ajdos
Friends Remembered
- Sep 8, 2010
- 2,282
- 399
Well the one thing I have surely noticed as I have trained over the years is the bodies ever seemingly diminished capacity for recovery.
I started out as a natty bodybuilder with great recovery ability. I would work construction, I had no car, so I walked or road a bicycle everywhere...and I managed to train 6 days a week with no problem.
Youth, it was such a nice thing.
Eventually, I became bigger, and the bigger I seemed to get with more muscle and more strenth, the longer it started to take to recover in between workouts.
Now after 21 years, and having used AAS at points, I am clearly not the recovering machine I was back then.
Recently I hit another wall, I was really struggling and the pain I was feeling all over my body was horrible.
I had been dieting, and I thought it had alot to do with the diet and just being sluggish and lethargic, but as time went on I noticed I was gradually getting worse.
I took one week off to let my body heal. Within two days of being back in the gym I felt like ass again.
My training was a two on one off schedule, so I was getting a rest day every third day. But what I kept noticing were symptoms that werent going away, I just wasnt healing. It depressed me a little, I kept thinking 'fuck Im just getting old!'. Things like my forearms hurt all the time, it was too the point I didnt want to grab anything very suddenly or use my fingers for certain tasks...my left hand felt like it was bruised, but had no bruise.
My knees, feet and shins hurt, and leg day was absolutely a nightmare, everything hurt, my hams, knees, IT bands, EVERYTHING!
I couldnt figure out wtf it was!
So, as my diet progressed and I moved into taking 3-4 days of no training and crap loading I was noticing that each successive day of rest I was in MORE pain!
So, I ended up having some other issues to deal with and took 6 days off after one of the crap loads, by day 6 I actually began to feel a little better.
Then I remembered an old post I wrote years ago-about overtraining and needing more rest as we get older and larger.
So I decided to hit legs, and just see what happened....well it wasnt AS bad, but still creeky.
I took 2 more days off, then I hit another bodypart, chest.
Felt a little better, so then one day off, hit back, still a little better.
As the weeks progressed I was taking either one or 2 days off after EVERY lift.
Most weeks the last month I have been training maybe 3 times per week!
At first I didnt notice anyting except that I was feeling better, and my backslide of pain and loss of strength seemed to have at least leveled off.
Then other people started saying things, everyone was asking me what the hell I was doing I LOOKED HYUGE!
In reality I was still dieting and losing weight...but even I started to notice the muscles werent flat and depleted, they were thick and full and I was actually leaning out a bit more.
I dont think I have heard so many people tell me I was looking bigger than ever when I was this dieted, I have lost 20 lbs or so.
The overtraining bug is easy to fall into, this is the least I have ever trained a week, feels almost like Im cheating but I feel better, and my workouts are progressing again like never before.
I actually started to look big to me even.
It really occurs to me when I hear people struggling on the boards that overtraining is really a bigger problem then most think.
Dorian Yates popularized the HIT training, very intense, very low volume training. I never could embrace it because I really like to do more sets and reps with a volume approach to lifting.
Well, flip side of HIT, I think is high volume, High intensity, low frequency.
At the end of the day its all about recovery and how well you do it before hammering your body over again, if it has not completed the cycle of recovery and you train again, it blunts the bodies ability to grow and supercompensate with larger muscles.
There was an article I read recently that was saying theres evidence it can take up to 72 hours for complete recovery, now Im sure thats dependent on the individual...but think about it, if you hammer yourself before your body can grow, you will never grow.
As we age our bodies become less efficient at it but ALSO they get more developed with larger muscle fibers that are stronger and can exert more physical force.
With all that added strength and ability to damage even more larger fibers, you can imagine a system with diminishing recover ability, even one aided by pharmaceuticals, is fighting a losing battle to recover in the same amount of time as the years go by and the muscles grow larger.
So-the older and more advanced athlete HAS to take more time to recover, it is paramount, I would bet you alot of the pros and high up athletes are overtrained and could be even bigger!
Apply this to your own training, really assess how tired you feel from it on a daily and weekly basis, training less could be something you really need to consider, so long as when you do go to the gym you attack the weights with balls the size of dumpsters.
I think alot of us get an ironman mentality, were pussies if we dont push through, its one thing to be slacking because your a bit tired, its another when your system is exhausted and you are just drowning yourself further into the abyss of overtraining.
I started out as a natty bodybuilder with great recovery ability. I would work construction, I had no car, so I walked or road a bicycle everywhere...and I managed to train 6 days a week with no problem.
Youth, it was such a nice thing.
Eventually, I became bigger, and the bigger I seemed to get with more muscle and more strenth, the longer it started to take to recover in between workouts.
Now after 21 years, and having used AAS at points, I am clearly not the recovering machine I was back then.
Recently I hit another wall, I was really struggling and the pain I was feeling all over my body was horrible.
I had been dieting, and I thought it had alot to do with the diet and just being sluggish and lethargic, but as time went on I noticed I was gradually getting worse.
I took one week off to let my body heal. Within two days of being back in the gym I felt like ass again.
My training was a two on one off schedule, so I was getting a rest day every third day. But what I kept noticing were symptoms that werent going away, I just wasnt healing. It depressed me a little, I kept thinking 'fuck Im just getting old!'. Things like my forearms hurt all the time, it was too the point I didnt want to grab anything very suddenly or use my fingers for certain tasks...my left hand felt like it was bruised, but had no bruise.
My knees, feet and shins hurt, and leg day was absolutely a nightmare, everything hurt, my hams, knees, IT bands, EVERYTHING!
I couldnt figure out wtf it was!
So, as my diet progressed and I moved into taking 3-4 days of no training and crap loading I was noticing that each successive day of rest I was in MORE pain!
So, I ended up having some other issues to deal with and took 6 days off after one of the crap loads, by day 6 I actually began to feel a little better.
Then I remembered an old post I wrote years ago-about overtraining and needing more rest as we get older and larger.
So I decided to hit legs, and just see what happened....well it wasnt AS bad, but still creeky.
I took 2 more days off, then I hit another bodypart, chest.
Felt a little better, so then one day off, hit back, still a little better.
As the weeks progressed I was taking either one or 2 days off after EVERY lift.
Most weeks the last month I have been training maybe 3 times per week!
At first I didnt notice anyting except that I was feeling better, and my backslide of pain and loss of strength seemed to have at least leveled off.
Then other people started saying things, everyone was asking me what the hell I was doing I LOOKED HYUGE!
In reality I was still dieting and losing weight...but even I started to notice the muscles werent flat and depleted, they were thick and full and I was actually leaning out a bit more.
I dont think I have heard so many people tell me I was looking bigger than ever when I was this dieted, I have lost 20 lbs or so.
The overtraining bug is easy to fall into, this is the least I have ever trained a week, feels almost like Im cheating but I feel better, and my workouts are progressing again like never before.
I actually started to look big to me even.
It really occurs to me when I hear people struggling on the boards that overtraining is really a bigger problem then most think.
Dorian Yates popularized the HIT training, very intense, very low volume training. I never could embrace it because I really like to do more sets and reps with a volume approach to lifting.
Well, flip side of HIT, I think is high volume, High intensity, low frequency.
At the end of the day its all about recovery and how well you do it before hammering your body over again, if it has not completed the cycle of recovery and you train again, it blunts the bodies ability to grow and supercompensate with larger muscles.
There was an article I read recently that was saying theres evidence it can take up to 72 hours for complete recovery, now Im sure thats dependent on the individual...but think about it, if you hammer yourself before your body can grow, you will never grow.
As we age our bodies become less efficient at it but ALSO they get more developed with larger muscle fibers that are stronger and can exert more physical force.
With all that added strength and ability to damage even more larger fibers, you can imagine a system with diminishing recover ability, even one aided by pharmaceuticals, is fighting a losing battle to recover in the same amount of time as the years go by and the muscles grow larger.
So-the older and more advanced athlete HAS to take more time to recover, it is paramount, I would bet you alot of the pros and high up athletes are overtrained and could be even bigger!
Apply this to your own training, really assess how tired you feel from it on a daily and weekly basis, training less could be something you really need to consider, so long as when you do go to the gym you attack the weights with balls the size of dumpsters.
I think alot of us get an ironman mentality, were pussies if we dont push through, its one thing to be slacking because your a bit tired, its another when your system is exhausted and you are just drowning yourself further into the abyss of overtraining.
