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Overreaching itself is not a bad thing. If you keep training when overreaching then it may turned into overtraining which includes regression of abilities, disrupted sleep, decreased appetite, etc. which leads to overtraining. However, short term overreaching can be planned to induce supercompensation and is actually a good thing.
Think back to the fatigue and fitness model. As our fitness improves it becomes substantially harder to progress because our bodies adapt to the training stimuli. Therefore, as we advance into the intermediate/advanced training stages, we need to think about our mesocycles in terms of several week or two week blocks.
As the complexity of the routine rises, we start to vary them with light/medium/heavy days and low/medium/high repetitions days. This allows us to emphasize training more towards the neuromuscular or musculoskeletal systems in our bodies. Additionally, the cumulative fatigue of several workouts or consecutive days training to depress the body's physiological abilities such that the overall training forces an adaptation. These two reasons help lead to progress.
This is the core of the "dual factor" theory and how we can use planned overreaching to progress. We want to combine several workouts together usually weekly or biweekly to depress the body's abilities to allow progression. For clite athletes it may be monthly or yearly depending on if they are in season or trying to peak for certain competitions such as the Olympics.
For our purposes this is why we are planning on a weekly cycle. Planned overreaching is executed well with at least a couple rest days or light days so that the body can recover from the total volume of the week,
Thus, with overreaching we start want to think longer term. A decrease in abilities during a week in an intermediate or advance training cycle is not always bad as long as there is sufficient rest at the end of the week to recover so that you can supercompensate and adjust for the next couple weeks of the mesocycle.
Hence, why I said that if you are not progressing within a mesocycle much it may just be that the "fitness" results are still being masked by the "fatigue." Once you hit the rest break at the end of the mesocycle you may supercompensate and get stronger.
Planning some of the more advanced training concepts into your routine will definitely take a lot of thought and experimentation because everyone is different. So do not worry if you are having problems adjusting. This is why a training log is so important so you can look back and see if your abilities were decreasing or increasing over a mesocycle. Plus, if you did not make progress and then suddenly got stronger after a deload week you can see the effects of supercompensation.
Knowing how your body responds at certain frequencies, intensities, and volumes of training is important to learn how to program effectively. It will help you modify your own routines to elicit the best progress for your level of ability.
Overtraining is actually a prolonged state of "underrecovery" in which the body does not have the ability to properly repair itself. Generally, it takes weeks or even months to recover from this type of state where the abilities are so depressed below starting level. This state can only be reached through chronic overworking. This means that unless you have done months upon months of training in a row or years for that matter, you will never hit an overtraining state.
One exception is rhabdomyolysis. Simply put, rhabdomyolysis is an injury to the rod-shaped/striated tissue ("rhabdo") which is muscle ("myo") where the muscle itself is broken open ("lysis") and the cellular contents spill out into the bloodstream. This can occur under various circumstances, but the one
we are most concerned with is the exercised induced variety. When an exercise has excessive volume or eccentrics in it (CrossFit in particular), the muscle fibers themselves can actually be destroyed. This is not actually "overtraining" as it appears in the literature, but it can lead to a state where the abilities of the athlete are decreased substantially — strength and conditioning loss in those with rhabdomyolysis single workout or series of workouts. However, we are going to ignore this case since it does not represent true overtraining.
Depending on the relative intensity of the exercise you are doing, you may never even it an overtraining state even if you are training for years on end. With proper deloading, overtraining will likely never occur which is only why I am briefly touching on this subject.
If your abilities are increasing each workout, you are not overtraining or overreaching. On the other hand, you could be performing more or less than your body can handle. Thus, experimenting with the volume, intensity or frequency of workouts to increase the gains or recovery is possible.
If you are plateauing or regressing and you have not taken a break from working out in a while then it may be time for a deload depending on where you are in a mesocycle. This is likely due to some form of overreaching or undertraining. I would always rest first for a week just to see if that helps, but if it does. not then it is likely undertraining.
Similarly, examine your sleep schedule, diet and stressors in your life and make sure they are consistent. These all affect recovery substantially, so it might not be that you are training too much. It may be the fact that your body's ability to recover from that training normally is blunted - ¢.¢. underrecovery." Anything that puts back water into your body's pool ~ sleep, proper nutrition, destressing, massages, etc. can help to mitigate overtraining.
The two most prominent symptoms of overtraining are decreased appetite and decrease in quality of sleep. If you have recently increased volume or executed workouts with higher intensity and this is the case, then it may be a good idea to remove the extra stressors until you have adequately adapted to the training to add additional volume. If you are experiencing some of those symptoms it may be due to overworking yourself or underrecovery. Do not be afraid to take an extra rest day or two if you need to. Missing one workout will not kill you; wasting your time in a chronic plateau or regression from an overtrained state will. When in doubt take a couple rest days.
Basically, overtraining is not something that you should be worrying about. As long as you have your goals and are progressing towards your goals you are fine. If you are not, then you need to evaluate your training, sleep, diet, or other factors to see if you are doing too much work or blunting your recovery. If you need advice from plateauing or regression, do not hesitate to ask someone with experience on how to break through that. Also, do not be afraid to take a couple days here and there for rest.
For beginners overreaching will tend to be when progress stalls from workout to workout. At this juncture, deloads and moving back into constant progression in advised.
For intermediates and beyond where progress is more week to week or longer, planned overreaching can and should be used to apply adequate stress to the body to force strength and muscle mass adaptations.
Overtraining, in general, is not something to be worried about unless your abilities are constantly regressing in which case it may be a good idea to take significant time off to recover.
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