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In a world where you’re constantly told to “do more”, we at LVLTN say “do less, fam.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of justifiable times where “you need to work harder” is a viable criticism. However, we very often see people overdoing it when it comes to their exercise regimen and don’t understand why they aren’t getting results faster from putting in more effort.
To explain why that is, let's define a few things first and foremost.
Fitness: “The quality of being suitable to fulfill a particular role or task” or in the sense of what we care about – “the physical capability we have achieved as a result of training”
In laymen’s terms it is our ability to lift more, run longer, swim faster, jump higher, hit harder, etc. With consistent and effective training our level of “fitness” should increase over time. It’s common sense that to be able to do more, you have to force your body to actually do just that. In terms of getting stronger and building muscle volume (work) must be increased over time but there is a point where doing more is no longer beneficial and eventually can be detrimental. A normal relationship between the work we do and the progress we see starts off pretty linear (as one increases so does the other). The more work you do the more you progress you see … until you don’t. The work we do has “consequences”. It takes up energy that could be used elsewhere. It comes at a cost. Our bodies way of “realizing” this is the buildup of fatigue.
Fatigue: “Extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness” or “a reduction in the efficiency of a muscle or organ after prolonged activity”
So aside from “progress”, another result of our training is fatigue and, similarly, it is accumulated proportionate to the amount of work that we are doing. This concept may seem fairly obvious; the more work you do the more it takes a toll on your body. Over time we do develop “resistance” to fatigue and our work capacity increases but that doesn’t make us superhuman – the work we do ALWAYS has an impact. And that impact is really noticeable acutely (in the short term). In a single training session, as your workout progresses you have less energy than you started with and aren’t able to lift as heavy as you could when you were fresh – that is fatigue. On a lightly grander scale (workout to workout) fatigue increases along with your fitness level. The increase in fatigue doesn’t necessarily affect your level of fitness, but it does mask it and the relationship between those two is what we really want to keep an eye on.
Performance: In terms of our training : “Fitness – Fatigue” = Performance
Generally, as fitness rises so does your performance. You have experienced this if one workout you were able to lift 100 lbs for 5x5 and the next session you were able to do 105 lbs for 5x5. That is an increase in fitness AND performance. However, at some point residual fatigue accumulates and starts to hinder or decrease performance. This can be seen in the case of someone getting stronger session to session until they can no longer increase weight lifted or perhaps, they feel weaker than they did the session/week before. From here things can go one of two ways; you can enter a state of “functional overreaching” after which your performance returns/increases OR you go even further into what is called overtraining.
Overreaching: “Training while residual fatigue is elevated and masking your fitness level via stagnation/decrease in performance”
Essentially, it is intentional and planned training at (or “beyond”) failure. Typically you work up to this period throughout a mesocycle (block of training) by incrementally increasing one or multiple variables like volume, intensity, frequency, etc. By the time you get here, you should be tired. You should be sore. Your workouts should be HARD. If done strategically, the result of training during this time will be a “super-compensatory” effect via maximal exertion of all motor units followed by effective fatigue dissipation and (ideally) increased performance. The general strategy to perform "functional overreaching" is to keep training structured as normal, but with reduced volume or intensity or a combination of the two (de-loading) after a few sessions or a week of REALLY HARD (failure/RPE10/0RIR) training. This allows you to “overly stimulate” your muscles before a planned period designed for the dissipation of fatigue, while maintaining your level of fitness with a primary goal of performance returning back to normal and then INCREASING. Best case scenarios end with your performance reaching a level higher than it would be had you not overreached (functional overreaching). Non-functional would be if your performance level returned to baseline but did not improve due to training in the fatigued state. Worst case scenarios end in the extreme case where performance and fitness both decrease. This is called overtraining.
Overtraining: “Prolonged training in an overly fatigued state that results in decreases in performance and fitness level”
In the case of overtraining, your fatigue has gotten so high that you are unable to train at a level that allows you to increase or maintain "fitness". At this point your physical abilities decrease and making the mistake of increasing volume (trying to push past this "wall" by “doing more”) will do nothing but reverse progress that you've made. To reverse the effects of overtraining, much more time is required compared to the deload or volume taper you would perform during an overreaching phase. Volume will probably need to be decreased considerably for a number of weeks to allow fatigue to dissipate and performance to return. Most people will never reach this state (it's essentially complete exhaustion), but it is beneficial to be aware that you can in fact push yourself too hard.
So what's the point of distinguishing between overreaching and overtraining or fitness and performance...?
....To emphasize the importance of periodization and proper progression when it comes to increasing training volume.
You CAN do too much, too quickly. You NEED to increase your volume over time if you want to continue to make progress, BUT, the way you do so should be strategic to avoid unnecessary setbacks.
Thus the “Fitness-Fatigue Model”
When it's properly managed, all the variables come together to form a pattern that (optimally) looks like this:
As your training progresses, your physical capabilities improve.
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Your improvements are seen in your level of performance at the gym or during your training.
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As training continues, fatigue begins to accumulate.
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At some point this will hinder your performance during training.
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When this happens, a decrease/taper in workload should occur to allow your body to rest and recover.
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Due to adequate recovery, performance returns to normal and then increases.
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The cycle repeats.
Understanding this cycle proves that an awareness of how much work you're actually doing is crucial to optimize your progress.
You need to know how much volume you are performing in the first place to be able to properly apply increases and decreases when necessary.
This is why we are huge advocates of tracking your workouts and comparing data on a session to session / week to week / month to month basis.
You can absolutely make progress by simply "working hard" day in and day out. But at some point your progress will stall, and without enough information to know how you got to that point, it's difficult to know how to move past it. And it's far too easy to think “I just need to work harder” when that very well may be the opposite of what you need to do.
So if you want to optimize your “gains”, yes you need to train hard, but more importantly, you need to train smart.
Interested in having a personal coach in your corner to ensure every strategy you implement is optimized for your body and your lifestyle? Learn more about our online health coaching by clicking here!
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