Remember This Thibaudeau Article?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

Christian Thibaudeau wrote an excellent article for T-Nation some time ago about how to deliberately overreach before a two-week vacation so as to profit greatly from the layoff. Does anyone remember the name of this article?

Thank you,

Ross Hunt

2

It wasn’t an article, it was a Cool Tip. linked here, if this works
http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do;?id=523651

3

Thanks, I already found that tip. It’s useful, but it basically just says ‘overreach before you take a vacation.’ C.T. wrote a full article on this subject back when T-Nation was T-Mag, complete with a full workout template as an example, if memory serves.

Does anyone remember the name of the article? ‘Overtraining,’ ‘overreaching,’
‘vacation,’ etcetera all bring up too many hits in the search engine.

4

Ross, I don’t know where the article is but here are the notes I took on it:

Use a shock microcycle. Simply put, during the week before your planned vacation you? double your training stress so that you’ll be in a state of overreaching (short term/transient overtraining) at the start of your vacation. Your body will use the first 3-4 days to recover from the intense training stress and the following 3-4 days to surcompensate. So you’ll actually grow bigger and stronger while on your vacation!

  • Increase training frequency by 1-2 days
  • Decrease rest intervals. Use only 45-60 sec. between sets, even if using heavy weights
  • Increase volume by 6-9 total sets per muscle group (or per lift structure if you’re more into powerlifting)
  • Use highly intensive methods such as the post-fatigue method, pre and post-fatigue method, drop sets and clusters for at least one exercise per muscle group
  • Train each muscle group 2-3 times during the week
    You?ll feel tired and weak at the end of the week. However you’ll be 3-5lbs heavier (mostly muscle) and stronger (5-10%) when you get back from your vacation.

Hope that helps.

Zulu (aka Paul)

5

that kind of thinking makes perfect sense. It’s called crash training. Overtrain for a short period, then rest, lots. risky, but could yield good improvement.