Andy Dick:
To adquately plan you need to take into account the outside stressors as well. For me the last time I over did it, was when my work hours basically doubled. I was unsure how it would affect me and made adjustments to my training but not enough adjustments. That is when I ran into trouble. Also, you need to know how your body adapts to training and what not.
ADDITION: I think back to when I would go train with my team for 2 or 3 weeks. When all I did was train and hang out all day and do nothing. Those days I could basically max every day with no issues because all I did was relax. There is something to say about the ability to recover.
TheRedReaper:
Yes, an easy worl/social life is the key to hard training without over training. I'm lucky, my job is very easy and only a few hours a day.
Arturo Gómez:
In our team, there were no professionals. All of us were workers, teachers, medical, police, students. So, we could not experience "too much training". Our time was limited. We could not to experience with too much time training hard, because works or studies gave serious restriction to this posibility.
But we trained very intense, especially after a cours with Anghel Spasov, form Bulgaria, and we improved our records training everyday with 100%.
We observed that the scheme "olimpic - squat and pulls - semiolimpic" gives a organic dinamism very significative. We trained much more hard than with the habitual polish hungrian and soviet systems and we finished with a feeling of much more energy.
A interesant point is the proportion olimpic x basic. I saw, in Latinoamérica, a trend to copy exactly the systems of european countries. And with the difference that latin lifters are not a selected group, but basically voluntaries or singular profesional. And in general, they are (or we are) structurally weaker in proportion to the best results in olimpic lifts. So, much of us finish overtrained because we make much snatch and clean and jerk with weights over our structure, and we cannot improve the phisical resources because we were very tired after the first exercise (generaly olimpic).
So, to mantanin a control in this proportion, is for me a fundamental point to avoid overtraining.
Spasov spokes about an index (cumulate volume in olimpics/cumulate volume in complements) that is convenient to be around of 50%. To mantain in our trainings a control of that index was I think, o X of we not overtrain.
I think today that this index is too raw, and it will vary if the lifter is more or less strong in relation with his result.
TheRedReaper:
Khoi,
Here is a paragraph I was reading today in a book. full book is here if you want to read it. http://luizfernando.info/files/PPST.pdf
Overtraining. Overtraining is the cumulative result of relentless high-volume or high-intensity training, or both, without adequate recovery, that results in the exhaustion of the body's ability to recover and adapt. The primary diagnostic indicator is a reduction in performance capacity that doesn't improve with an amount of rest that would normally result in recovery. Although the accepted (ACSM) definition of overtraining holds that recovery from it requires no less than two weeks, overtraining is relative to the level of the trainee, and there are no hard and fast rules governing its onset or its abatement. Even a heinous abuse of a novice with an overwhelming workload, one that induces a loss of A question of balance performance ability, would resolve fairly quickly. Although the time frame would be compressed, the symptoms observed by the coach would be those of overtraining. Although overtraining in the novice can occur, it may not be easily diagnosed because the magnitude of the loss of performance might be difficult to perceive, due both to a lack of training history for comparison and the low level of performance overall. Once again, as with overreaching, the overtrained intermediate fits the commonly accepted ACSM/USOC definition: an overtrained intermediate will not be able to recover in less than two weeks. In the advanced trainee, however, recovery is never planned to be complete for a minimum of four weeks anyway, and for the elite trainee, it may be considerably longer than that. The existing definition is inadequate for these trainees. It is also easier to diagnose overtraining in advanced and elite trainees, since the performance reduction is quite noticeable against the background of an extensive training history and, presumably, an established rate and pattern of progress. A working definition of overtraining that applies to all levels of training advancement requires a better way to quantify recovery time in each stage. Overtraining occurs when performance does not recover within one reduced-load training cycle. The duration of that cycle will vary according to the athlete's level of advancement. For example, if a novice training every 48 hours has a workout that is markedly off due to excessive load in the previous workout, this will be apparent during warm-up. His range of motion will be decreased due to the soreness, and his bar speed will be noticeably slower and more labored as the weight increases through the sets. The coach should then stop the workout, having determined the problem (in the last workout he did five extra work sets while another trainee was being coached in the other room, for example) and sends him home with orders to rest until the next Practical Programming workout 48 hours later. He comes back in for his next workout, and warm-ups reveal that he is fine today, recovered and capable of the sets he should have done the previous workout. He was overtrained, and now he is recovered. This is possible because he is a novice, and this recovery time frame is consistent with a novice's ability to recover, both from normal overload and from overtraining, since the mechanism is the same. If an advanced trainee on a four-week cycle of loading, declines from expected levels during a cycle, either the athlete has come into the cycle overtrained or the current cycle has exhausted recovery capacity. In such a case, four more weeks of reduced training load will be required to facilitate recovery. For both the novice and the advanced trainee, a repeated and dramatically reduced load cycle of equal duration should immediately follow the diagnosis of overtraining in order to reestablish homeostasis. Elite lifters using very long training cycles can ill afford the time required to deal with a programming error that might take months to notice, and even longer to correct. Overtraining is yet another example of the differences between novice and advanced athletes, in that the more advanced an athlete becomes, the more costly overtraining becomes. A novice might be inconvenienced by a missed training goal, but that inconvenience lasts for a couple of days, and is of no concern outside the narrow bounds of a beginner without any clear competitive aspirations and no consequences to anything other than the next workout. Intermediate athletes have committed to their training to the point of selecting a sport, and are in the process of becoming competitors. An advanced athlete is by definition always training for a competition, has invested many thousands of hours, many thousands of dollars, and many gallons of sweat in training up to this point, and has much to lose as a result. Elite athletes A question of balance may have titles, sponsorship money, endorsements, and postcompetitive careers riding on their performance at the next competition. As careers advance, so does the price of failure, even if it is temporary. Is consideration of overtraining important? According to the USOC/ACSM Consensus Statement on Overtraining, 10 to 20% of all athletes are suffering from overtraining on any given day. This is a problem. H o w many coaches can afford to have 20% of their team performing below par on game day? Having a significant number of athletes overtrained at any given time has important ramifications for team success, as well as for the careers of the individual athletes. The culprit here is a lack of appropriate application of the principles of exercise programming to the training of athletes. Diagnostic signs of overtraining in non-novices are severe, when finally apparent: obviously compromised performance, disrupted sleep, increased chronic pain, abnormal mood swings, elevated heart rate, change in appetite, and other physical and mental abnormalities. However, not all trainees will display the same symptoms even if they become overtrained on the same program. Once again, the coach's eye is essential in determining changes in the performance and wellbeing of the trainee. Once overtraining is diagnosed, it is imperative to take remedial action, as longer periods of overtraining require longer periods of recovery. It quite possibly can take as much as twice as long to get a trainee out of overtraining as it took to produce the condition. Horror stories about severe overtraining abound, with examples of athletes losing entire training years. No effort must be spared in recognizing and treating this very serious situation.
TheRedReaper:
Khoi,
I think what I missed before might have been a failure to consider the types of training some people are doing. I think over training is more likely to occur when you are a very advanced lifter and are training heavy weeks and light weeks.
The reason I did not consider this was because I always train heavy. But when I start dropping lifts (and realize I am at risk of over training and having my rep max fall) I immediately respond by reducing the amount of sets I did on the previous days training in my program so I can do more on the next days.
If you train like this, you immediately see the results of fatigue, so it's easy to avoid over training.
Though people who train a heavy week full of many 1RMs and then successive light weeks afterwards, they have less way to gauge if they're over training. The reason is, on the light weeks when you're supposed to recover, you are not being pushed too hard, so you don't know the situation as you've little to gauge it by because all your sets are fairly easy. Then you get back to your heavy week, and all of a sudden you cannot perfom as you wanted due to pushing yourself too hard.
Like this, an athlete might be over training for an entire month before they realize it. Then they're focked and cannot do the RMs they were expecting.
So I suppose, looking at it like this, over training is entirely possible for those who have light weeks and little ways to gauge their general fatigue that is pulling them away from the 1RM they have not performed for weeks.
My adivce would be to find a way to gauge your overall fatigue. If you are doing successive light or medium weeks back to back, then have a day in the middle where you just do your 1RM in you major lifts just one time. If you achieve it, keep going, it's all good. If you fail to achieve it, lay off a bit as you are too fatigued - just an idea. I'm no pro. But I've been reading a lot and am trying to figure this out myself.