The Myth: Overtraining or Under Eating?

[quote]ajweins wrote:

To the OP, read Bauer’s thread in the T-cell and get his take on overtraining.[/quote]

be careful, while i generally agree with Bauer on his take on overtraining, i’m just saying in general be careful some people out there, everyone’s different, everyone’s recovery levels are different, some need more sleep, more food, more time in between workouts.

Just because one person hasn’t experienced overtraining doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I am merely saying this because i know there are many very impressionable people who lurk these forums and if they read something they believe it completely (think author fanboys, or HIT jedis)

[quote]ajweins wrote:
elano wrote:
Alright, Im going to stop here because I think my point is clear and you guys are just nitpicking. I just used 6000 calories as an over-exaggerated example. Of course thats way too much, but my point was that eating more will not prevent or solve an overtrainng problem.

The problem lies in the lifters ability to stress his/her body to the point that they cannot recover from it between workouts.

Actually you are the one who is nitpicking. The OP was asking if people generally see overtraining as a real possibility, or is progress usually haulted by lack of calories.

The overwhelming consensus is that 95% of the time it is a lack of calories that is the problem. You are claiming that a person can train to the point of where no amount of calories can prevent them from overtraining. Sure, this may be true, but do you see it as a regular occurance?

Has anyone for that matter? This is the point Vader made and pretty much sums up the question.

To the OP, read Bauer’s thread in the T-cell and get his take on overtraining.[/quote]

Actually the OP was asking [quote]
Do you agree or disagree? that “There is no such thing as over training just under eating.” [/quote]

I have stated my opinion: Disagree
Are you agreeing with this statement ajweins?
Do you think that there is no such thing as overtraining?

[quote]josh86 wrote:

I think for the majority at 150lbs it would be pretty damn hard to overtrain eating 6000+ calories a day. At that weight you are weak as shit (except for maybe some extremely short/freak of nature individuals) and as such you wont be moving any heavy weights. That’s going to make it pretty hard to overtrain.[/quote]

I have known plenty of 150 pounders that could squat and pull twice their BW for reps and press 1.5 times plus. The BW of the lifter really wouldn’t have much to do with their potential to overtrain.

I bet just about every serious lifter that has been around ten years or so, with family; the job; and life in general; has reached an overtrained state from time to time. If you’re consistently pushing the your limits; you’re going to get it wrong once in awhile.

I certainly have! That is how I recognize it coming and am able to make adjustments. Twenty plus years and I still learn something new about myself every workout…gotta pay attention!

I remember that one thread where the OP was talking about following in the footsteps of the super-accumulation program trying the find the craziest most excessive routine ever.

Then another guy came on and posted 28 full body workouts to be performed over 14 days using 140 % 1RM eccentrics by the dozens, drop sets that could last 5 minutes, and all other kinds of crazy shit.

Yeah I don’t think the body is geared to use food to recover from something like that no matter how many calories are present, that and you’d probably just drop the bar on your head to end it all, lol.

[quote]Gumpshmee wrote:
I remember that one thread where the OP was talking about following in the footsteps of the super-accumulation program trying the find the craziest most excessive routine ever.

Then another guy came on and posted 28 full body workouts to be performed over 14 days using 140 % 1RM eccentrics by the dozens, drop sets that could last 5 minutes, and all other kinds of crazy shit.

Yeah I don’t think the body is geared to use food to recover from something like that no matter how many calories are present, that and you’d probably just drop the bar on your head to end it all, lol.[/quote]

haha yeah, if there’s a will, there’s a way

If a person is in the situation where he/she needs to ask which one it is, it is undereating.

[quote]That One Guy wrote:
ajweins wrote:

To the OP, read Bauer’s thread in the T-cell and get his take on overtraining.

be careful, while i generally agree with Bauer on his take on overtraining, i’m just saying in general be careful some people out there, everyone’s different, everyone’s recovery levels are different, some need more sleep, more food, more time in between workouts.

Just because one person hasn’t experienced overtraining doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I am merely saying this because i know there are many very impressionable people who lurk these forums and if they read something they believe it completely (think author fanboys, or HIT jedis) [/quote]

Very true. I am not recommending Bauer’s volume. I know I could handle it. But it is just another example of a really big dude who isn’t overly concerned about overtraining

[quote]elano wrote:
ajweins wrote:
elano wrote:
Alright, Im going to stop here because I think my point is clear and you guys are just nitpicking. I just used 6000 calories as an over-exaggerated example. Of course thats way too much, but my point was that eating more will not prevent or solve an overtrainng problem.

The problem lies in the lifters ability to stress his/her body to the point that they cannot recover from it between workouts.

Actually you are the one who is nitpicking. The OP was asking if people generally see overtraining as a real possibility, or is progress usually haulted by lack of calories.

The overwhelming consensus is that 95% of the time it is a lack of calories that is the problem. You are claiming that a person can train to the point of where no amount of calories can prevent them from overtraining. Sure, this may be true, but do you see it as a regular occurance?

Has anyone for that matter? This is the point Vader made and pretty much sums up the question.

To the OP, read Bauer’s thread in the T-cell and get his take on overtraining.

Actually the OP was asking
Do you agree or disagree? that “There is no such thing as over training just under eating.”

I have stated my opinion: Disagree
Are you agreeing with this statement ajweins?
Do you think that there is no such thing as overtraining?
[/quote]

I agree with your disagreement, but am trying to emphasize the rarity that this occurs (I personally have never seen it). If you have, I would be interested in how much work they were doing and how much food they were consuming.

overtraining. def: provided an adequate environment, to include rest and nutrition, the amount of training to which there is no add’l training effect, be it strength or hypertrophy, whatever the intended goal.

Ive over trained before. You feel depressed and shitty and you just want to workout more, which only makes it worse.

Alot of guys that workout all the time cant deal with depression or stress WITHOUT working out, so its a self perpetuating cycle.

I was eating easily 6k cals a day, and ridiculous amounts of protien.

I was going to failure every time, and not recovering properly.

On my days off Id play hours of sports and such.

You can over train even with absurd calorie intakes.

I took about 4 days off, then did about two weeks of lighter workouts, and I was good to go.

I’m with westclock; overtraining is real. But I think it is pretty rare for the most part you’d need someone that drove their CNS and Body to their limits and stayed on that limit for a long time. The average trainer isn’t capable of doing this, and it isn’t just about volume.

For me it was dancing with insanity and thinking I was going to kill myself on the gym floor night after night. I was also going to failure every time, and not recovering properly. (The important part being recovery for not just the body but the CNS)

The worst part would have to be the severe sudden depression that encompassed all waking thought and didn’t go away once.

You know it isn’t normal when you have no reason to suddenly be in melancholic hell the whole time you are awake.

I concur with Prof-X the term overtraining is used too much. As with westclock I dialed down as much as I allowed myself to until the endless days of depression went away, rest is important. Subsequently I suffered my spree of injuries. I never said anything about not returning back to that form of training!! … though the injuries put a dampener and made me re-evaluate how much rest I was putting in in relation to training.

Ajwens it is rare from my experience as well, I don’t see other trainers willingly put themselves in that situation. To know how to get to that point, stay at that point, and feed off of it.

It depends on what you guys mean by overtraining like the regression I wouldn’t consider overtraining because in a few days you are better and you must do that to get better sometimes. When I say overtraining I think that it means that your body is so fucked that it actually does not have the compacity to recover for ahwile like it takes weeks/months to even start to improve and with just lifting and your lifts going down it is more like your nerv system and muscles need to recover.

I have overtrained a few times and I would just basicly do whatever amount it took that day to be half dead like running 60-70 miles a week and trying to lift weights and wrestling and bjj back to back (4 or more hours of very high intensity) with very little sleep and it would be for weeks it was like I had mono.

I did it again last year (finally learned will never happen again) and I couldn’t do anything for 2 weeks I had all the mono symptoms and finally could function tried to train and had a fever for like 3 days after.

To really do that you need to either be in really bad times and addicted to training where your mind needs more to feel ok than your body can handle or be completly obssesed with a goal and while your doing it you are running on cortisol/adrenaline the whole time so if you take one day off you feel horrifying because you just couldn’t feel the pain and how exhausted you were because of the cortisol/adrenaline I did both of those two ways for it to happen btw. Forgot to add it wasn’t like jogging or anything when I was running every single run was run like a race I had to win which is murder to your body with that amount of volume. Also the wrestling bjj was the same way.

And its different for everyone it you are obssessive and you hear there is no such thing as overtraining you will kill yourself training but like you guys are saying for 90% that is good advice. And especially is for guys who aren’t used to pain because being afraid of overtrainng will just give them an excuse to train like a pussy.

[quote]ktennies wrote:
If a person is in the situation where he/she needs to ask which one it is, it is undereating.[/quote]

I agree with this 100%. If, in the off chance you ever do overtrain, then you will know it. If you have to ask, then you are just undereating AND UNDERSLEEPING.

I’m much more worried about undertraining than overtraining. I can recover from overtraining with some extra food and a day off, but undertraining is wasted time that you will never get back.

I have “overreached” at times, but that is usually a short term thing, for example increasing my volume too much too quickly. After an extra day off, some extra food and rest, the body adapts and the stimulus that you thought was making you “overtrain” is making you get stronger.

No, not at all. Most who think they are overtraining AREN’T. But overtraining is real. If you push past your body way past the point it can recover from and hit it way too hard way too soon again, you’ll have problems. And no amount of extra food will fix them.

I will just say, if you are thin and having a hard time getting bigger, beware the overtraining-stuart mcrobert school that has you lift once every 10 days. That shit cost me at least 18 months of training.

I know my experience is personal and does not represent everyone, but I’d bet MOST of the time those who aren’t growing aren’t eating enough.

[quote]Westclock wrote:
Ive over trained before. You feel depressed and shitty and you just want to workout more, which only makes it worse.
[/quote]

Really? I always lose motivation to train, I don’t get more motivated to train. That’s actually the first symptom that I notice.

A lot of people on this forum seem to think that overtraining doesn’t exist and then go to the gym everyday doing the same thing, busting their but, feeling crappy, and making little progress. I think CT said it best;

-Stimulating growth is about progression, or challenging your body on a systematic basis. Yes, you must force your body to gradually do more arduous work. However, you must not exceed your capacity to recover, otherwise not only won’t you progress, you’ll actually go backwards.-

[quote]elano wrote:
I think overtraining is real. Go squat 3 times a week for 3x5 or 5x5 and you will eventually regress. Thats overtraining. When you start missing reps, its called overreching.[/quote]

Actually some of my best gains came by squatting 3 to four times a week on shieko program or that Smolov type program.

[quote]elano wrote:
Overtraining is when the body cannot recover enough between workouts and progress stops and regresses. If you are overtrained, no amount of food can fix the problem. You have to back off.[/quote]

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again. Your recovery abilities are NOT finite and can be improved like any othee aspect of training. The body is capable of adaptation.

Lixe X said, most people will never reach overtraining state.

[quote]martin blank wrote:
I will just say, if you are thin and having a hard time getting bigger, beware the overtraining-stuart mcrobert school that has you lift once every 10 days. That shit cost me at least 18 months of training.
.[/quote]

Here here. Those books are poison. So much we read is bullshit that we really don’t need to know about.

We also call that the “vagina split: 1 day on- 28 days off”

[quote]martin blank wrote:
I know my experience is personal and does not represent everyone, but I’d bet MOST of the time those who aren’t growing aren’t eating enough.[/quote]

Or aren’t training enough…

[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Westclock wrote:
Ive over trained before. You feel depressed and shitty and you just want to workout more, which only makes it worse.

Really? I always lose motivation to train, I don’t get more motivated to train. That’s actually the first symptom that I notice.[/quote]

I agree with Sento on this, If I ever do not look forward to a training session I know I have overtrained. On a rare occasion I’ll be sitting at work in the afternoon and I’ll want to go home and nap instead of train.