Overtraining is usually something we perceive as being bad.  Overtraining is associated with lack of recovery, injuries, suppressed immune system, plateaued results in the gym and on the field, low energy, low motivation, etc.  I’m not gonna dismiss any of these side effects from a training volume too high, as these are very real effects from overtraining.  Actually, I’m usually the first one to sensitize people to the effects of overtraining, and I encourage coaches and trainers to monitor training volumes and progress closely.

Then, why am I writing a post questioning the importance of overtraining?

I’m not really questioning the importance of overtraining.  What I want to say is that if it is planned, monitored, and the appropriate amount of rest is planned consequently to allow overreaching, then overtraining might be an interesting tool to use.  I’m not talking about the kind of overtraining that lasts for weeks, or months where you just bury your athletes in the gym without any consideration for obvious symptoms of overtraining that are just getting worse and worse.

If you know that your athletes are going on vacation for a week or two, or they won’t be able to train for that same amount of time, planning to have them reach an overtraining state before they leave might actually be beneficial.  Because you know that during their time away they will have plenty of time to recover, which will allow them to  supercompensate, which will be beneficial for their development.  Upon their return they’ll have recovered and they might have reached new levels of strength, power, endurance, or conditioning.

This might also be a strategy that can be used even with athletes who are not going on vacation.  You can plan overtraining in your program.  As long as it’s followed by an appropriate deload period, you can definitely get some benefits from it.

After all, overtraining is essential to make progress.  The system needs to be overloaded to create adaptation that will translate into gains in strength, power, endurance, aerobic power, or whatever you are trying to improve.  If the overload is not sufficient, the body won’t create adaptation that will trigger improvement.

In the image above, you can see the importance of creating the right amount of training stress, and give the appropriate amount of rest before imposing a new stress.  The red curve is the ideal one where the body is stressed enough to create supercompensation big enough that will lead to improvement.  In that case it’s also important that the training stress is re-applied at the right time (as identified by the letter B in the chart).  So the bigger the training stress (creating overtraining), the more time you will need to allow for recovery so the compensation reaches its peak.

If you ever talk to Cal Dietz, strength coach at the University of Minnesota, you’ll hear him say over and over again that he overtrains his athletes.  For someone who doesn’t understand the supercompensation concept it may sound kinda silly, but the reality is that Cal plans his training volume and rest periods with his athletes as much as anyone I know.  He takes into account the fact that his athletes are also students, that have Christmas break, Spring break, finals, vacations, and all that stuff that’s part of a student’s life.  Therefore he knows that his athletes won’t train with him 52 weeks a year, which is why overtraining (or overreaching) at different time of year is a good option in his situation.

Like I said before, everything is relative.  Nothing is all black, or all white, a lot of things fall into this good old gray area.  It’s all a matter of understanding the context.

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Sorry.

Wrestling reference.

That’s the first thing that came to mind when I wrote the title of this post.  Hopefully you can appreciate.

Aaaaand just so you know I didn’t write this title just to plug a wrestling reference! I promise.

In fact, I was at the BSMPG summer seminar this past weekend and I had a blast.  I got to spend some time with the smartest minds in the business including Patrick Ward, Sean Skahan, Cal Dietz (University of Minnesota), Joel Jamieson, and Jim Snider (University of Wisconsin) just to name a few.

The recurring subject that came back with a lot of these guys during conversations is that…well…you have to know your role!  What I mean is that as a strength coach you need to recognize your area of expertise, and more importantly you need to know where that area of expertise stops.

It’s really cool to learn about the SFMA, DNS, ART, Graston, Mulligans, all the rehab protocols, but we need to recognize that a lot of these things are not our job to do.  There is nothing wrong with learning from different fields, but not with the mindset of doing everything yourself!  As Patrick Ward was telling me himself: “we need to know just enough about everything to know where to refer our clients to and when”.  I couldn’t agree more with this statement.  Joel Jamieson was also telling me that coaches get too caught up sometimes trying to fix people, and their sessions turn out into an hour of corrective exercises.

Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s extremely important to be able to bridge the cap as a strength coach because there always will be some grey area, and we can’t send every one with a mild discomfort to physical therapy.  Which is why we need to understand how the body works, what is good movement, how to identify dysfunctions or imbalances, and how to use corrective strategies efficiently.  But our job is still to TRAIN ATHLETES!

I will be the first to recognize that there is a lot of incompetent health practitioners on this planet, but it doesn’t mean that you should try to fix everyone yourself.

Our job is to make athletes and clients feel better, improve their performance and lower their risk of injury.  If they’re in pain, that is not our job to take care of them and fix them.  And that’s the bottom line.

Another wrestling reference. Sorry.

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Just a quick post today to share with you some of my favorite exercises to develop power for athletes.  Obviously there are plenty more exercises that I like to use throughout a training year, but these are just a couple of my favorite ones if you need some variation and something different from the traditional plyo exercises and the common Olympic lifts.

Unloaded squat jumps are a great exercise that I learned from Cal Dietz, strength coach at the University of Minnesota.  It allows you to jump higher by pulling down on the bands as you jump (although it doesn’t necessarily translate into more power development), but because of the height of the jump, you have more force to absorb (or decelerate) when you come back on the floor.  That really is what’s beneficial about the exercise; an increased ability to absorb forces and react to high velocities.

The second one is more of a method than an exercise itself.  It’s called the complex method, and the concept is simply to perform a heavy lifting exercise (with about 90% of your 1RM) for 2-3 reps, rest for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then perform a bodyweight plyometrics exercise.  The idea is that the heavy lifting exercise will activate more fast-twitch muscle fibers that you’ll in turn be able to use when doing the plyo exercise.  In the video I perform them within 15 seconds, but ideally you’d want a longer rest.

The third one is a medicine ball throw variation that I got from Eric Cressey. It incorporates more velocity in the movement by running a couple steps and jumping before smashing the med ball into the wall. I’ll use this variation a lot with baseball players.

The last one is a variation of an Olympic lift. The reason I like it so much is because it usually is so much easier to teach and to learn than the traditional Olympic lifts. The 1-arm DB snatch is very effective to develop power and will take minimal time to master. If you haven’t already, try it!

As I mentioned in the beginning, this really is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are so many exercises to help develop power. I just wanted to share some of my favorite ones with you if you always end up using the same ones and need variety!

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