The Wisdom of the Uninitiated

It's been a while since the Veggilante floated a really noxious and controversial turd of a post, but I was just browsing another thread and MVP's signature got me thinking.  As he will no doubt someday want to change it, for the benefit of posterity, I will repeat it here:

brihead301
"Don't be a b****. Fear of "overtraining" shouldn't ever even cross your mind.  It never crosses my mind.  If you start feeling like s***, eat more!"

I think ol' brihead301 is onto something here, and at the risk of misinterpreting his quote, it conjured up one of my oldest suspicions in regards to bodybuilding: what if all the advice we hear about overtraining and not hitting the same muscle directly two days in a row is a lie?

Before you answer with a litany of quotes and recite all the expertise you (and I) have been unquestioningly spewing for years, stop and consider the following:

• Everyone loves to rag on the uninitiated "fools" in the gym who spend all their time at the dumbbell rack banging out biceps curls, or bench pressing the afternoon away with zero regard for the number of sets (and in some cases the number of reps) they are performing.  Emphasis on "performing".  Yet, for all our ragging and preaching about recovery and overtraining, millions of guys nevertheless still manage to build impressive guns and pecs doing exactly that.  Yes, my coffee table has bigger legs than most of them, courtesy of their imbalanced training focus; yet Mother Nature and the Mass Fairy rewarded their (we would say) idiocy with respectable upper body development in spite of their amateur approach.  I personally know two guys who fall into this category rather nicely.  When I ask how they built their insane arms, I get what every experienced lifter reading this board would call a recipe for overtraining.  "Oh, I hit alternating dumbbell curls and barbell curls and preacher curls and cable curls and I finish it off with some concentration curls.  Maybe one or two sets of each, I don't really count."  When I watch them perform this salad bar of exercises (again, emphasis on "perform" -they will literally glance around the gym to see who's watching them), they will rep out until they drop the weights somewhere around 35 or 40.  They will do this sometimes five times a week, in workouts whose total duration goes way beyond the commonly accepted standard 45 minutes.  By the precepts of virtually every "proper" bodybuilding methodology, this is both foolhardy and futile.  Yet they have the guns anyway.
• If working the same muscles directly every day is a death sentence for hypertrophy, I should have burned my abs and obliques flat off months ago.  for the past three months, I have been using ab crunches as a mid-workout break in every workout I complete.  If I'm doing a "Pull" workout, I might blast two compound moves for back, and then blast the crap out of my abs with weighted crunches and twisting situps, etc, before continuing with rear delt and biceps work.  Same thing on "Push" days and "Leg" days.  Always taking a "break" in the middle of the workout to obliterate my abs.  Every day.  If this was going to wreck my posture, sap my energy, and atrophy my abs, don't you think I would have seen that by now?  Instead, my freaking abs are getting so out of control blocky that now I'm considering ditching abdominal work altogether until my chest and delts start to catch up.

It just seems to me that maybe we haven't really made a compelling case for the dangers of overtraining.  Maybe, and this is just the anti-corporate conspiracy theorist in me talking, maybe supplement companies and magazine editors have been hyping up overtraining to guarantee a better flow of revenue, selling products they promise will optimize the lackluster results their overly cautious advice produces. Thoughts?

My home away from DBB

Veg  --- I just wanted to say --- you wrote an article in dedication of a quote influenced by MVP's signature --- Imma starr!!!!

All together, you're 100% correct and I agree with you. But the most common type of overtraining we refer to is CNS fatigue, most of us don't consider muscle tissue overtraining, seeing muscle tissue isn't ever fully repaired when you train it anyway.

I think overtraining is a word often confused, it's a psychological condition from training too hard for too long. It's not likely most of our muscle tissues can our perform our brain, which is what CNS fatigue would be. Muscle performance beyond the brains capability to keep up, which is rare.

Of course, as I mentioned in a thread a little while ago, if you worked your arms every single day of course they'll grow, it's just it's not always necessary, you could argue the same results could be done training biceps directly 1X per week and with one or two pull sessions during the week on top of that.

Good read. I like.

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

Here's a good article concerning misconceptions of CNS fatigue by one of my favorite writers, Christian Thibaudeau:

"Misunderstanding 'Overtraining'

If you ask me, "overtraining" is the most abused and misunderstood concept in the entire strength training community! Perform more than twelve sets for a muscle during a workout and you'll undoubtedly be accused of overtraining. Train a muscle group more often than two times per week? Overtraining! Relying on set extending methods such as drop sets, pre or post-fatigue, or rest-pause? What are you doing? Don't you know that's overtraining and you'll shrink faster than your masculine pride on a snowy Canadian winter night?!

Yes, overtraining can eventually become a problem when it comes to your training performance, injury risks, and growth. However, it's far from being as common as most people would have you believe.

The problem stems from the term itself, which is composed of "over" and "training." Because of that term, individuals are quick to equate it to "training too much." So every time someone thinks that a routine has too much volume, frequency, or advanced methods, they're quick to pull the "overtraining" trigger. When someone is tired and has a few bad workouts he'll also automatically assume that he's "overtraining." In both cases this shows a misunderstanding of what overtraining really is.

Overtraining is a physiological state caused by an excess accumulation of physiological, psychological, emotional, environmental, and chemical stress that leads to a sustained decrease in physical and mental performance, and that requires a relatively long recovery period. There are four important elements in that scientific definition:

"Physiological state:" Overtraining isn't an action (i.e. training too much) but a state in which your body can be put through. In that regard, it's similar to a burnout, a medical depression, or an illness.

"Caused by an excess accumulation of physiological, psychological, emotional, environmental, and chemical stress:" Stress has both a localized and a systemic effect. Every type of stress has a systemic impact on the body; this impact isn't limited to the structures involved directly in the "stressful event." This systemic impact is caused by the release of stress hormones (glucocorticoids like cortisol for example) and an overexertion of the adrenal glands.

So every single type of stressor out there can contribute to the onset of an overtraining state. Job troubles, tension in a relationship, death in the family, pollutants and chemicals in the air we breathe, the food we eat or the water we drink, etc. can all contribute to overtraining. Training too much is obviously another stress factor that can facilitate the onset of the overtraining state, but it's far from being the sole murder suspect.

"Leads to a sustained decrease in physical and mental performance:" The key term here is sustained. Some people will have a few sub par workouts and will automatically assume they're overtraining. Not the case. It could simply be acute or accumulated fatigue due to poor recovery management or a deficient dietary approach.

A real overtraining state/syndrome takes months of excessive stress to build up. And when someone reaches that state, it'll take several weeks (even several months) of rest and recovery measures to get back to a "normal" physiological state. If a few days of rest or active rest can get your performance back up to par, you weren't overtraining. You probably suffered from some fatigue accumulation, that's all.

Worst case scenario, you might enter an overreaching state (a transient form of overtraining). Reaching that point will normally take 10-14 days of rest and active rest to get back up to normal. Overreaching can actually be used as a training tool since the body normally surcompensates (with rest) following overreaching. Elite athletes often include periods of drastic training stress increases followed by a 10-14 day taper to reach a peak performance level on a certain date.

"That requires a relatively long recovery period:" As we already mentioned, reaching a true overtraining state takes a long period of excessive stress and requires a long period of recovery. The following graphic illustrates the various steps toward the onset of an overtraining state as well as the recovery period needed to get out of these different levels.

The spectrum goes from acute fatigue, which is the normal fatigue caused by a very intense/demanding workout, right up to a true overtraining state. In all my life, I've seen two cases of real overtraining. In both cases this happened to two high level athletes right after the Olympic Games (accumulation of the super intense training, the stress of qualifying for the Olympics, and the stress of the Olympics themselves).

Understand that most international level athletes will train close to 30-40 hours per week. Obviously not all of that is spent in the gym; they also have their sport practice, speed and agility work, conditioning work, etc., but these still represent a physiological stress. Yet rarely will these athletes reach a true overtraining state.

How could training for a total of five or six hours per week cause overtraining? Fatigue, yes, mostly due to improper recovery management, a very low level of general physical preparation (conditioning level), or a mediocre work capacity.

To paraphrase Louie Simmons, North American athletes are out of shape. Being out of shape (low level of general preparedness or conditioning) means you can't recover well from a high volume of work. But the more work you can perform, without going beyond your capacity to recover, the more you'll progress. So in that regard, poor work capacity can be the real problem behind lack of gains from a program.

By continually avoiding performing a high level of physical work, you'll never increase your work capacity and will suffer from accumulated fatigue as soon as you increase your training stress ever so slightly. Obviously, the solution isn't to jump into mega-volume training, but to gradually include more GPP work as well as periods of increased training stress that will increase in duration and frequency over time.

Ask any of my clients �?? they must all go through four-week phases of very high volume work interlaced between phases of "normal" volume training (or even phases of low volume). And as they progress through the system, the high volume phases will become more frequent (as their work capacity improves) or last longer."

Source:- http://www.tmuscle.com/...le.do?id=1442461&cr=

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

"Misunderstanding 'Overtraining'
...Snip...

The problem stems from the term itself, which is composed of "over" and "training." Because of that term, individuals are quick to equate it to "training too much." So every time someone thinks that a routine has too much volume, frequency, or advanced methods, they're quick to pull the "overtraining" trigger. When someone is tired and has a few bad workouts he'll also automatically assume that he's "overtraining." In both cases this shows a misunderstanding of what overtraining really is.

...snip...

Training too much is obviously another stress factor that can facilitate the onset of the overtraining state, but it's far from being the sole murder suspect.

...snip...

A real overtraining state/syndrome takes months of excessive stress to build up. And when someone reaches that state, it'll take several weeks (even several months) of rest and recovery measures to get back to a "normal" physiological state. If a few days of rest or active rest can get your performance back up to par, you weren't overtraining. You probably suffered from some fatigue accumulation, that's all.

...snip...

How could training for a total of five or six hours per week cause overtraining? Fatigue, yes, mostly due to improper recovery management, a very low level of general physical preparation (conditioning level), or a mediocre work capacity.

...snip...

Genius, MVP.  Pure genius.  Outstanding article!

I remember reading an article about Porter Cotrell back in the day, talking about how he was a big fan of high-volume training.  The same was said of Lee Priest.  Dudes would check into the gym at 9:00 AM and wouldn't leave until 2:00 PM.  Sometimes they'd just spend the whole darn day there, blowing sh*t up.  Granted, they had a slight pharmaceutical advantage in the recovery department, but still.  I'm getting the distinct vibe that high volume training (at least in the short-term) is a good idea.

My home away from DBB

I am really glad you posted this because I have been wondering the exact same thing.

I know a fella who does no legs. He does chest, tris on one day and back, bis, and shoulders the next. He alternates this for 6 days a week. The dude's upper body is incredibly huge. His numbers are ridiculously high. He spends 2-3 hours in each training session.

I watched his chest routine one day and he went flat barbell, flat dumbell, incline dumbell, decline dumbell, machine flyes, cable flyes, bench press machine thingy.

Then I have no idea for triceps because by then I had finished up my entire workout.

This is a very good discussion and I'm anxious to see other replies.

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

Well ive been in a stage of overreaching quite a few times.  Its not hard to get there.  Your lifts go down.  Your joints get sore.  And you get pissed off that youre getting weaker.  So its not impossible.  Then I back off for a while and my lifts shoot up higher than before.  If i did not back off it would most definatly get worse and worse.

working on explosive phase
vertical: 35
weight: 206

Big 3: 300/440/515

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

Which is another reason periodization is so important, deloading gives you time to recover and you start all over again.

As far as the OP goes heres my take:

You cant just compare those guys to other trainee's who say train properly. Theres way too many variables to consider here...

As with all routines, if your in a surplus and getting ample amounts of protein you will see gains. You just cant argue that.

Supps (Steroids, PH's, Test boosters, HgH) Will all effect gains, and I am more inclined to believe the average joe who does the curling/benching nonstop is more prone to Juicing than someone who "trains properly"

genetics
Sleep
Stress levels (cortisol is an enemy)

Theres just a lot of pieces to look at the big picture. They are going to gain regardless if they play their cards right, they neglect legs? sure they will have tooth pick legs. If they included things like squats and deadlifts would they gain more? of course, if not for the huge surge in hormonal release, the compound movement and heavier weight will also.

Of course we know that doing deadlifts, rows, chins works your biceps. And bench, OH press, push ups works your triceps. They are much smaller muscles and until you reach a certain point or are juicing, there is no need to place such emphasis on such small muscle groups as opposed to your Legs, back, chest etc.

As for your Ab's, I think MVP hit a good point. When we refer to Over training its CNS not the muscle tissue itself. Over training is supposed to feel like getting hit by a car, your weak, slow, basic functions are hard or even painful to perform and it will take months and months to recover from. You would have to purposfully try to reach this point...

But I think most peoples bodys naturally tell them when there over reaching, be it mental (burn out) or physical you plateau, strength starts to decrease where you would normally be able to do something.

I personally dont think its anything most people have to worry about.

As for your ab's example, the whole CNS muscle tissue thing explains it. But there are muscle groups that can be worked longer/harder then some. Its also dependent on exactly how much is actually weighted, and how much weight. Body weight exercises can be performed multiple times a day, every single day. You wont gain much strength, but you may gain some defenition and certainly muscle endurance.

eh back to work now...lol

6'3"  @213

Squat 1x20x275

press:200, Deadlift:475, Bench:300, P.clean:235, Squat:385

"The only failure that is final is to stop trying to improve"

Nm0ney34


Which is another reason periodization is so important, deloading gives you time to recover and you start all over again.

As far as the OP goes heres my take:

You cant just compare those guys to other trainee's who say train properly. Theres way too many variables to consider here...

As with all routines, if your in a surplus and getting ample amounts of protein you will see gains. You just cant argue that.

Supps (Steroids, PH's, Test boosters, HgH) Will all effect gains, and I am more inclined to believe the average joe who does the curling/benching nonstop is more prone to Juicing than someone who "trains properly"

genetics
Sleep
Stress levels (cortisol is an enemy)

Theres just a lot of pieces to look at the big picture. They are going to gain regardless if they play their cards right, they neglect legs? sure they will have tooth pick legs. If they included things like squats and deadlifts would they gain more? of course, if not for the huge surge in hormonal release, the compound movement and heavier weight will also.

Of course we know that doing deadlifts, rows, chins works your biceps. And bench, OH press, push ups works your triceps. They are much smaller muscles and until you reach a certain point or are juicing, there is no need to place such emphasis on such small muscle groups as opposed to your Legs, back, chest etc.

As for your Ab's, I think MVP hit a good point. When we refer to Over training its CNS not the muscle tissue itself. Over training is supposed to feel like getting hit by a car, your weak, slow, basic functions are hard or even painful to perform and it will take months and months to recover from. You would have to purposfully try to reach this point...

But I think most peoples bodys naturally tell them when there over reaching, be it mental (burn out) or physical you plateau, strength starts to decrease where you would normally be able to do something.

I personally dont think its anything most people have to worry about.

As for your ab's example, the whole CNS muscle tissue thing explains it. But there are muscle groups that can be worked longer/harder then some. Its also dependent on exactly how much is actually weighted, and how much weight. Body weight exercises can be performed multiple times a day, every single day. You wont gain much strength, but you may gain some defenition and certainly muscle endurance.

eh back to work now...lol

Excellent points brought up.

RollingStone


Well ive been in a stage of overreaching quite a few times.  Its not hard to get there.  Your lifts go down.  Your joints get sore.  And you get pissed off that youre getting weaker.  So its not impossible.  Then I back off for a while and my lifts shoot up higher than before.  If i did not back off it would most definatly get worse and worse.

I think I've reached that state before too, you train hard for so long and it causes you to get weaker and you begin to think it's backwards training, then you take some time off, continue to eat right and come back and you're fresh.

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

Agreed, NmOney34, insofar as all that makes perfect sense on paper.  I always told people that trying to gain sick amounts of mass by blasting away at tiny muscle groups like the bi's and tri's is like trying to mow a football field with a pair of scissors.

Obviously, larger muscle groups like the lats, glutes, and thigh muscles are going to provide more hormonal stimulus, but it still doesn't explain why so many people who don't include them in their regular routine still end up jacked, and seemingly in the same amount of time as those who do include them.  I'm also inclined to agree with your assessment of these individual's likelier tendency to juice.  Again, not to paint everyone with the broad brush, but several of the people I know who have sub-par (or at least not carefully balanced) training routines dabble in the dark side.  Right, wrong, or indifferent, it seems to be working for them -and their total lack of detrimental side effects doesn't exactly help those of us trying to keep it legal and natural.

But I digress...

I guess my confusion has an analogue in all the "Good-old-days" stories you hear people like Dennis Leary ranting about.  As in, back in my day, you didn't need an offensive line coach, a defensive coordinator, a 700-page playbook, three officials, and an instant replay booth -you just grabbed a footbal and you went out in the middle of the street and tossed it around with your friends.  And if a car came along, someone would shout "CAR!", and you would stroll just far enough out of the way to let them pass, and then the game would continue.  You kept this up for three or four hours, stopping occasionally to drink straight from a garden hose (that was very likely laying in the DIRT).

Sometimes, I get the feeling we make bodybuilding more complicated than it needs to be.  All those bruisers I remember from the high school varsity team who used to drop by the weight room and hit whatever padded their ego that day?  I bet they never wrote any of it down or knew -or even cared- how much more HGH or Test they could stimulate by hitting the perfect combination of antagonist compound lifts.  They just lifted for the hell of it, and look where it got them.

But like you said, there are tons of variables we don't know about, and I'm not advocating that we throw out all the hard science we've racked up since then.  God knows, there's a certain delicious condescention and conceit that comes with having a grasp of the physiology and chemistry that the average weekend warrior lacks, but where's the fun in being an "expert" in all these theories if the uninitiated succeed in spite of their ignorance?

My home away from DBB

Maybe that can't be answered directly, but at least I'm glad this discussion put the term "overtraining" under a long overdue microscope.  Clearly, there are a lot of people (myself included), who have had the wrong idea about it.

I'd be willing to bet less than 1% of the people reading this board have ever truly experienced an overtraining syndrome in the clinical definition of the word.  Like Christian Thibaudeau wrote in that article, "Fatigue?  Certainly.  But not overtraining."

My home away from DBB

You're right about the guys training biceps and triceps with terrible principles growing pretty quickly. But if you train a muscle and feed it, regardless of how you do it you'll get the same result - growth.

As far as leg movements go, isn't it something how sometimes a complete upper body guy will get talked into doing squats for the first time, then the rest of of his lifts just shoot up? Is it the hormonal benefits? Or is it that compound movements like the squat teaches the muscle groups better coordination and teaches them to work together so efficiently it is even reflective of the muscle groups that they do not overload.

Train your biceps and triceps and without a doubt, eat big and you'll gain big biceps and triceps. But it's a general rule of thumb that for every 15lbs you gain you add an inch to your arms, of course it's not always accurate but can be a rough guideline. In order for their arms to grow they have to gain weight- We know there's no such thing as spot reduction but what about spot growth where one muscle groups is hypertrophied and the rest stay the same? No, I don't believe it. 15lbs doesn't go just to your arms, it goes to your overall body and if you're not working other muscle groups, what happens to them? Maybe they'll get fat?

Your arms would probably grow quicker if you worked your whole body due to working your whole body would add weight to you faster and overall healthier. Eating a lot and just doing arm movements will only get you so far, eating a lot and training your whole entire body will get you as far as you want to go.

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

I don't really know the "science" behind it, but I have my own personal philosophies and beliefs about everything in life.  In lifting my philosophy is basically this:

You're body is an adaptive "machine".  It basically has the ability to adapt itself to handle any situation in the best possible way.  This is it's natural "survival mechanism" in order to protect itself.  For instance, say you got stuck on an island with no clothes or shoes, and you were forced to live and survive there for years (like in the movie "cast away"), your body would naturally start to mold itself into that of an outside creature.  You'd grow callouses, you'd grow more hair, you'd learn to hunt better, etc....your mind+body working together in unison would transform your body into an "animal" that is built to survive outside. 

Building muscle is the same general idea.  You are constantly forcing your body to move weights around, and they get heavier and heavier, and the workouts get more and more challenging.  All the different systems in your body, including the muscular system work together to adapt itself to the constant work that you are forcing it to do.  Building muscle is the best way to handle this situation.  Your body knows that, since it is constantly being forced to do this strenuous work, it needs to build muscle to allow this work to be done.  It is basically a survival mechanism.

When it comes down to it, whether you're in the gym doing lifts with "perfect form" and some nice olympic weights, or you are outside moving heavy objects around all day everyday, or you are stuck in the jungle and forced to protect yourself against predetors, your body will do what is necessary to survive.   "Bodybuilding" is really just basic, animalistic survival. 

Now this is why the concept of "overtraining" is a joke to me.  Like I said, if you were forced to survive, you would do so.  You wouldn't be thinking "proper rest periods and recovery periods in order to avoid overtraining".  You would just do what you had to do, and your body would transform into what it needed to in order to survive.  So I go to the gym with the mentality that I'm going to be moving heavy objects, and over time those objects will be getting heavier and heavier.  I do what's necessary to move those objects, and what is necessary is to constantly go to the gym and do the lifts and give it my 100% effort.  The more I go, the stronger I get.  A nice side effect to this is that my body builds muscle to help me complete this task.  I never about overtraining. 

I worry about lifting heavy weights, and how to do that.   Food and sleep take care of all the rest and give me energy to keep at it.  It's really really REALLY simple in all honesty.  It's just basic human adaptibility and survival. 

"True genius, in many fields of human endeavor, is often revealed in elegant simplicity."

- A smart man

Journal: http://www.wannabebigforums.com/showthread.php?t=117358

Well, you raise an interesting point, MVP, but I have to disagree slightly with your premise that there is no "spot growth" (to an extent).  For one thing, the reason spot fat reduction is an impossibility is because there is no way to directly stimulate specific deposits of fat.  There is no CNS connection that puts where your body burns fat under your conscious control.  Muscle, on the other hand, is very much subject to direct, even isolated manipulation, and therefor, targeted growth.

As you and brihead301 both point out, Any muscle that is directly and adequately stimulated will grow.  But blasting your biceps alone (with an isolation move) won't put a millimeter of mass on your thighs.  To the extent that compound lifts like deadlifts and squats cause systemic hormonal responses, there should always be a spillover to all the other muscles in the body; but if you only did deadlifts, and nothing else, you would not get as much growth out of your biceps as you would if you also trained them through their full ROM.

I think it's interesting to note, per both of your outlooks on training, that what I have accomplished so far in terms of gains is both within the margin of predictability, and reflects the holistic training pattern I employed.  That is, I've been blasting the crap out of everything, and consequently, I seem to have elicited equal growth all over.  It's like I've taken every skeletal muscle on my frame and made it larger by the same percentage.  It is a nearly linear adaptive response to an equally linear and comprehensive stimulus.

My home away from DBB

Yeah, it's not that hard to get to the point where you get really burned out.  I remember there was a month where I attempted to imitate the Navy Seal candidates attending BUD/SEAL in Phase 3- PT Workout before every meal. I was running 4 miles or so before I ate anything that month. Before the month was over I couldn't run. It wasn't really because my legs were giving out or anything, I just felt too stressed to do so, and I didn't run for 3 weeks. Gotta know when to back off, I guess

Age: 18
Supplements: Whey Protein
Sport: Long Distance Running (5-10k++)
Does Yoga!

CarlosJesena


Yeah, it's not that hard to get to the point where you get really burned out.  I remember there was a month where I attempted to imitate the Navy Seal candidates attending BUD/SEAL in Phase 3- PT Workout before every meal. I was running 4 miles or so before I ate anything that month. Before the month was over I couldn't run. It wasn't really because my legs were giving out or anything, I just felt too stressed to do so, and I didn't run for 3 weeks. Gotta know when to back off, I guess

How fast did the fatigue overtake you, Carlos?  Was it a gradual buildup involving declining quality of sleep/appetite, or was it more sudden?  I guess I'm asking what kind of warning signs you saw (in retrospect).

My home away from DBB

veggeep

CarlosJesena


Yeah, it's not that hard to get to the point where you get really burned out.  I remember there was a month where I attempted to imitate the Navy Seal candidates attending BUD/SEAL in Phase 3- PT Workout before every meal. I was running 4 miles or so before I ate anything that month. Before the month was over I couldn't run. It wasn't really because my legs were giving out or anything, I just felt too stressed to do so, and I didn't run for 3 weeks. Gotta know when to back off, I guess

How fast did the fatigue overtake you, Carlos?  Was it a gradual buildup involving declining quality of sleep/appetite, or was it more sudden?  I guess I'm asking what kind of warning signs you saw (in retrospect).

 
To be honest, after a week and a half, I felt like sh*t. If you wanna get technical. I was really forcing it for the next 2. After 2 weeks, my knees were pretty bad. You see, I do yoga, and I couldn't do a lot of the poses that involve a lot of leg bending because my legs were always painful. After the first day I was still fine, I felt like I was accomplishing something. Yet as it went on, quite quickly it became a pain. As a musician I'm on a very tight schedule so I really limit myself to 8 hours of sleep. I guess my body didn't have enough time to recover. Besides. 12 or so miles a day is TOOOOO much

Age: 18
Supplements: Whey Protein
Sport: Long Distance Running (5-10k++)
Does Yoga!

veggeep


Well, you raise an interesting point, MVP, but I have to disagree slightly with your premise that there is no "spot growth" (to an extent).  For one thing, the reason spot fat reduction is an impossibility is because there is no way to directly stimulate specific deposits of fat.  There is no CNS connection that puts where your body burns fat under your conscious control.  Muscle, on the other hand, is very much subject to direct, even isolated manipulation, and therefor, targeted growth.

As you and brihead301 both point out, Any muscle that is directly and adequately stimulated will grow.  But blasting your biceps alone (with an isolation move) won't put a millimeter of mass on your thighs.  To the extent that compound lifts like deadlifts and squats cause systemic hormonal responses, there should always be a spillover to all the other muscles in the body; but if you only did deadlifts, and nothing else, you would not get as much growth out of your biceps as you would if you also trained them through their full ROM.

I think it's interesting to note, per both of your outlooks on training, that what I have accomplished so far in terms of gains is both within the margin of predictability, and reflects the holistic training pattern I employed.  That is, I've been blasting the crap out of everything, and consequently, I seem to have elicited equal growth all over.  It's like I've taken every skeletal muscle on my frame and made it larger by the same percentage.  It is a nearly linear adaptive response to an equally linear and comprehensive stimulus.

We're talking about 2 different types of overtraining here (both of which I don't believe in though).  I'm talking about overtraining the CNS from too much training and not enough recovery.  You are talking about overtraining of a specific muscle or muscle group from working it too much.  My philosophy would apply to both though because the body is really just an organism trying it's best to stay alive.  The body doesn't think "Wait a minute.....I already did biceps twice this week, this 3rd session is too much".  Rather it thinks "I'm constantly being forced to move this object through this particular ROM, therefore I gotta do what is necessary to make this task possible." 
 
But overtraining of the CNS is what I was talking about, and even still I don't worry about that, because again, the body does what's necessary to survive.  When it needs sleep, it shuts down.  When it needs food, it gets hungry.  So it does all the necessary work, and gives the brain it's signals when it needs food or rest.  It is capable of doing a TON of work though!
 
So a routine written on paper may appear to look like it has the potential of "overtraining", but the body doesn't see what's written on the paper, and it doesn't understand and of the "training principles" of the routine, it just does it's job and adapts.  
 
Basically, in case it wasn't clear, I'm in total agreement with the idea that if you work a muscle more, the better.

"True genius, in many fields of human endeavor, is often revealed in elegant simplicity."

- A smart man

Journal: http://www.wannabebigforums.com/showthread.php?t=117358

No, bri... I get your point.  I'm not disputing the difference between accute muscular fatigue and legitimate CNS "Overtraining".  It's that distinction that I think has been missed in everyone's zeal to toss the word "overtraining" around.  So we're all on the same page there.

My last reply takes issue with the claim that you can't target a specific musle for growth without affecting the rest (ie, equating targeted muscular hypertrophy to the futility of targeted fat loss).  The addage "15 lbs overall to gain 1 inch on your arms" is a fairly safe generalization, but the premise of my original post is that yes, you can indeed pack 15 pounds of muscle onto just your pecs and arms, leaving your legs utterly neglected and unchanged -AND pack it on with really crappy training discipline.  It will, of course, take much longer to gain those 15 pounds, but it happens too often to be discounted as impossible.

My home away from DBB

Incidentally, I decided to put this little theory of mine to the test, and (per Nm0ney34's suggestion) throw in a brief stint -maybe two or three weeks- of ridiculously high volume as a periodization strategy.

So yesterday, I blew up a two and a half hour upper body throw-down.  Bench presses, decline bench presses, shoulder presses, bench DB pullovers, low cable rows, barbell rows, ab crunches, EZ-Bar curls, alt DB curls, low-bar chins, upright DB rows... pure, exquisite, sweat-drenched, vein-popping, endorphin-flooded madness.  I did not want to stop

Alas, I pried myself away from the weights when it began to dawn on me that I was approaching four hours since my last meal.

Smashing good fun, if not a tad impractical.

My home away from DBB

Ah, I see we are on the same page!  I'm looking forward to seeing these results to the test!

"True genius, in many fields of human endeavor, is often revealed in elegant simplicity."

- A smart man

Journal: http://www.wannabebigforums.com/showthread.php?t=117358

THIS will be good.

Veg, you bulking right now I am guessing?

Perrynaytor


THIS will be good.

Veg, you bulking right now I am guessing?

Aaawww yeeeah, booeeeyyy! There will be a 190-pound plant-powered veggilante prowling these boards by Christmas if I have to gain the next 20 pounds in pure lard to do it

Just kidding.  I'm not that crazy.  But yes, bulking is the current focus.

My home away from DBB

Perrynaytor


THIS will be good.

Veg, you bulking right now I am guessing?

Yes VEG is Bulking
I....In turn am VEG
 
We'll change back after summer

Current Stack: HDROL,Celltech,Superpump 250, Glutamine,Beta alanine,Whey protein.

I think there may be some truth to this where people may be "overstressing" how long of a break you need before working a muscle over again. I myself have two friends that do a large amount of bicep work 3-4 times a week like the typical "gym noob" and they destroy me as far as bicep strength goes despite the fact ive been working out much longer. So in saying this, I am going to be very interested in veggeep's experiment and wouldn't even be extremely suprised if it worked great for a month before tapering off.

I understand some people have chemical advantages, but lets take for example Louie Simmons and the guys at westside barbell.  For them they have 4 days that are focussed on their dynamic and max effort exercises with some supplementary work afterwards.  BUT they don't have any rest days, every other day they still come back in and hit supplementary work, they utilize a principle however that each time they repeat a given area that it is at 60% of the volume of the previous work out, then the next time 60% of that.  Of course roids and things help them recover, and we know most all the top performing 1200 lb squatters are most likely on the juice.

But, if we are healthy and have decent testosterone levels, what is to keep us from attempting to train like some of these others.  Lately I never get sore exceptt a few localized little spots like my right grown and hamstring after ME squat, but I could still do more work on it the next day just not heavy heavy squats.  I'm working on a business plan for a strength training/athletic training facility, if that all goes through and my job is running hte place, I am going to utlize the time I am there and see if I can't handle training much more than one would normally suggest.

http://www.discussbodybuilding.com/Seos-Log-2008-m442008.aspx

I'm going to bump this veg if you don't mind.

I was browsing the site, here is a scientific study Dan posted in relation to overreaching VS. overtraining.

http://www.discussbodyb...verreaching-m223894.aspx

Good read.

ACE-CPT, NASM-CPT, AFPA-Nutrition Consultant 

SEOINAGE


I understand some people have chemical advantages, but lets take for example Louie Simmons and the guys at westside barbell.  For them they have 4 days that are focussed on their dynamic and max effort exercises with some supplementary work afterwards.  BUT they don't have any rest days, every other day they still come back in and hit supplementary work, they utilize a principle however that each time they repeat a given area that it is at 60% of the volume of the previous work out, then the next time 60% of that.  Of course roids and things help them recover, and we know most all the top performing 1200 lb squatters are most likely on the juice.

But, if we are healthy and have decent testosterone levels, what is to keep us from attempting to train like some of these others.  Lately I never get sore exceptt a few localized little spots like my right grown and hamstring after ME squat, but I could still do more work on it the next day just not heavy heavy squats.  I'm working on a business plan for a strength training/athletic training facility, if that all goes through and my job is running hte place, I am going to utlize the time I am there and see if I can't handle training much more than one would normally suggest.

Just wanted to say that I test this boundary all the time and in the end the weights always kick my ass.

working on explosive phase
vertical: 35
weight: 206

Big 3: 300/440/515

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

I'm afraid I polluted my little experiment...

I blasted the crizzap out of everything for a solid week -no workout shorter than two straight hours of all-out vein-popping madness (and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of each workout), but then I had to run up to New Jersey for the July 4th holiday weekend.  Even though I brought some DBs and I have a Swiss ball up there, I couldn't really hit the same all-out intensity that I can at home.  Besides, I was more concerned with relaxing (not that working out at the shore isn't extremely relaxing in itself, but you get the picture).

In any case, measurements from that week were definitely up, and definitely more so than when I'm playing it safe and doing a Push/Pull/Legs & Abs split.  But last week I dropped back to Monday/Tuesday on, Wednesday off, Thursday/Friday on, and some of my measurements backslid.  Again, not sure if that was caused by taking a hit on my diet while at the shore, or if it was the (comparatively) relaxed training approach.

Either way, one week is obviously not a long enough trial from which to draw definitive conclusions, so as long as it didn't kick my ass, I'll continue to toss those high-volume workouts in for periodicity's sake.

My home away from DBB