The difference between overtraining and muscle overload

In my early days, when I was just starting out at the age of 16 and weighed around 20 pounds, I trained 5-6 days a week with incredible intensity. In fact, he literally forced me to miss every set he did. The reason is that I didn’t feel like I had 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 pushing yourself to the limit day in and day out and what that might do to your recovery.

I always compare it to driving a car; If you buy a car and red-mark it everywhere you go, then you’ll be pretty much wrecked after a couple of weeks. The same is true for your body. However, many people continue to confuse the difference between overtraining and overloading. This article will attempt to address this confusion so that you can better understand how your training should evolve over time.

Remember that one of the keys to grow and strengthen is the progressive increase in microtrauma to the muscle. That means that as time goes on you need to add more weight to the bar, otherwise the stimulus isn’t great enough to cause the anabolic effect you’re looking for. The time it takes to gain weight largely depends on the level of the athlete.

Beginners can add weight every week, or even multiple times a week, however, Olympians have 4-year cycles to reach new personal bests to tie in with the Olympics. The thing to remember is that if you, in 6 months, lift 20kg more on each of your lifts than you do now, then you’ll be bigger (assuming you’re eating enough!).

The above 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 very detrimental. One is a short-term state, while the other is long-term, requiring 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 (double factor) routine, it is common for the athlete to overload during the first four or five weeks of the eight or nine week cycle. The overload phase is a medium to high intensity, high volume that puts stress on your body that it could not handle for long periods of time but can handle for short periods of four to five weeks.

Overload can be extremely useful because in an overcharged state, the fatigue in your body dissipates much faster than the strength gains gained in the overload phase. Therefore, the athlete can have a deload week before ramping up with low volume and high intensity to new highs at the end of the cycle. The athlete can then 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 excessive stress for too long. Overtraining would be the result of overloading for too long; for a period of 10 weeks or so. When you are in a state of overtraining, you may need to rest for 2-3 weeks for your body to fully recover, your lifters will be inactive, and you will find it difficult to sleep at night. Those 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 the time scales. Overloading for 4 weeks can have an incredible effect on your strength and subsequent size gains. If you overload yourself for too long and go into an overtrained state, you’ll find yourself with chronic fatigue, injuries, and a couple of weeks off training. I hope this post has cleared up some misconceptions about “overtraining.” The term is used all too often in bodybuilding circles, and in the completely wrong context. See you at the squat rack.