Well, I can say that i’m very interested in what you guys have to say about this one. I want to increase my speed and strength to the next season. I play soccer in Sweden and our season is over now. We were about to get a little break from practice for a while but suddenly things changed. Now we’re trying to reach the hightest division of our age class (18 next year). I don’t really care if my legs are in top shape during this qualification period because I’m not going to play that much with this team next year anyhow. However, the problem is that when we have played our qualifying games and our break starts the team that i’m going to play with next year starts their training again. I don’t really know when and how much I should train. This is rather important to me because speed is something that i really want to improve. My legs still got the feeling that you have after a long season. They scream for some rest. But still I can’t give them that rest because I have to train (not that much but anyway) and play one game a week now for three or four more weeks if we don’t loose the next game (It’s a elimination competition).
So I don’t really know what to do. I feel like less is more right know but that won’t improve my speed the way I want to. Maybe some rest now and then a shorter period of hard speed training. Then some rest again on our christmas break before the pre-season starts.
Well, I’ll follow your discussion and see what you have to say.
It has taken me a LONG time to recognize that. I am still figuring out optimal weight training loads for my present situation but I am getting much closer.
I can now get 2 good high intensity days of sprinting in a week with total speedwork volume in the ~1400m a week range.
I am still lifting twice a week doing the main lifts (squat, dead, bench/pushpress, clean etc) but have tapered things down significantly from what I was doing last year.
(I have also included a strength endurance day as well which is helping a ton)
I am recovering much faster and am running faster now after only completing GPP vs all of last year!!
When your legs are screaming for rest, more rest won’t help your speed??? Why on earth not?
When you’re tired, More of anything is never the answer- unless it’s more therapy!
Chris30,
This past year I dramatically scaled back my weight training and just threw it in as an afterthought to my speed workouts, depending on how I felt. I ended up gaining more strength between last September and April (when I peaked out) than I did the previous ten years (my squat increased about 30% and my incline press went up about 20%). And I did that at the age of 31/32. It’s never too late to learn. My average weight workout comprises 2-3 lifts for a total of 4-6 sets (not including warmup sets). This is very much in line with what Ian King prescribes for his athletes.
The main thing holding me back on the track was my soft tissue problems, which Charlie’s post above hits square on the head. As I posted in the Fascial Stretching thread, now that I know what the muscles and postural alignment should ideally feel like, I don’t do any training unless I can get the tissue in the optimal state during the warmup. If it doesn’t come, I don’t train. I just move into a regeneration session. It’s frustrating at times, but you have to let logic override your emotions. To paraphrase Ian King, there’s a big difference between knowing what to do (or not to do) and actually doing it.
Unfortunately, it’s out of print. Number Two picked up a few copies of it a couple years ago and I was lucky enough to buy one from him. They’re probably all gone now. I floated the idea of selling it on this site as an e-book, but I don’t think Charlie has followed up with Gerard on this point.
After finally getting a chance to read through this thread I feel it is important to stress the differences lightly touched on by a couple of the members between overtraining and overreaching.
Overtraining is a complex and still relatively little understood occurence where an athletes performance deteriorates do to an inability to cope with continued mental and physical forces applied by a training regime.
Overtraining can have many negative effects on the body such as lowering of testosterone production in males, wegiht loss, overuse injuries, hampering of the immune system causing illness or infection, high blood pressure, sleep disorder, as well as psychological disruptions such as depression, anxiety, fatigue, disinterest, etc.
The effects of overtraining often take many weeks if not months to recover from.
Overreaching on the otherhand, with the terms still sometimes used synonimously, tends to refer more to a short term effect of slight overload of training volume/intensity/lack of rest causing minor negative effects such as increased fatigue or need for elogated rest between training sessions (perhaps 3-4days). However as previously stated overreaching can, if used properly in a training regime, have positive effects resulting from supercompensation.
“Overreaching”, as you define it, is actually a high stress stimulus applied at appropriate intervals in the training program, so, in fact, “overreaching” doesn’t overreach!
in russia linear periodization was only used as a means to produce results in athletes for a single compotetion or narrow competiton period. coaches in the former ussr were paid on a quota system, where they recieved payemnt directly proportional to the results they achieved. So many times periodization was instituted to insure payment. In reality at the highest level coaches used a deficiet system in which a deficiet was calculabe deficiet was placed on an athlete via “overtraining” it would look somewhat like a check mark in which the bottom point marked the greatest level of performance deficiet and the right most end indicatiing the eventual level of supercompensation. This allowed for multiple “peaks” throughout the year and a more variable control over the athletes development. what i have recently learned is the longer this defeciet is maintained the greater the supercompensatory response after the defeciet is “relieved” this gives a coach or athlete even more control of training stimulus since they can come out of the deficiet with the use of restortive methods either within the training or otherwise. ofcourse the defeciet must be constant and non-maladaptive.
Originally Posted by Charlie Francis
“Overreaching”, as you define it, is actually a high stress stimulus applied at appropriate intervals in the training program, so, in fact, “overreaching” doesn’t overreach!
My point exaclty. The main difference between overreaching and overtraining is that overreaching occurs on a smaller scale and can be used to ellicit positive results whereas overtraining occurs over a longer period and always results in poor results.
My question is can overreaching be used over multiple training sessions and if so in what fashion? In personal experience I have only used it in single or back to back sessions before weekends or when I knew I would be away from the weightroom do to external factors.
So here are a few questions I am pondering:
Can overreaching be used over multiple sessions?
If so, should they be in machine gun like back to back to back… hi intensity workouts or should it be a gradual system overload?
In either scenario how long can one administer overreaching in hopes of a larger supercompensation effect without it turning into overtraining or atleast taxing the system to a point of lower returns than a normal workout?
And is there any feedback you could look for to distinguish between overreaching and overtraining?
I feel that there is little feedback that would be of benefit because you are overloading the athlete in the short term, which will either not give you adequate time to get feedback as to overtraining, or the two stages overtraining vs overreaching exhibit near identical effects in the short term.
Interesting post James. I always assumed that this was part of the way training was organised. As you move through the season you accumulate fatigue so perhaps 8 weeks into SPP the results being produced are happening while the athlete is in a state of fatigue (though it may not be crippling fatigue). So my feeling is that whatever they are achiveing at about week 8 is the minimum they will achieve during competition because as we move towards compeition the performance level is rising along with the level of fatigue and then as you cut back on the high intensity work and the level of fatigue drops you get a wave of “performance” that rolls in and it is fairly easy to control this. Since using Charlie’s system my athletes have always peaked when i planned simply because it is inevitable. Now some of them are at higher levels of performance I expect a second wave of supercompensation from when they finish racing through the 10 day taper to the championship. Now i see the true value of the 10 day taper and i think in many cases (e.g. those who don’t necessarily plan what they are doing consiously) 10 days is not enough.
another benefit over training in this manor over traditional periodization is that you can achieve multiple levels of supercompensation occuring at the same time by employing very specific stressors. i have talked to traininers who were able to improve only an athletes start in a sprint and change nothing else. this was varified with video analysis. but in a more complex fashion you can train say absolute strength, spped strength and whatever other physiological factors you wish with out a great interference with one another, at the same time each supercompensating. So like the conjugate system (which was also only a part of the russian system not an entire system as westside barbell would have u believe) you can train multiple desired phsiological traits, brining the athlete out of the choosen trait defeciet when so desired, keeping the athlete in others if so desired.
Again interesting. Can you explain why it would be useful to do this in relation to an athletics event so i can think about how to put theory into practice?
all athletic endevours are a combination of genreal aggregates say rate of force development, spped, strength absolute strenght so on and so forth. these traits can be further broken down into even more specific traits sobe based on the physiological level such as motor neuron activation frequency, alpha gamma loop ( as in spinal base reflexes), u get the idea. by training a given trait, gross or acute, u can effect supercomensation ofcourse the stressor to the organism must be specific to the desired trait. knowing the length neurological effects will be maintained after a period of supercompensation allows one to organize their system in such a way to control adaptation without over stressing the system or allowing aquired traits to deteriorate.
You’ve made three interesting points about overlapping varied performances here which are in conflict with the other post you made about compressing max performance, which I replied to on the “increased size and power output” thread.
Everything here makes sense but doesn’t seem to be consistent with the other post. Can you clarify over there? (Perhaps I didn’t get what you were saying there)
i think i can charlie. just because an athlete can bench everyday doesnt mean they will. for example an athlete may go 6 months becnhing maximum weights everyday but for whatever reason they dont because benching is not the ultimate goal. say for a football player benching only serves as a way to strengthin the shoulder complex. it is a tool so to speak not a means to an end. so but more importantly thant actually benching everyday is their ability to display that strenght at any given time. that would be more important for a field player and even a sprinter to be able to at anytime be able to generate maximum muscle tension. i am in no way advocating benching for the sake of benching or benching everyday as some type of parlor trick but to use it as a tool to achieve the desired supercompensatory result.
I think there is confuson here between what is possible across a spectrum of high intensity activities and their interplay and what is possible long-term in a single area.
This is why the investigation of the role of the CNS stimulus and it’s global effects,not only on the specific muscles involved in it’s creation, but the carryover effect on all other muscle groups in terms of the maintenance of strength, readiness, and performance.
To extrapolate from actions over a shorter term to what might be possible over a longer term within a given muscle group is problematic. So, in effect, it may be precisely because they don’t continue that you could be led to believe they could.
i believe that they could continue because i talked to jay in person and he told me as an experiment for one year he bench pressed his maximum bench press every 30 min for 8 hours a day (16 times a day) 7 days a week. in that time he said of all his attempts he missed one. But charlie i think you are correct in saying that an individual cannot just simply start maxing out everyday their must be in place certain physiological traits which allows an indiviudal to do this whatever they may be.