure any Corey remembers this feeling Im also sure he has never duplicated it through weight training for any logical period of time. Maybe if you trained every day for 10+ hours a day you would achieve the level of overtraining of an SF hopeful at the end of his training. So in a way these people who are trying to refute IA are correct but in order to understand why IA's methods work we need to look at the reasons which the military puts soldiers through this kind of training. CNS failure is usually reached long before physical failure is ever reached and as you tax your CNS and push through it you train your CNS to fail later than it would have before. The military wants to push their men to such a point that the soldiers CNS has adapted to extreme levels so failure becomes far more difficult. To a soldier who has gone through training a normal everyday task looks like nothing eb\ven combat situations are easier than what they went through in training so why would their CNS fail? Theyve adapted. The avergage trainee on the other hand has never undergone this kind of training. Their CNS will fail quickly and cause their body to stop responding. One of the people who is reuting IA said that he was a distance runner, your CNS has been trained your failure rate will probably be far higher than other peoples you have no business using yourself as an example. I was a distance runner I can dothings that other people cant I may even be able to handle more volume than others since my mind has leasrned to overcome its shortfalls. Most people however cannot gain on the kind of volume a lot of people advocate for the simple reason that their mind wont let them. Its not a aconscious decision that they "Cant handle the pain" as one person so bluntly put it, its a lack of mental training. Theyve never gone through the kind of mental preparedness training that a distance runner or a navy seal has gone through. CNS failure is not medical overttraing but it exhibits many of the same symptoms when viewed from the outside. The mind is far more powerful than the body. No one can argue that IAs systems dont work anectdotal evidence has proven that they do. His use of the word overtraining to mean CNs failure or just plain lack of gains is his perogative and I think alot of you guys are getting hung up on the semantics of it and not looking at what he is saying. He answers questions here for free guys and this is how he makes his living so be respectful. Wow this is really long Im gonn acut it off now.