Is Overtraining Misunderstood?

I have always battled with accepting the idea of overtraining, also called overreaching, and applying the concepts to my training. In case you are not familiar with this concept, overtraining is essentially a physical, behavioral, and emotional reaction when physical activity exceeds the bodies ability to properly recover from physical exertion. It can cause loss of strength and muscle mass, inability to sleep, irritability, and negative changes in the brain-- among many other effects. In otherwords, it is believed that it is possible for someone to exercise harder than their body will allow which in return causes a bunch of bad shit to result physiologically.

Now, I am not debating the fact that overtraining causes a physiological effect, it does, it is why we get stronger. I am questioning the idea that it is bad, and more importantly, what percentage of the training population should be concerned with overtraining. I am also not an expert in neuroscience, nor neurobiology, but I come from a physics background and one thing that taught me was to find out why things happen. What causes them to work or behave like they do... I don't like taking much for face value, rather I try to find holes in the logic of something, like a statistic for example. If all you ever did was believe everything at face value, you will live your life being severely misinformed. Take this wonderful statistic for example:

100% of people who drink water will die.

That is not a lie, at all. It is 100% true! Seriously, everyone who drinks water will die, right? Of course. This happens all the time, we're only looking at a very small slice of the puzzle. If you read this statistic at face value you will not want to drink water, because apparently everyone who does, parishes. The same can be said for overtraining, why does the body have certain responses to overly intense physical exertion? Instead of simply accepting that the body having this response is automatically bad for you, let's explore it...

If Overtraining Is Such A Prevalent Concern...

 ...then why are the so many people who push well beyond this so called physical limit to become more awesome? My first example is undoubtedly the most badass military unit on the planet, the United States Navy SEALs. I've had a fascination with this group of guys since I was a kid, I've always admired them. Let's take a look at the training one must undergo to just be considered for a spot on the SEAL Teams-- BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition / School). On a small slice of land in Coronado, California, you will find a school called BUD/S. This is a 24 week school one must endure to move on to further specialized training. The attrition rate is generally around 80%. Sure, I will acknowledge that some of these are due to stress and overuse injuries. However, this is where I will address the issue that one most build up and train their body for a given task. You can't take raw metal and expect it to perform like steel, it most be tempered.  Plus, shit happens.

Drown proofing. Its like swimming but with your hands and feet tied.

If you're curious or don't know a lot about this training, I encourage you to read about it. There are tons of books on it. For the sake of this article, let's just look at Hell Week. This particular week falls into the first phase of training and is five and a half days where the trainees only get 4 hours of sleep for the entire week, they run about 200 miles during these days, are still expected to perform evolutions, all the while doing everything else like swimming, carrying boats on their heads, etcetera. How's that for overtraining? There is a reason the President gives these guys the high end jobs like killing Osama Bin-Laden, because they put out and get results.

Let us also take a look at elite level olympic lifters, or even amateur level olympic weightlifting. It is not uncommon for these men and women to squat twice a day, 7 days per week, also while performing the competition lifts like the snatch and/or the clean & jerk. Some gyms even advocate working up to a max every day for their athletes, which defies all conventional wisdom you see in 99% of the gyms across the globe. That basically gives an uppercut and roundhouse kick to the notion that you must only train a body part when it is not sore and never train a muscle group two days in a row. If they took this soft and pansy-like mentality you would not see the impressive numbers being put up today in olympic lifting meets all around the globe.

Chest and back splits? Nope.

Benoît Lecomte swam 3,716 miles in 73 days across the Atlantic ocean... you read that right. In 1998, this badass was followed by a boat that emitted a 25 foot electromagnetic field to ward off sharks. I great white shark followed him for 5 days. To prepare for this great feat, he swam for 5 hours a day, 6 days per week.

Shaolin Monks balance on their heads for hours to strengthen their necks for fighting... 

Just chillin' and taking a load off.

The Princeton Crew Quintathalon rows twelve miles, bikes seventeen miles, then runs a 10k, then rows another 15k on a rowing machine followed by about 50 stair sprints... 

Those are all just a few examples. A fantastic analogy said by owner of Average Broz Gymnasium, John Broz:

  

"If you got a job as a garbage man and had to pick up heavy cans all day long, the first day would probably be very difficult, possibly almost impossible for some to complete. So what do you do, take three days off and possibly lose your job?

No, you'd take your sore, beaten self to work the next day. You'd mope around and be fatigued, much less energetic than the previous day, but you'd make yourself get through it. Then you'd get home, soak in the tub, take aspirin, etc. The next day would be even worse.

But eventually you'd be running down the street tossing cans around and joking with your coworkers. How did this happen? You forced your body to adapt to the job at hand! If you can't' squat and lift heavy every day you're not overtrained, you're undertrained! Could a random person off the street come to the gym with you and do your exact workout? Probably not, because they're undertrained. Same goes with most lifters when compared to elite athletes."

– John Broz 2002

 Well said. 

What about injuries. Well, injuries happen, it is part of the game. I've never met anyone that has accomplished something great that did not have some unfortunate event happen to them. You name the situation, you'll probably find something that stood in their way-- its the way it works. World record holder in powerlifting Matt Kroczaleski is a great individual for this discussion. He believes people can come back from pretty much anything... He has this to say,

"None of us ever want to experience a serious lifting injury, but many will. The longer you stay in the sport and the stronger you become, the greater the odds that at some point you'll be faced with a serious injury. Due to my strength level and approach to training, I've suffered more muscle and tendon tears than just about any active competitor I know.
I've torn my left calf, right quad, left pec, left lat, my groin on both sides, my lower back numerous times, both biceps, right triceps once, and my left triceps three times including the most recent tear which required surgical repair of the tendon.
Three of the injuries resulted in me being wheeled into an operating room for surgical repair and many others required an extensive rehab. I've also separated my right acromio-clavicular joint, dislocated my right shoulder, and even pushed myself to the point where I caused intracranial bleeding – on two separate occasions."
 -Matt Kroczaleski
 

Matt Kroc

Look up videos of Matt "Kroc" training, you'll be impressed with his intensity. 

I come from a climbing background, so one more fantastic story to mention is Joe Simpson's and Simon Yate's first ascent of Siula Grande in the Andes Mountains. A 20,813 ft alpine route they did in 1985. There is a book and a movie published on this incident, called Touching The Void. After their successful ascent, on their descent from the summit Simpson slipped and broke his right leg by crushing the tibia into the knee. Bad weather was closing in on them and they had ran out of fuel for their stove so they could not melt snow for drinking water-- thus they could not could stick around. In an effort to descend down on a very steep portion of the descent, Yates had to lower Simpson over this area because of his injured leg. During this process, Simpson and Yates could not see or hear each other because of the howling weather and terrain. Yates had unknowingly lowered Simpson into mid-air over a cliff. Simpson had tried ascending the rope to free himself of hanging in mid-air, but his hands were too frost-bitten to properly tie the knots to do so and inadvertently dropped the Prusik cord. So, here Simpson floated. Unable to be lowered any further, unable to go up, and unable to communicate. They remained in this position fora few hours and the snow around Yates' belay seat began to give way, cold weather began to take its toll, and Yates' had no idea what had happened to Simpson. Yates had to make a decision, because both just sitting there exposed each of them to death. 

Siula Grande, Peruvian Andes Range. Not too many hospitals close by.

Simon Yates decided to cut the rope which sent Joe Simpson falling into a deep crevasse. Yates dug a snow cave and waited the night out and descended the next day. Upon his descent, he realized what happened to Simpson and called out his name, but heard no reply. Assuming that he had died in the fall he ventured back to base camp. Simpson however was very much alive. Despite having a broken leg, falling onto a ledge in a crevasse, and going unconscious for a period of time-- he was still alive and regained consciousness. Simpson managed to lower himself deeper into the crevasse and eventually found his way out through a steep snow slope. He then spent three days without food and very little water crawling 5 miles back through a glacier navigating more crevasses to base camp returning only moments before Yates' depart for civilization. 

With that story in mind, I think it is safe to say most "experts" would have deemed this situation as a certain death for Joe Simpson. He literally pushed his body to his absolute limits, for the sake of staying alive. His body had two options, stop and die, or keep pushing. I couldn't imagine the amount of will power this feat required. I relate this to anything else when it comes to pushing the body, the majority of people do not have a clue as to what they are capable of as a human. If a doctor told me I was going to die unless I added 100 pounds to my squat in a month, I can guarantee you I would be squatting every day, multiple times a day, to make this happen. Apply some extreme unconventional logic to everyday things and it can certainly change how they appear.

So What Is Going On In The Body?

 Now that we have seen some defiance in the logic of what constitutes the "norm," should we really be worried about taxing the central nervous system and the body? A great article I read a while back broke it down like this. I don't remember where I read it, but it has stuck with me.

When we train our bodies with weights, or whatever, there is more than just your muscles, tendons, and ligaments that are being trained. Our brains are being adapted as well. When you warm up in your routine to lift heavier weights, you are not only warming the muscles, stretching soft tissue, introducing more synovial fluid into the joints, or raising the body temperature- but you are priming the nervous system for the tasks at hand. Your brain directly responds to training by the chemicals it uses to make your body work, in short, it changes its structure chemically from physical stress. The central nervous system  (CNS) does not operate like the electrical impulses in a power cable you would plug into your wall to charge your computer. It operates by chemicals to the nerve impulses, or neurotransmitters to synapses. Synapses allow a nerve cell to pass a signal (chemical) to another cell. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals in which pass the signal across the synapses. These chemicals are what make everything work in the body. The electrochemical reaction is the reason electrical impulses are detected, because they are a byproduct of this process. A big reason why we get stronger when we train is because the nerves develop more receptor sites and a greater amount of neurotransmitters are made to result in a stronger impulse. 

When a greater than usual stress is placed on the nervous system it gives it a reason to adapt. So if you start a routine of squatting heavy every day, and you previously did not do this, the body will then realize it isn't prepared to handle the work load. Thus it will began to make changes in order to survive from the demands placed upon it. So, the brain will shut down certain functions in order to go through this period of adaptation. This is the reason for some of the side effects of overtraining. Serotonin is a major component in muscle contraction and how hard it contracts. Serotonin is also the main hormone that effects our happiness, mental outlook, willingness to go train and do things. A lot of this is used when lifting maximal weights and thus why this effects our mood. 

So when this sudden demand gets placed on the body serotonin receptors get shut down in order to be upgraded. This period of adaptation can take days or weeks, and a person will feel the effects of it. Serotonin also regulates appetite, sleep and your cardiovascular system. Which is why these are also effected during this time of change. Naturally, your brain is giving you signals to stop whatever it is your doing so it doesn't have to make these changes. The human body and brain are always  looking for the easiest method for survival, it is why we get pleasure from things like sleeping, eating, and being lazy. This is exactly what you don't want! You want to push through this process in order to put the greatest demands on the body to receive the greatest adaptation. 

This is why high volume, high intensity, high frequency programs are so difficult; such as Smolov or Bulgarian lifting methods. Because they do not make you feel good! However, it is also why they work like no other program. A lot of people lift weights and exercise because it makes them feel good, they are essentially addicts like a drug user is. When you lift lighter weights serotonin is raised but their is no adaptive response from the brain. So all you get is the feel good affect much like someone who is snorting a line of coke.

Conclusion

This is hopefully something you can consider in your training. I firmly believe in understanding why we feel and react the way we do to certain aspects of our lives. The body is very complex and I am not in any shape or form saying there are not more pieces to the puzzle. Though, in my personal experience in training I've managed to send my training volume through the roof by forcing myself to train through some very bleak moments. Moments when I was tired, sore, and felt like my body couldn't take anymore-- I was back in there doing it again, and again. Surviving these moments has adapted my body to be able to handle greater training loads. I firmly believe if you don't have swollen hot joints, you can probably train, regardless of how you "feel."