Understanding Overtraining

If you have been training for a while, chances are that you from time to time have been overdoing it. I know I have, and sometimes still do. That’s just part of the package; the name of the fitness game is progression, and to progress, you continuously need to be pushing your envelope. This is a delicate balance, but one that we really need to learn to manage better to avoid - or at least minimize - injuries and overtraining.

When talking about overtraining, we need to differentiate between the process of overtraining - sometimes referred to as overreaching - and the potential consequences if the overtraining process is allowed to persist for too long. This can lead to overtraining syndrome, a relatively severe condition which can take a very long time to recover fully from – you know, the kind of physical and mental state where you just want to curl up in fetus position in a corner of your apartment and start talking to the cockroaches. :-D

So what constitutes overtraining, then? Well, this can become as complicated as we want to make it, but what it boils down to is that your body has become fatigued. When I first started training I really didn’t understand what was happening when my progress started to slow down, eventually coming to a halt or even start to decline. Of course, I was only 12 years old at the time - this was in the late 70’s. My teenage logic advised me that the correct response to this dilemma must be to train even harder, until some older athletes at my local gym (yes, over-the-hill guys somewhere in their late teens) took pity on me and told me that I was probably overtraining. Of course, these guys didn’t know much more than that, but at least they pointed me in the right direction.

Simply put, strength training stresses your body, and your body needs time to recover from that stress before you hit the weights again. If you don’t give your body the chance to recover, you’re creating an imbalance between training and recovery which essentially pushes yourself further down the overtraining spiral.

There are a lot of different factors involved in the relation between training and recovery, but research suggests that a major part is related to the state of your central nervous system - commonly referred to as the CNS. The mechanics of the process is as follows: when you perform a certain exercise, the CNS sends an impulse to the muscle, making the muscle contract. However, the quality as well as quantity of these nerve impulses - and hence, the muscle contractions and the way you perform the movement - depends on what shape your CNS is in at any particular moment. Needless to say (but I’m doing it anyway ;-) ) - if your CNS is fatigued, your performance will suffer. So, how do we manage our training intelligently, avoiding the curse of overtraining and keeping the CNS fresh and capable? Well, first we need to examine the concept of intensity a little closer.

The level of intensity in strength training depends on a number of different aspects; the amount of weight that is lifted, how many repetitions that are performed, how many of these repetitions that are done with maximum weight, and the volume - how many sets - in a specific training session. In relation to the CNS, the most significant of these aspects is the amount of weight. Using lighter loads, while keeping the volume (sets x repetitions) high doesn’t fatigue your CNS to the same extent. Training at a higher level of intensity means that your CNS will become fatigued faster and need more time to recover. Does this mean that we should avoid training at a higher intensity? No, of course not. Maximum effort training - meaning, lifting weights that are close to your own 1-repetition max - actually also improves neuromuscular coordination, increasing the CNS’ ability to coordinate and distribute nerve impulses. In that sense, the CNS responds the same way to the training stimuli as the rest of your body; it adapts to the stress that we impose upon it. The trick is to find the appropriate balance, doing just enough to elicit an adaption that makes you stronger and fitter, while avoiding going over the top. In a perfect world, there would be a universal blueprint for this; clearly stating what constitutes “just enough”as well as “too much”. Unfortunately, we’re stuck in a world where no such blueprint exists, so we have to wing it. The good news is that we don’t have to be right 100% of the time. Occasionally overdoing it is actually not that big a problem.

Understanding variation

To make sure that we don’t get stuck in the overtraining process for too long, we need understand how to incorporate variety into our training. Some people misunderstand this concept and think that they need to confuse the muscles by frequently changing exercises. There’s nothing wrong with varying your exercises now and again - as long as you don’t do something extremely stupid, like substituting deadlifts for triceps kickbacks - but it’s really much more important to vary your intensity level. This gives your body - and above all, your CNS - a fighting chance to recover. Also, don’t confuse neuromuscular fatigue with muscle soreness. Muscle soreness is the result of a microtrauma in specific muscle tissue - like your biceps - that really has nothing to do with the state of your CNS, and - more importantly - isn’t an indication of overtraining.

Incorporating some planned variation into your training program doesn’t have to be all that complicated, at least not in a basic level - let’s face it, most of us are not peaking for the next olympics. Consider the following example:

Week 1: You perform an exercise; let’s say the squat, for 3 workouts in which you use weights at approximately 80 percent of your maximum weight for a particular rep range. If your 5-repetition maximum (5RM) is 200 pounds, this means that you would use 160 pounds for week 1.

Week 2: Again, 3 workouts, but now at 90 % of your 5RM, which would equal 180 pounds.

Week 3: The same 3 workouts, now at 100 % of your 5RM.

Over a course of 3 weeks, you have moved from 80 to 100 % of your maximum in a particular rep range. I used 5’s in my example, but the logic is the same no matter how many reps you do. What now? Well, in week 4, you could perform what is known as a deload. Deloading is nothing else than cutting back on intensity, giving your body a chance to recover. Depending on the level of fatigue, this could mean stepping it down to 70 % for your three workouts, or doing just one workout at around 85 % of your 5RM - or doing no strength training at all the fourth week.

This can become a little confusing, but it doesn’t have to be. The whole point of the deload is to allow some recovery to take place, without losing your hard-earned gains from the 3 weeks of progressively heavier training. I personally don’t feel that taking a whole week completely off is necessary (unless you are very fatigued or have some nagging injuries). I feel that a better way is to keep the number of weekly workouts constant, and instead cut back a little on intensity, by doing 8 or 10 repetitions at about 70-75 % of my maximum for that particular rep range. Because overall intensity is lower, your CNS will get a chance to recover, while you still do enough work to maintain your strength gains. As an added benefit, working with lighter weights also gives you a chance to focus on fine-tuning your technique.

So, to summarize, the whole 4-week cycle looks like this:

Week 1: 5 rep per set at 80 % of your 5RM.

Week 2: 5 reps per set at 90 % of your 5RM.

Week 3: 5 reps per set at 100 % of your 5RM.

Week 4: 8 reps per set at 70 % of your 8RM.

OK, so now you have progressively escalated the intensity, and deloaded in week 4. The next step is simply to start over again. But since you need to keep progressing, your starting point for this cycle won’t be exactly the same as the last one. If you estimated that 80 % of your 5RM was 160 pounds in the first cycle, I suggest you add about 5 pounds to all your lifts the second time around. Likewise, in the 3rd cycle, you would add another 5 pounds to all lifts. Don’t get caught up in specific percentages, though - use the example above as a template, and make whatever changes that makes sense for you. For example, you might choose to start at 70 or 90 % instead of the proposed 80 % - or you may choose to prolong the progression cycle (the weeks prior to the deload week) for another week. Some may feel that starting a cycle at 20-30 % below your maximum isn’t necessary, but I believe that it is a good idea. For one thing, starting at a lower intensity gives you the time to develop good technique and build a strong foundation, which gives your tendons and joints a chance to keep up with the increasing stress generated by the progressively heavier weights.

As you can see, this general template can be customized in a multitude of ways to accommodate your specific goals and circumstances - however, it also works pretty well just as presented. If this stuff is new to you, my advice is to start with the basic template as it is presented above. When you feel like making some changes, be smart about it. Some people fall into the “total makeover trap” and change just about everything in their training program at once. The problem with this approach is that it makes evaluating what works and what doesn’t work damn near impossible. A much more intelligent way would be to change one factor at a time; either the intensity or the length of the progression or the way you set up your deload week.

And finally, don’t overthink things. Just start doing, and the details will unfold at their on pace.

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April 11, 2009 | Filed Under Health & Fitness 

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