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 By: Kelly Baggett One of the biggest debates among coaches and trainers that always arises every few years is the topic of recovery. Some say you need to be beating yourself up week in and week out and always increasing your work capacity by simply doing more, more, and more work over time. Others in the HIT (high intensity) camp emphasize recovery with a mantra that says, "less is always< more". So who's right? Are you gonna get better results by constantly training yourself into the ground or will that approach leave you chronically overtrained? Is that overtraining maybe a good thing? Or will you get better results by sitting on your butt 5 days out of every 7 and attacking your workouts with ferocity when you do? Or will that approach leave you undertrained and so inactive that you pile on enough fat to make Warren Sapp look like a GQ model??
Well first lets define some terminology. What most of us call overtraining is really over-reaching. Overtraining is more like a disease then a temporary state. For 95% of us, "over-reaching" is what we're really referring to when we say overtraining.
Now let's start with a few key claims I'm going to make.
Notice I said "consistent hard trainees" there. That statement doesn't apply unless you train both hard and consistent.
Over-reaching by design can be a very good thing. Notice that I said "unless you know what you're doing". That's what I intend to help you do in this article.
Recovery can be defined as - regaining what was lost - however, for the athlete this is not enough as it returns them only to where they started. Adaptation can be defined as the process of long-term adjustment to a specific stimulus. This process of adaptation can include adjustment in a number of factors such as the athlete's physiology, psychology and mechanics.
These alterations can ultimately lead to improved performance - which is a more satisfying goal. We want to jump higher, run faster, get stronger, run longer etc. In order to get fit we must stimulate some fatigue so that our body adapts. We must push ourselves beyond our limits some of the time - which is fatigue. Let's call a training cycle a 30-60 day "period" of training. All good periodized training answers this question: What is the optimal amount of fatigue to induce over the course of the next training cycle in order to optimize the fitness that results from it?
All things being equal, if I do no training (assuming I'm not in an over-reached state) then I likely will not improve at all, and in fact may slip back. On the other hand, if I work out daily and intensely and continue adding volume, I'm also likely to slip back. So there must be an optimal blend of both fatiguing myself or over reaching (in order to improve) and resting myself or under reaching, so that I can see the gains from the over reaching I've done. Under reach too much and you won't get the results you want because you haven't forced your body to adapt; over reach too much and you won't get results because your body is shot. The rest of this article is about how to solve this puzzle and determine how to intelligently over reach at the beginning of a training cycle, and under reach at the end of a cycle, in order to boost the overall results of each training cycle.
The basic point I want to make in this article is that you should either be training a little harder then what feels comfortable or a little less then you think you should. This is an implementation of the Two-Factor theory model of stress and adaptation. Let's talk a little bit about the 2-factor theory.
When you train you accumulate both fatigue and fitness. That observation itself should be worthy of a nobel prize. However, what many people don't realize is that the fatigue that accumulates over the course of a training cyle itself "masks" the fitness gains that you make. Fitness persists about 3 x longer then fatigue. This means that when all traces of fatigue are gone from a bout of exercise or a cycle of training, the fitness gained will persist for 3 x as long as the fatigue. That's why most people make gains when they take a few days off from time to time. What I want to do is show you how to make this process predictable.
 Super Compensation Curve  Click To Enlarge.The problem with this approach is you are left with the problem of timing workouts to correspond to the supercompensation wave. Anything sooner or later will lead to a bad workout. Another problem is there is only so much systemic stress that can be thrown on the body in one workout. If you prolong the length of the stress (loading and fatigue) period in the above chart by days or weeks, instead of a single workout, you increase the overall stress. Therefore, providing you to allow recovery to take place after prolonged loading, you increase the height of the supercompensation curve as well.
You will often here training according to the 2 factor theory called many different things. You'll hear it called concentrated loading, load/unload, step-type loading or any number of other things. It's nothing fancy and most of you are probably already using it to an extent.
Training Scheme A
Training Scheme B
During the 4th week we're allowing fatigue to dissipate so that we can display the fitness we've gained from the previous 3 week's of training. During this low intensity/low frequency week, the physiological indicators we've stimulated the previous 3 weeks "rebound" back up and above where they were before. Comparing The Schemes
Homeostasis is disrupted and prolonged during the 3 week loading period. Although we won't see a whole lot of progress during this 3 week phase itself, when we pull back on the volume during the reduced loading period the functional indicators will then rebound back above baseline. The ultimate "rebound", or performance increase, in scheme B will be greater than the summation of smaller rebounds from scheme A. So what we're doing is building up fatigue and fitness by over-reaching slightly and then pulling back on the fatigue by under-reaching. Nothing really complicated about it.
Ok. Now the important thing to note is that most athletes are already over-reaching slightly even though they don't realize it! They never allow recovery to take place and some haven't been fully recovered in years.
Therefore, I almost always start athletes off with more recovery so that they can allow all the fatigue they've been acumulating during their previous months or years of training to dissipate. It's also important to realize that recovery doesn't have to be "complete" between training sessions in order for one to experience gains. People are rarely ever 100% completely recovered but still make gains. Athletes in most sports are always experiencing some level of constant fatigue. What you want to do is maximize those gains which you can do by intentionally manipulating the relationship between fatigue and fitness.
The lower that performance falls during the loading period (within acceptable limits of 10-15% or so), the greater that performance rises during the unloading period. I don't recommend intentionally loading to the point that performance falls off noticeably due to injury risk, but you can still incorporate and benefit a less intense version of the same process.
You accumulate fatigue the whole time, you never "completely" recover. You might make gains but you're never really completely recovered. Then you have another one or 2 weeks in which you train with reduced frequency, volume, or intensity and allow recovery to take place. I favor keeping intensity fairly high, cutting volume by at least half, and slightly lowering frequency. In any event the overall training stress is lower. The main benefit of the higher volume phase isn't the gains you make on it, but the gains you make when you switch to a lower volume phase.
In other words, accumulate fatigue and train frequently for a while and then transition into a period of time where you train with full recovery between sessions for a while. Say you train 3 x per week for 3-4 weeks and then once every 4 days for 4 weeks. Your gains will be out of this world during the 2nd phase because you heighten your ability to adapt in the first phase. That works very well. Examples
An example of this is a simple "block loading" scheme often practiced by endurance athletes that can also be used successfully by others. In fact this is a scheme used in many university team sports. "Block Loading"
By Friday the athlete will be worn down and performance very well may have regressed over the course of the week. Yet by having 2 consecutive days off (Saturday and Sunday), we allow a lot of that fatigue to dissipate. Thus, the body supercompensates and the athlete goes into Monday with enhanced ability - for a few weeks anyway. Generally speaking, anymore than 3-4 weeks consecutive loading will fail to bring about gains unless a one week unloading period is inserted. The body will tolerate 3 such 3/1 blocks of loading/unloading before a longer recovery period is necessary. This means that we'd do 3 consecutive 3/1 cycles before taking 2-3 weeks of training at a lower intensity.
The intensity of the loading period will vary as well. During loading periods it's ok for some regression to take place but no more then 10%. That means if your vertical jump is 30 inches you can train yourself to a 3 inch decrease and when you recover fully it'll rebound back up above 30. The same thing goes for your strength etc. Remember, the greater the decrease in function the greater the rebound above baseline during the unloading period. There is one caveat here however. The more regression that takes place the longer your unloading period will need to be. If you train to the point of big time (10%) regression, you will need a 2 week rather then 1 week unloading period.
Volume Phase 4 weeks - Deloading Period 1 week
Squat 5x5 (3x3) Bench 1x5 (1x3) Row 1x5 (1x3)
Wednesday:
Friday: Volume Phase - Weeks 1-4:
For exercises you do wice a week you have a separate day which you perform a single set of 5 reps with the goal of setting records on the 3rd and 4th week for your best set of 5. Don't start the weights too high. Lower the weight if need be but get the sets and reps in - except where you are setting records. Deloading Week - Week 5:
Intensity Phase - Week 6-9:
If you are so burned out that you need an extra day here and there that's okay. If you can't do all the work that's okay too. Just keep increasing the weight week to week.
Phase I- High Volume/High Frequency This phase consisted of 2 consecutive 3 weeks load/ 1 week unload schemes. The loading portion looked something like this:
PM: Weights- 3 x 3 at 80% squat, RDL. Tuesday - Conditioning- 100 yds x 15 with 30 second rest intervals
Wednesday - AM: Plyo- speed drills- 4-6 sets depth jumps/ 1 position specific agility drill/ 4 sets straight leg sprints/ 4 sets 60 yard buildups
  Depth Jumps Click To Enlarge.Thursday - Conditioning- 100 yds x 15 with 30 second rests
Friday - AM: start technique, maximum speed sprints and flying 20's, agility drills, position specific drills- 500 yards total. Saturday - AM- Agility technique, buildups, Upper Body strength endurance focusing on the bench press Sunday - Off He'd follow that for 3 weeks and then unload for 1 week. The unloading period consisted of 1/2 the volume of on field work on Monday and Friday and elimination of plyo, speed, agility work on Wednesday. After about 6 weeks of training, it was obvious to me he had got about all he was gonna get from this scheme. He seemed a little burned out and he complained of sore joints. I knew that this just meant he was slightly over-reached and his performance would rebound up big time once we tapered into a lower volume phase. He's always been able to transfer functional ability into technical ability.
We ended up dramatically lowering the overall lower body volume. On upper body we got him away from the bench press for a while and worked on his weak points. The routine ended up looking like this: Phase II - Low Volume Intensification
Depth Jump, standing triple, one leg hops onto box, - 4-6 sets each x 3-5 reps
   One Leg Box Hop (Shown Two Legged) Click To Enlarge.
Session 1- UB
Session 2 LB
   Lateral Hurdle Hops Click To Enlarge.
Session 2 UB
    Push Jerk Click To Enlarge.
Session 1 LB
Session 1 UB
Session 2 LB Session 2 UB Therefore, he was getting 4 days rest between bodypart workouts and 8 days between like sessions. This allows him near full recovery and he was able to set records nearly every workout for a month long period which coincided perfectly with the timing of his workouts and tryouts. EMS was also used on his legs to maintain his strength. It's important to note that the gains from this phase weren't just made from this phase itself, but they were made and set-up in the previous phase as well.
Those are a couple of examples how to set things up. Hopefully you can begin implementing some of these ideas into your training. Stay tuned for a future article on the same topic in which I'll cover how to stimulate that same adaptation by simply engaging in cyclical eating patterns.
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