Beyond-Brawn-2nd-Edition

BEYOND BRAWN
14.6 Growing bigger and stronger is your body’s response to the stress you
impose on it by lifting progressively heavier weights in good form. e
stress you impose is essential. Getting unusually strong and big demands
an unusual degree and type of stress, but there is a fine line between doing
enough and doing too much.
14.7 Even when you think you can cope with a very heavy stress level, such as at
the end of a training cycle when you are pushing full-bore, your body is taking
such a battering that your immune system is suppressed to a degree. is
increases your chance of infection. When you are riding the crest of a wave
of effort and progression in the gym, do not think you are indestructible.
At such a time, take an extra day or two of rest between workouts, reduce
your training volume a little, sleep more, eat better, and be super attentive to
recovering fully between workouts. Do all this so that you do not go from
being “indestructible” one day, to being laid down with a viral infection the
next.
14.8 Stress itself is not bad, but an excess of stress relative to what you can deal
with is bad. An over-stressed body regresses. is is Nature’s way of forcing
you to cycle your training intensity. Whether you like it or not, you will end
up cycling your training intensity to some degree, whether you do it intentionally
(by deliberately backing off at times) or have it forced upon you by
injury or illness.
Symptoms of overtraining
14.9 Before you can take action in response to warning signs of overtraining,
you need to know what signs to look for. While the following symptoms
are accurate for the typical non-competitive trainee, including those who
are advanced, the very advanced and competitive elite may exhibit different
symptoms of overtraining. is list is not presented as an exhaustive study.
a. Stagnated training poundages, perhaps even before you have reached
your most recent best training weights. One or two bad workouts do
not necessarily mean you are overtrained. All people have the occasional
bad workout that should be written off. But when you have three or four
consecutive bad workouts, then you are almost certainly overtrained.
b. Reduced enthusiasm for training, i.e., not looking forward to training as
much as usual, and having trouble getting a workout finished without
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