Over Training.

R

realmuscle

0
I just wanted to write a quick post to express a concern that I have.

It seems that lots of people on here are over training and then wondering why they aren't progressing. Some of the best progress I ever made with muscle gain, etc. was when I stopped training so much.

Remember, muscles grow when your resting, not when your working them out. Make sure your protein is good, rest is good and your muscles arent sore when you hit the gym again.

Rt
 
High frequency training is not bad, if done right. Look at gymnasts.

Most overtrain because they don't know what they are doing.
 
LeiYunFat said:
High frequency training is not bad, if done right. Look at gymnasts.

Most overtrain because they don't know what they are doing.
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I second that. as for going into the gym when your muscles are still sore. My muscles are always sore AND i give them 48 hours rest.
 
LeiYunFat said:
High frequency training is not bad, if done right. Look at gymnasts.

Most overtrain because they don't know what they are doing.
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Clearly we are throwing around a couple vague terms which leads to ambiguous perspectives.

"Overtraining" needs to be defined.

I train people to work the same muscles 6 days a week. I am not the only one. As was stated, gymnasts, lumberjacks, certain other sports professionals, farmers, etc. all train the same muscles daily without injury.

In fact, look at professional strongman competetors. They are the strongest of the strong. How do some of them train? There are lots of methods, but a good portion train the way most people would claim is "overtraining". Therefore the science to support the statement that 48 hours of rest is universally required is non-existant. What has passed as "science" was incomplete lab work taken not from real life, but controlled and yet unrealistic and incomplete conditions.

If you are training for mass, and mass alone, then sure: I can see 48 hours of rest being desirable. -But this is the lazy man's way out and ineffective to achieve any real health, much less strength.

True strength requires daily work.

True health requires daily work.

Injury can only be achieved by doing this daily work with too heavy a lift, improper posture, or lack of nutrition----just like using any other training methodology.
 
Overtraining is such a overhaussed fashionword, the vast majority dont have to worry about that in any way. In the old days people were spending 8h a day at the gym 7days a week and they got awesome results, not optimal sure but still awesome results. Today people are worried if they will fall down and die from exhaustion if they go for a run the day after a gymsession :rolleyes:
 
Hawk said:
I train people to work the same muscles 6 days a week. I am not the only one. As was stated, gymnasts, lumberjacks, certain other sports professionals, farmers, etc. all train the same muscles daily without injury.
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My favorite example is soldiers. The US Army will train the same muscles on the same exercises 6 days a week during basic. Even when they cycle morning PT sessions you still get smoked throughout the day, catching what you might have missed during the am workout.

Know how many physical training-related injuries I saw? None. Someone blowing his hand off with a mortar? Check. Someone burning in on their last 100-150 feet on a training jump? Check. People tearing tendons and ligaments or hurting their rotators? Negative.

And it gets results, I came out of it lean and mean, with tons of strength and a mountain of endurance. The only thing it didn't do was emphasize size gains, but I'm more of a function over form sort of guy anyways.

Speaking of size, I think part of the problem is that many people seem to equate all forms of progress with size gains. You can train for strength and endurance as well people, both of which are - IMO - way better than size any day of the week.
 
Toning doesn't even exist, so I don't see how that's relevant.

At any rate-- overtraining does exist, though it takes a lot more than most people give to see it happen.

It's also not an on/off situation. Overtraining doesn't occur from a single session by definition, and only rarely in a single week. Overtraining, much like any adaptive process, is a long term process.

It's also, strangely enough, contingent on volume and intensity. In optimal conditions I train nearly every day. But this doesn't mean doing just one type of work. One session may be 5 sets of 5. Another may be 2-3 sets of 10. Another still might be 6 singles. Acute fatigue is very specific, and rotating the training load even throughout a week will help manage this.

That said, it's a bit myopic to assume it's an either/or proposition. Training frequency just like anything else can and should be managed as its own variable. No specific frequency will instantly equate to overtraining.
 
I want to jump in and say I agree with most on this thread...particularly PMDilly's post above. I do understand what realmuscle was getting at (at least I think...)

... many out of shape folks will go ALL OUT and WAY ABOVE their means regarding fitness. They just quit smoking and are determined not to gain weight... so they barely eat and do cardio an hour each session twice everyday.

This is just a quick example and gives credence to everyone has different goals, different training levels, and different paths in fitness. Training for endurance is not like training for size. Training to lose fat is not the same as a program designed to add lean muscle on the body.
 
So it is okay to workout more than 3 days a week, even during a sports practice day? for example - I have softball practice at 2pm and if I wanted to work out on tuesday/thursdays, I would workout in the morning at like 6:40am before my 7:40am class.. also - I do sprint/agility work tuesday/thursdays at 9:30-10:30am usually or sometimes until 11am, and then I go home and eat and go to practice. the sprint work prepares me well for practice (gives me a lot of energy), but my hitting power is not great. I am thinking about working out the upper body early in the morning tuesday/thursdays. I already workout mon/wed/ and sometimes friday when I'm not lazy.
 
lol... I do not have the energy to decipher your weekly/daily workout routine :D

You can workout as much as you are so long as:

A) Your Body and Muscles Can Handle It
B) YOU ARE PROPERLY FUELING THE BODY FOR ALL THIS ACTIVITY
C) You Are Not Overtraining a Muscle for Extended Periods of Time
- Working out the biceps as part of a weight lifting routine on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and then have practice workouts every day, hitting practice two times a week... not good.

Regardless of what folks say... professional athletes may practice and workout each day but they are not over-exerting their muscles. They work up to the ability to utilize muscle fibers each day. They are also involved in cycles (macro-meso- and micro).

It's just not as simple as saying Yes or No. Do what you feel is best for your body. Do what feels right to your muscles. Test it. Take a day or two off and see if you feel better or if your strength is 2 times greater upon returning.

The only way your questions will be answered properly is if you talk with someone qualified enough to sit down with you, list out all of your activity, list your food intake and then do all the necessary assessments.
 
I don't think it's fair to say that 48 hours of rest is required all of the time. Since I've been doing weights 3/4/5 times per week, and pushups every morning I have had amazing gains.
 
I agree with Trainer Lynn about doing what feels best for your body. Everyone is different and you should plan/schedule your rest depending on your fitness level, abilitiies (genetic abilities maybe?), and schedule. Some people really do not have time to work out daily so they need to plan rest times and workouts that work best for their busy schedules.

I personally did very well with HST (hypertrophy specific training): (weights 3x/wk) which meant a LOT of rest. I became the strongers, the most lean and the lowest in weight after this training coupled with HIIT (high intensity interval training).

I think that at least a day is necessary though for recovery. BUT that all depends on the person's ability to heal (takes longer in some people than others I think).

Anna Kubit
 
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realmuscle said:
Yeah I understand all this guys but this is the Toning Forum, not a strength Forum. Thats why I posted it here.
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Ew.

I'm new, and I don't really want to cause trouble, but this is just ridiculous.

This forum is entitled "Women's Weight Training" -- women's weight training is women's weight training, not the "toning" forum.

Bah.
 
Title: Effects of a 7-day eccentric training period on muscle damage and inflammation.

Researchers: Chen TC, Hsieh SS.

Institution: Department of Ball-Related Sports Science, Taipei Physical Education College, Taipei City, Taiwan.

Source: Medicine and Science Sports & Exercise 2001 Oct;33(10):1732-8

Purpose: This study examined the effects of a 7-day repeated maximal isokinetic eccentric training period on the indicators of muscle damage and inflammatory response.

Methods: Twenty-two college-age males were randomly assigned to eccentric training (ET) and control groups (CON). The initial exercise was 30 repetitions of maximal voluntary isokinetic eccentric contraction (ECC1) on non-dominant elbow flexors with Cybex 6000 at 60 degrees.s-1 angular velocity. The ET group performed the same exercise for the following 6 consecutive days (referred to as ECC2 to ECC7) after ECC1. Upper arm circumference (CIR), range of motion (ROM), and maximal isometric force (MIF) were measured before, immediately after, and every 24 h for 7 consecutive days after ECC1. Plasma creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), glutamic oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), leukocyte counts, and serum interleukin-1beta and -6 (IL-1beta, IL-6) levels were assessed before; at 2 h; and at 1, 3, 4, 6, and 7 d after ECC1. Muscle soreness was measured before and for 7 consecutive days after ECC1.

Results: The ECC1 produced significant changes in most of the measures for both groups, with the exception of leukocyte counts. No indicators of increased damage were found from the second consecutive day of eccentric training to the 7th day for the eccentric training group.

Conclusion: Continuous intensive isokinetic eccentric training performed with damaged muscles did not exacerbate muscle damage and inflammation after ECC1. In addition, a muscular "adaptation effect" may occur as early as 24 h after ECC1, as shown by the ET group's performance for 6 consecutive days after ECC1.

Discussion: One of the most controversial aspects of HST is the suggestion that people train in a predominantly eccentric fashion for two weeks straight. Heresy! they shout. Then when you ask them why it's so bad to train a muscle more frequently or, heaven forbid, do negatives two workouts in a row, they say because your muscle can't "recover" that fast. This study calls into question the belief that muscles can't recover if trained again soon or even the next day.

They looked at a wide variety of markers for muscle damage including plasma creatine kinase (CK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), glutamic oxaloacetate transaminase (GOT), leukocyte counts, and serum interleukin-1beta and -6 (IL-1beta, IL-6). Although both groups experienced a significant change in all these indicators (accept leukocyte count), no indicators of increased damage were found from ECC2 to ECC7 for the ET group.

What about soreness? For both the group who only did one training session as well as those who did seven in a row, muscle soreness developed 1 day after the first eccentric training bout, and remained through the 3rd day, then gradually diminished regardless of which group they were in. The group that did the eccentric sets every day experienced the same progression and subsidence of soreness as the group that did only one set at the beginning of the week. The soreness level was almost back to baseline on 7 day for both groups.

The results of this investigation indicated that repeated bouts of the eccentric exercise performed on each of the following 6 days after the first bout did not affect recovery from the first training bout. This is in agreement with a substantial amount of other studies indicating that muscle adapts effectively to physical load even when the loading is frequent or even continuous. Keep in mind that we are only talking about the physical recovery of the muscle. We are not talking about performance. After all, HST is "Hypertrophy-Specific" by design.

So once again, HST turns out not to be so outlandish, but instead, simply a derivative of the research. The results and the science, speak for themselves
 
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