In Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 1, I gave a detailed definition of overtraining which I’ve reproduced below.

Overtraining occurs when there is a long-term imbalance between the training load and recovery processes that, for a given athlete, leads to a decrement in performance that takes more than 2-3 weeks to return to normal.

Having examined the details of performance decrement/underperformance syndrome in Overtraining, Overreaching and all the Rest Part 2, I want to back further up the definition and look at the idea of the balance between training load and recovery being the root of the issue (at least at a global level).  I also want to make the point that explicit training and recovery is not all that needs to be considered here.  Finally, I’ll also look at the idea of underrecovery as a bigger issue than overtraining per se.
 

What Causes Overtraining Part 1

A long standing question among sports scientists is what the actual ’cause’ of overtraining is, although they are usually looking at it in more of a biological sense than what I am going to talk about today.  I may talk about that later in the series but, for the most part, much of what research has looked at (e.g. muscle glycogen, muscle damage, etc.) is neither practically nor easily measurable.  Rather, in this section I want to look at the more global ’causes’ of overtraining.

In simple terms, we really need to consider two major and interacting processes on the body which are:

1. Training load: volume, intensity, frequency, etc.


2. Recovery processes: representing a whole mix of different stuff.

Or think of it more simply as stress on one side of the equation and recovery on the other side. Where the balance of the two determining whether a given athlete improves, stagnates, or regresses during their training.  Simply but reasonably accurately, we can say that:

Since the 1980’s, when everybody tried to follow the drug-fueled training models of the Eastern Block Countries and got completely broken off, a constant cry and fear in the training world is that of ‘overtraining’.  People throw around the term in the most interesting of ways and most of those ways are incorrect.  This is especially true in the general fitness/physique world where ‘overtraining’ has come to be synonymous with ‘I got kind of tired’ which is not what it means at all.

But it’s clear that the concept of overtraining (and I’ll admit that I tend to be a little bit free in throwing the term around from time to time) is very unclear for folks.  So I want to set about unclearing it by looking at a variety of concepts.  Two of the primary ones are overtraining (aka the overtraining syndrome or OTS) and a related idea called overreaching.

This is more than just a semantic distinction, mind you; although the definitions tend to be a little less than useful as you’ll see by the time I get to the end of all of this.  I’ll also discuss a couple of more recent terms called ‘underperformance syndrome’ and the new catch-word/phrase which is ‘under-recovery’.

Since, as usual, I’m too wordy, this is going to be divided up into multiple parts.  In an ideal world, I’d finish with Part 2 on Friday.  Don’t be surprised if I go longer than that and run to at least a third part to cover everything.

.What is Overtraining?

To get this party started, I want to present a seemingly pedantic as hell, detailed definition of the term overtraining.  As you read the article, hopefully you’ll see why I went to so much trouble to define it this way:

Overtraining occurs when there is a long-term imbalance between the training load and recovery processes that, for a given athlete, leads to a decrement in performance that takes more than 2-3 weeks to return to normal.

Ok, that wasn’t so bad was it?  And I’d note that I’ve seen even more tedious definitions than this, be glad I managed to get it into this few words.  But there are a few key words/phrases in that definition which I now want to look at in some detail.  I’m actually going to be difficult and look at them in reverse order since, as you’ll see, the earlier parts of the definition sort of assume information about the latter parts.

.2-3 Weeks Vs. Longer to Recover (aka Overtraining vs. Overreaching)

It became clear early on that true overtraining, whereby it took months to recover to previous performance levels, was fairly rare.  When athletes started to perform badly and were given a couple of weeks of rest, they tended to come back quickly and strongly (often exceeding previous fitness levels).

On the support forum is a thread where folks can make suggestions for articles.  Among them, someone mentioned an article on supplements.  I had previously (I think in one of the newsletters) made a list of my ‘Top 10 supplements’ or whatever but since the archives are now defunct, it needed to be recreated.   Since what I want to do is going to be long, as usual I’m going to split it into two pieces.

For the record, this is actually the near entirety of Chapter 11 from the soon to be completed project: Applied Nutrition for Mixed Sports.  I had mentioned this in the last newsletter and the final files are being processed right now, after one more edit it will be made available.  Probably in about 2 more weeks.

The project actually started life as a seminar I did in Vancouver last year  for the Simon Fraser University soccer and football athletes. When completed, the product will include 2 DVD’s along with the original Powerpoint slides as well as a complete 80 page stand alone book examining the topic that I wrote to go along with it (the book started out as handouts I gave to the athletes but I decided to write an entire book around the handouts).  As always, newsletter subscribers will get first crack at it at a discounted price so go sign up if you haven’t already.

And with that out of the way, here’s a quick look at the topic of supplements, while the information was originally aimed at mixed sports (think team sports, boxing, MMA, anything that requires a mix of strength, endurance, etc. for performance), what I have to say pretty much applies to other areas as well including bodybuilding and pure strength training.

Of course, I’m sure readers will have some pet supplement that they take for some very specific reason (e.g. B12 because they lack the absorption factor, or something to control blood cholesterol or whatever).  The list below isn’t meant to be comprehensive.  Rather, it’s meant to look at the supplements that have the most broadly generalized use and application (for all types of athletes) along with having research or backing to support their use.  So please don’t get edgy in the comments if I left out something that you just swear by for some very specific use.

It’s safe to say that, in the US at least, the bench press is one of the favorite exercises of most trainees (especially males). Let’s face it, if someone finds out if you lift, their first question is invariably “How much do you bench?”.

And, while it’s difficult to decide which movement is done more poorly in the average gym (let’s face it, 99% of people have atrocious technique), the bench is right up there. I’ve seen staggering amounts of truly amusing things done on bench press, usually by guys who want to lift more weight to impress their buddies and/or hit the minimum macho poundage (which ranges from 225 to 315 depending on what type of gym you’re in). Never mind that the bench is realistically more or less responsible for more shoulder injuries than any other lift, the reality is that trainees will want to do it. So they might as well do it correctly. And that’s what I’m going to describe here.

Now, let me say right up front that I am going to be detailing a very specific variation on bench pressing, which is the raw generic power bench press. Lemme explain those terms. Raw means no gear as in no bench press shirts. Yeah, a lot of guys belt but, unless you’re using the belt to hold down your bench shirt, it’s pretty pointless. And I guess you could consider wrist wraps gear, I can’t say I’ve seen many non-powerlifters use them. But raw in this context means no bench shirt.

My use of the phrase generic power bench may confuse some people. I’m using the term generic to delineate that this is the generic form I’d teach a beginning/non-competition athlete trainee under most circumstances. Yes, there are exceptions. With a bodybuilder, I might do something a bit different, for a powerlifter, it would depend on their fed and their gear.

Over the many years I’ve been involved in the fat loss game, I’ve seen some weird stuff happen.  When I was in my 20’s and only thought I knew what I was talking about (as opposed to now when I’m simply usually sure I do), I had observed one of the things I’m going to talk about today but didn’t have any real clue why it happened.  With clients or whatever, the only answer I could give was “Because it does.” or “Magic!”.

Now, I have a bit more clue what’s going on, or at least what I think is going on so I’m going to share one of these with you (I’ll address others in future articles).  Today I want to talk about something that I like to call the LTDFLE,  an acronym that I genuinely hope you will use at every possible chance on forums to confuse people, and which will make sense shortly.

The LTDFLE

Anyone who has had the headache-inducing misfortune of reading (or trying to read) Supertraining by Mel Siff and Yuri Verkoshansky may have a clue where I’m going with this section heading.  In that book, one topic that is discussed rather endlessly is the long-term delayed training effect (LTDTE), a phenomenon whereby strength/performance gains often show up considerably (e.g. 2-4 weeks) after the heavy training has been done.  This can actually be explained fairly simply through a two-model fitness/fatigue theory of adaptation but I’m getting way off track.

Chaput JP, Tremblay A. Obesity and Physical Inactivity: The Relevance of Reconsidering the Notion of Sedentariness. Obes Facts. (2009)2(4):249-254.

The population statistics of most countries of the world are indicating that industrialization and computerization have been associated with an increase in sedentariness and more recently with a significant shift from healthy weight to overweight. In general, this change in the overweight/obesity prevalence is attributed by health professionals to suboptimal diet and physical activity practices. However, recent data raised the possibility that excess weight gain might also be the outcome of changes imposed by our ‘24-hour’, hectic lifestyle. Parallel to an increase in body weight, one has observed a reduction in sleep time and an increase in knowledge-based work (KBW) that appear as a growing necessity in a context of economic competitiveness and globalization. Sleep and cognitive work both exert a trivial effect on energy expenditure and may thus be considered as sedentary activities. However, their respective effect on energy intake is opposite. Indeed, an increase in the practice of the most sedentary activity, i.e. sleep, is associated with a hormonal profile facilitating appetite control whereas KBW appears as a stimulus favoring a significant enhancing effect on food intake. Television viewing is another example of sedentary activity that has been shown to increase the intake of high-density foods. These observations demonstrate that the modern way of living has favored a change in human activities whose impact goes well beyond what has traditionally been attributed to a lack of physical exercise. Therefore, we will need to reconsider the notion of ’sedentariness’ which includes several activities having opposing effects on energy balance.

In a Primer on Dietary Carbohydrates – Part 1, I took a brief look at what carbohydrates are and listed the three primary categories of dietary carbohydrates which are monosaccharides, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides. As well, I looked in some detail at the monosaccharides (simple sugars) which are glucose (dextrose), fructose and galactose. Today, I want to examine the other two major categories of dietary carbohydrates: oligosaccharides and polysaccharides.

 

Oligosaccharides

The term oligosaccharide is used to refer to any carbohydrate chain between 2-10 molecules long (’oligo’ = ’several’ or as I like to call it ‘a buncha’; ’saccharide’ = sugar). Chemically, that is, an oligosaccharide, is a buncha monosaccharides that are chemically bonded together but there are only 2-10 of them in the chain (this will make more sense when I discuss polysaccharides).

In Beginning Weight Training Part 1 I examined some of what defines a beginner in terms of entering the weight room along with examining some of the different reasons (e.g. appearance, performance, health/fitness) that people choose to start lifting weights.

In Beginning Weight Training 2, I examined in some detail what some of the primary goals of beginner weight training are including developing an overall base of strength (and/or muscularity), developing work capacity, learning how to perform the lifts, etc.

Finally, in Beginning Weight Training Part 3, I looked at some of the research (and experience) dealing with the loading parameters that are appropriate for beginners.  I’ve summarized them below as a launching off part for today’s final article where I’ll lay out three different basic weight training programs and talk about things like progression, when to change things, etc.

1. Intensity (percentage of 1 rep. maximum): 60% or a weight that could be done for ~20 repetitions to failure
2. Volume (# of sets): 1-3 sets per exercise/muscle group.
3. Reps/Set: Variable depending on the circumstances and both high and low reps can be appropriate here
4. Frequency: 2-3X/week
5. Workout design: Generally a full body routine
6. Exercise Selection: Highly variable depending on the circumstances
   

On Tuesday in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, I looked at some basic issues relating to beginning weight training including some commentary about different goals of weight training (and why a trainee’s ultimate goal sort of doesn’t matter in the very beginning stages) as well as looking at what defines a beginner trainee.

Today I want to continue by looking at what the specific goals of beginner training are, that is what specific adaptations and things are trying to be accomplished when setting up a beginning routine in the weight room.  As I’ll come back to when I finish up next Tuesday in Part 3, those goals desired, along with some science I’m going to bore you with go a long way towards helping to design a good basic beginning weight training program.

Now, as I mentioned in Beginning Weight Training Part 1, people have varying and myriad goals for why they get into the weight room.  And while the specifics of training certainly need to reflect that at some point, at the beginner stage, I believe that their training programs will look more alike than not.  Whether the ultimate goals are the physique sports (bodybuilding, fitness, figure), powerlifting or some other strength related sport, lifting for sports performance or general health, beginner routines will all look basically the same.  The big exception, as I also mentioned before, would be Olympic lifting training but setting that up is between you and your coach.

Last week I made friends with one of the other skaters (most of the skaters at the oval are, shall we say, unfriendly. Coming from me that’s saying a lot. I personally think they carry the same elitist prick gene that road cyclists carry but I digress). He’s young and big, I shall call him The Big Kid (TBK).

So TBK and I are at dinner talking skating. He tells me that he moved down here to try and make the national team. Ok, I’m down. Except that when I see him at the rink, he’s usually spending more time hitting on the chicks instead of training.

TBK also opines that he is just convinced that the top guys must have some secret. Ah, there’s the rub, he’s still looking for secrets instead of realizing that the only secret is ass busting work over a long period of time. And that’s what stimulated this article.

I still get emails, see posts to my forum, etc. from people looking for that elusive training or diet secret. Something quick and easy, preferably in pill form that can be taken and make you great without putting in ass busting work over a long period of time.