Recovery and Overtraining

 

This is a topic that speaks very close to me. Recovery is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of growth, and i definitely had a time in my life where i overlooked it. We fall in love with training and we get this mentality that the more we put in the more we get out. Which is true in terms of dedication and effort during our sessions and the sacrifices we make out of the gym that impacts our physiques. But when it comes to the growth of muscle tissue just like a injury it needs time to heal. If we break a bone and go try to do things you normally would our bone would never heal. Just like if we were to train a body part and then keep trying to target that area it would never heal. Now you can argue what if you did one muscle group a day and just split it out throughout the week. Well your CNS(central nervous system) needs a rest to. Your CNS consist of your brain and spinal cord, and any task you perform your CNS is engaged. You brain sends signals to the spinal cord and your spinal cord sends signals to the muscles needed to accomplish the task at hand, and the harder you work the more it gets taxed. So if you are hitting the gym 6/7x a week at a high intensity then your probably overtraining and overtaxing your CNS and muscles. The way to increase muscle tissue is to train the desired area to complete mechanical failure to the point of reaching a higher stimulus from the previous session then not stimulating that area again until its fully recovered. Now if we fatigue one area like say back, then the next day we have a push day including chest and shoulders, well after that second day you have taxed a significant amount of total area of your body. To go to the gym again to hit a area like say legs for example that has nothing to do with the two previous sessions might feel like a ok thing to do because that area doesn’t feel affected but your CNS definitely is and your ability to perform during that session will show it. Your CNS won’t get sore but there are some signs that will allow you to know your probably doing too much. If your CNS is taxed you will find the quality of sleep to become poor, low energy, low motivation, flu like symptoms, headaches, joint aches, etc. Unfortunately a lot of the times we like to contribute some of these symptoms to training in general, thinking i'm just real tired because i trained hard, or my joints are achy because of training, but in reality your body is probably trying to tell you to take a day off. Once you can find it in yourself to listen to your body and increase your recovery by taking a day off every 2-3 days  then you will see and feel the difference. It took me 3 years of people who were more advanced than myself telling me to decrease training time, decrease days the the gym and think more about recovery till i finally listened and started to see the difference. I went from eating over 5k cals a day, training 6-7 days a week, 2-3 hrs a session and my weight did not budge. I now eat 500 cals less, i train 2 days on 1 day off and my sessions only last about 1.25-2hrs(2hrs being legs) and i weigh 40 lbs more with better conditioning. Unfortunately when it comes to overtraining we are our own worst enemy but we also possess the power to turn it around, it just takes a big mental jump.


“Once you’ve stimulated the growth process through training, more training won’t ACCELERATE it. In fact, it can keep you from making progress. If growth has been initiated through training , then after that it’s about eating, sleeping, and recovering.”

-Paul Carter


 
Joseph Patch