did Arnold overtrain back in 70s???

[Big_pimpin]

Back in the day I had Arnold's Encyclopedia of Modern bodybuilding. Its a pretty cool book with lots of famous bodybuilding photots. Anyhow, If I remember correctly Arnold was all about LOTS of sets. His beginner workouts had about 15 sets per bodypart ie 3 exercies for 5 sets for each part of the body. His advanced workouts had about 25-30 sets per body part, ie 5-7 sets of 5 different exercises for each body part. Its been about 20 years since I've looked through it, so the details are really hazy.

 

[MattJS]

If he overtrained it wouldn't have worked, and it definitely worked... I know a guy who can squat over 400lbs for 5x5 naturally, he's squatting four times a week, granted there's a light and a medium session in there, but thats still one more heavy squat session each week than most roiders are doing, I've also heard of olympic lifters squatting heavy daily... So if the human body can adapt to that naturally, what should a performance enhanced athlete be able to do? Should we REALLY worry about overtraining? I know I don't...

 

[Big_pimpin]

It all depends on your level of fitness. If you are used to super high volume then 30 sets won't cause overtraining. When I was younger I could work out for 90 minutes to 2 hours at a really high intensity. Now I am fried after 30 minutes since I am so out of shape. Doing more then 5-10 sets for me right now per bodypart would cause overtraining, but that would hardly warm me up back in the good old days, LOL.

 

[stevesmi]

If he overtrained it wouldn't have worked, and it definitely worked... I know a guy who can squat over 400lbs for 5x5 naturally, he's squatting four times a week, granted there's a light and a medium session in there, but thats still one more heavy squat session each week than most roiders are doing, I've also heard of olympic lifters squatting heavy daily... So if the human body can adapt to that naturally, what should a performance enhanced athlete be able to do? Should we REALLY worry about overtraining? I know I don't...

this right here is spot on

runners who train for 5K's run 4-5X per week. you won't get anywhere training 2-3X per week if you want to improve your time. however they don't go out there and do 10 sets of 400M intervals on the track everytime. they will do a LSD run, a tempo run, etc. maybe do intervals once or twice every 2 weeks.

weight training is the same thing. if you go in there and throw around as heavy a weights like a gorilla for an hour a day you are just gonna overtrain. its about having a strategy and laying off the gas pedal.. de-loading. going 60% some days and 80% others. if you go in there and do 1 rep of a compound lift.. rest for 8 minutes and do another and call it a day you aren't gonna get very far

 

[Creepusmaximus]

Tricky question because the body can adapt to most physical activities but that's not what you want for body building. I change up my work outs almost every week, I have a big group of exercises to pick from. Let say back day I might go heavy with barbell rows, next week my big lift may be deads for back, I'll hit the whole back I just change up what the focus exercise is week to week. I'll go in and go wild with a pull up bar some times and just do different grips until I can pull myself up any more then I'll use an assist to get some more till I can't do much of anything. The other side of that coin is doing exactly the same thing all the time, think construction something like that. You might lift heavy objects every day after day and your body just adapts to it, you don't grow and you can do it every day if you really want to.