The difference between overtraining and muscle overload
In my early days, when I was starting at 16 and weighed around 30 pounds, I trained 5-6 days a week with incredible intensity. In fact, it would literally push me to failure in every series I did. The reason is that I felt like I hadn’t worked the muscle if I knew I had more in the tank. Of course, at that age you don’t stop to think about the physiological effects of trying your best day after day and what that could do for your recovery.
I always liken it to driving a car; If you buy a car and mark it red wherever you go, it will be a wreck after a couple of weeks. The same goes for your body. However, many people still confuse the difference between overtraining and overloading. This article will attempt to address this confusion so that you better understand how your training should evolve over time.
Remember that one of the keys to getting bigger and stronger is the progressive increase in microtrauma to the muscle. That means that as time passes you must add more weight to the bar, otherwise the stimulus is not great enough to cause the anabolic effect you are looking for. The time it takes to gain weight depends largely on the level of the athlete.
Beginners can gain weight every week, or even several times a week, however, Olympians have 4-year cycles to reach new personal milestones that are related to the Olympics. The thing to remember is that if, in 6 months, you lift 20 kg more on each of your lifts than you do now, then you will be bigger (assuming you are eating enough!).
The preceding paragraph serves as an introduction to the key point of this article. Overtraining and overloading are completely different things. One can be beneficial to your training regimen, while the other can be hugely detrimental. One is a short-term state, while the other is long-term and requires significant time to recover.
So what is the difference?
Overload is a short period of time during which you push your body very hard. So, for example, in a periodization (dual factor) routine, it is commonplace for the athlete to overload themselves during the first four to five weeks of the eight to nine week cycle. The overload phase consists of medium to high volume and high intensity that puts your body under stress that it could not bear for longer periods of time but which it can bear for short periods of four to five weeks.
Overload can be extremely helpful because in a state of overload, your body’s fatigue dissipates much faster than the strength gains gained in the overload phase. Therefore, the athlete can have a week of unloading before increasing with low volume and high intensity for new highs at the end of the cycle. Then the athlete can rest, rinse, and repeat; each time it reaches a maximum at the end of the phase.
Overtraining, on the other hand, is much more serious and when your body has been under undue stress for too long. Overtraining would be the result of being overloaded for too long; for a period of approximately 10 weeks. When you are in a state of overtraining, you may need to rest for 2-3 weeks for your body to fully recover, your elevators will be low, and it will be difficult for you to sleep at night. These are the most common symptoms.
Long story short, there is absolutely no harm in going hard and heavy and wearing down your body as long as you pay attention to timescales. Overloading for 4 weeks can have an incredible effect on your strength and subsequent size gain. If you overload yourself for too long and go into a state of overtraining, you are heading for chronic fatigue, injury, and a couple of weeks of no training. Hope this post has cleared up some misconceptions about “overtraining”. The term is used far too often in bodybuilding circles and in a completely wrong context. See you on the squat rack.
