Topic: Adrenal Fatigue / Depression / Overtraining

[Cloud Strife]

Has anyone here ever pushed it too hard and burned out? If so, I am interested in hearing your experiences. There was a time in the past where I literally maxed out on a daily basis. Sometimes, I would train for 3-4 hours in this fashion. I'm not sure what happened, but after 3 months or so, I literally cracked. It took me an extrememly long time to recover. Probably over a year. Close to two. Maybe even two. In the present moment, I can't even tell if I'm back to "normal", whatever normal is.

I know some of you might've trained with a bulgarian philosophy.

Looking back, what I did was stupid... extremely stupid.
 

[Andy Dick]

I have before a couple times, whats your question?  Depending on how hard you push it and for who long after you have done it can cause the bounce back to take a while.  Right now I have gotten to paying as much attention to how I feel when I lift as much as how much I lift.  For me the warning signs are kinda what you put, lack of motivation or not wanting to work out, feeling down or depressed, in ability to seem to recover, little nagging injuries starting to pop up in many places, load decreasing due to just inability to lift heavy weight.  Right now as soon as I start see these signs I back of on load for a while.  For me the first two things to occur is lack of wanting to train and just a ton of soreness and fatigue.  Once this happens I back way off for about a week and drop a day out here or there and usually I bounce back quick.

[Cloud Strife]

I'm sure some of you have heard of John Broz. Well, he believes that there is no such thing as overtraining. I think some people have been infleunced into believing this also. Depressed? Keep squatting. Something's hurting? Keep on pushing.

That is exactly what I did. I kept pushing... NO MATTER WHAT. Now, there might've been outside stressors that lead me to my burnout. But do any of you agree with what he says? That it is extremely difficult to overtrain? Or is overtraining VERY REAL, which may result in your brain to malfunction? (depression)

Honestly, I find it very hard to judge my own training and mood at times.

Pushing hard, or relatively hard is required to get stronger. How many of you think it's possible to always be pushing? Or is this a really stupid idea? Will you body and brain adapt? Or will you just go through depression, which actually I heard shrinks your brain?

Honestly, I'm not sure what I am supposed to be asking. I guess I'm interested in getting as possible in a very short time frame. Some of you may know clarence0 on youtube. He started maxing out daily and is now at a 155 kg snatch and 195 kg clean and jerk. It took him around 2-4 years I believe. Wouldn't majority of us get destroyed either mentally or physically from training like this?

[TheRedReaper]

Well I just gave a big post about this in the auxilary lifts thread. Read it.
 
I do believe someone can poorly plan themselves and thus over train - i.e. they cannot achieve their 1rm on command because they are too tired.
 
I think it is poor planning. Like I said on other thread - learn the limits of your fatigue, learn to use it with balance and precision, always push at that limit but never go over it. If you never truly break the limit of fatigue, I believe you cannot over train.
 
I am all about consistent and frequent training at heavy weights, but I have a healthy respect for fatigue and learning to understand it.
 
Really, I think over training is just a result of stupidity (no offence). I also think if you train properly with respect for fatigue yet still training hard, there is no need for "heavy months" and "light months" and "peaking" in training. It should all be smooth, consistent and predictable - thus over training cannot creep up on you - you would see it coming.

[Cloud Strife]

hmmm... poor planning. I think you're right about that.
 
From my personal experiences, you can lift heavy pretty frequently... I guess I just didn't "plan" my training very well and outside sterssors started to affect my training. Likewise, my training started to affect my whole life, which is not a good thing.
 
You have to have a plan. There needs to be a balance.

[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.