Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below i have been doing cardio for 5 times(30-40 mins moderate intensity. heart rate above 150bpm) a week and been training 5 days a week on a 5 day split for an hour a day (my cardio and weights are split) do u think i am suffering from over training? should i cut my cardio down to 3 time a week for 20min HIIT for 2-3 weeks to see if it help?
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over training?
- Thread starter djeasye
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It is going to be hard for someone to tell if you are over training. Especially with the detailed info you provided. Do you feel sick, tired, and run down? Are you making progress in the gym? Strength, LBM, body comp?
Here is a good bit of info on over training from Madcow's training primer.
Training Primer
Is Overtraining at the Muscular Level?
Actually knowing that workload is a proxy for microtrauma or stimulus, now learn about fatigue or the nervous system. The nervous system is what overtraining is about, it's not about tissue repair so much. You don't get exhausted, unable to concentrate, interrupted sleep patters, decreased performance and reaction times from doing too many sets of bis one day. This is your nervous system getting hammered. The nervous system is what recruits your muscles and to do heavy work it fires hard (rate coding). So knowing that workload is a proxy for stimulus to the muscles and hypertrophy, getting those extra reps by going to failure becomes particularly expensive. Not that failure is bad but simply that rate coding skyrockets and that impacts fatigue and accumulated fatigue is overtraining - it is not an accident that failure or HIT type protocols default to low volume and stress recovery (they just didn't realize it wasn't the muscles that were failing, it was their nervous system redlining i.e. failure is not a stimulus unless you are trying to get better at the neural level and that is a viable way to load the muscles progressively with more weight but it isn't as direct as Mr. Mentzer seemed to think).
So that's failure in a nutshell, and reaching failure is not necessarily a bad thing. But it's important to understand it because fatigue is the limited resource so fatigue limits workload which limits microtrauma which limits hypertrophy. So there is a balance and limited resources.
How do I know I Recruited All My Fibers?
This is a great read on recruitment and how exactly this works, pay particular attention to nwlifter's posts in this thread. Really sharp guy and knows this area unbelievably. You can visit his site, Hypertrophy Research This jist being that all fibers get recruited between 50-80% of a 1RM effort, hence the very first rep of your 5 rep max will recruit all fibers and while the very first rep of a 10RM set won't you will get to that point fairly quickly as the initial reps fatigue you (you don't need ball breaking gut busting failure just to make sure). Back to workload, just because a fiber was recruited doesn't mean it has done enough work for hypertrophy though.
So How Does the Whole Overtraining and Nervous System Thing Fit into a Program?
Also the difference between the nervous system and performance/strength/muscular system in training can be seen in the two factor model where fitness and fatigue are separate factors. Interestingly and what makes this really important to separate those factors is that the nervous system recovers much faster than performance is lost. Basically, the rate of decay in fatigue is much higher and basically 3:1. Why is this important - higher workloads. A program that might kill someone over 10 weeks without break might be very stimulative for 3-4 weeks. Knowing that fatigue can be dissipated quickly, you wind up with periodization or an undulating set of blocks to where workload can be very high for a period, lowered for a brief period to allow recovery and then raised again. This allows a lot more work and microtrauma. Now this isn't necessary for most teens getting into this or anything, the name of the game there is to keep fatigue low enough to be tolerable and then scale the weights, but this relationship is very useful for elite lifters and athletes. This type of model is basically the standard at that level. Both of these are great links - you'll get a great contrast between single and dual factor models in the first (don't worry about the specific programs - one is the dual factor 5x5 on my site anyway - and I actually wrote the description onn the link) and in the 2nd you'll see how this is used and put to work at high levels.
Kelly Baggett's Planned Overtraining Article (Dual vs. Single Factor)
Article on Meso Illustrating Long-Term Planning and Utilization
Here is a good bit of info on over training from Madcow's training primer.
Training Primer
Is Overtraining at the Muscular Level?
Actually knowing that workload is a proxy for microtrauma or stimulus, now learn about fatigue or the nervous system. The nervous system is what overtraining is about, it's not about tissue repair so much. You don't get exhausted, unable to concentrate, interrupted sleep patters, decreased performance and reaction times from doing too many sets of bis one day. This is your nervous system getting hammered. The nervous system is what recruits your muscles and to do heavy work it fires hard (rate coding). So knowing that workload is a proxy for stimulus to the muscles and hypertrophy, getting those extra reps by going to failure becomes particularly expensive. Not that failure is bad but simply that rate coding skyrockets and that impacts fatigue and accumulated fatigue is overtraining - it is not an accident that failure or HIT type protocols default to low volume and stress recovery (they just didn't realize it wasn't the muscles that were failing, it was their nervous system redlining i.e. failure is not a stimulus unless you are trying to get better at the neural level and that is a viable way to load the muscles progressively with more weight but it isn't as direct as Mr. Mentzer seemed to think).
So that's failure in a nutshell, and reaching failure is not necessarily a bad thing. But it's important to understand it because fatigue is the limited resource so fatigue limits workload which limits microtrauma which limits hypertrophy. So there is a balance and limited resources.
How do I know I Recruited All My Fibers?
This is a great read on recruitment and how exactly this works, pay particular attention to nwlifter's posts in this thread. Really sharp guy and knows this area unbelievably. You can visit his site, Hypertrophy Research This jist being that all fibers get recruited between 50-80% of a 1RM effort, hence the very first rep of your 5 rep max will recruit all fibers and while the very first rep of a 10RM set won't you will get to that point fairly quickly as the initial reps fatigue you (you don't need ball breaking gut busting failure just to make sure). Back to workload, just because a fiber was recruited doesn't mean it has done enough work for hypertrophy though.
So How Does the Whole Overtraining and Nervous System Thing Fit into a Program?
Also the difference between the nervous system and performance/strength/muscular system in training can be seen in the two factor model where fitness and fatigue are separate factors. Interestingly and what makes this really important to separate those factors is that the nervous system recovers much faster than performance is lost. Basically, the rate of decay in fatigue is much higher and basically 3:1. Why is this important - higher workloads. A program that might kill someone over 10 weeks without break might be very stimulative for 3-4 weeks. Knowing that fatigue can be dissipated quickly, you wind up with periodization or an undulating set of blocks to where workload can be very high for a period, lowered for a brief period to allow recovery and then raised again. This allows a lot more work and microtrauma. Now this isn't necessary for most teens getting into this or anything, the name of the game there is to keep fatigue low enough to be tolerable and then scale the weights, but this relationship is very useful for elite lifters and athletes. This type of model is basically the standard at that level. Both of these are great links - you'll get a great contrast between single and dual factor models in the first (don't worry about the specific programs - one is the dual factor 5x5 on my site anyway - and I actually wrote the description onn the link) and in the 2nd you'll see how this is used and put to work at high levels.
Kelly Baggett's Planned Overtraining Article (Dual vs. Single Factor)
Article on Meso Illustrating Long-Term Planning and Utilization
Are you recovering?
Are you trying to lose weight?
I would have to eat MASSIVE amounts of foods to do cardio a few times a week and train 5 times a week.
Are you trying to lose weight?
I would have to eat MASSIVE amounts of foods to do cardio a few times a week and train 5 times a week.
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