Can You Train TOO Hard? - Q&A #5.5

Last time, I wrote about overreaching and its consequences with a deadlift anecdote. Fast forward to January 26th when another session put me in dire straits. 

Some background. Starting January 1st, I reduced training from 4 to 3 times a week. For muscle gain, training 4 times a week is ideal, but I simply don’t have the time now. 

Besides, I figured, this change would allow me to experiment. Perhaps verify findings claiming no difference between frequencies of training when volume is equal.

This adjustment called for 5 sets of seal row (RPT) on Friday, instead of 3 sets on Wednesday and 2 on Sunday. 

The first month went well and culminated in a session involving several personal bests. Of these, the seal row is of particular importance for reasons shortly revealed. 

Early December, I could seal row 140 kg x 5 with good tempo. This corresponds to a 158 kg 1RM, matching reality quite well. Managed to improve that performance to 140 x 7 kg under similar conditions come January. 

And then did something I shouldn’t have. Changed tempo, taking longer breaks between sets and fooled myself into thinking I was making progress on a weekly basis. Didn't intend to do it, but it happened. 

For reference, here’s the entire seal row sequence executed January 26th. In parentheses, reps added compared to the previous week:

140 kg x 10 (+1)

130 x 12 (+2)

120 x 12 

110 x 16 (+1)

100 x 25 (+5)

This sequence, combined with squats that same day, would fuck me up so bad I couldn’t train properly for the next 3 weeks. But consequences are secondary to the point I want to make. So let’s jump ahead and connect the dots from the previous part of this Q&A. 

Rest-Pause and AMRAPs

What do the seal row, squat and deadlift have in common? The seal row and deadlift allow one to train beyond failure, in a sense. By manipulating tempo, extending the pause between each rep, it’s possible to squeeze another 2-3 and turn a 6-7RM into a 8-10RM. 

The squat is another example. Indeed, guidelines for breathing squats, first outlined in Super Squats, is to take your 10RM and perform 20 reps by taking deep breaths in between. Having performed breathing squats regularly myself, I’ll say they’re extremely effective and equally draining. 

When I deadlifted 295 kg x 8, I rest-paused my 6RM deadlift to 8 reps. That single set took me 3 weeks to recover from (As detailed in Part I). 

When I seal rowed 140 kg x 10, rest-paused my 7RM to 10 reps. Stoked to hit a new "personal best", I put the pedal to the medal and performed all 5 sets in a similar manner. And later paid for it dearly. 

Aftermath 

Woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck the day after. My right forearm was trashed from the rows. If I kept it still for a time it “froze” in place, making straightening painful. Especially in the morning. 

My knees hurt, probably because I increased load and volume too fast in the squat, and used rest-pause on the last set. To add insult to injury, my left shoulder felt horrible, immobile. 

On top of that, I was tired. Dead tired. Not simply, the kind you get from poor sleep. The kind that comes from being worn down mentally and physically. 

Felt like the flu, but not quite.  Double the pain, minus the runny nose and sore throat. Interestingly, 400 mg Ibuprofen greatly reduced these symptoms. The next day whatever I had was gone. Felt good. Great, even. Stoked I’d made so much progress that week and looking forward to the next. 

But the following week was a complete shit show. Didn’t even log my workouts.  It was that bad. Everything sucked and my motivation to train wasn’t there. The week after, better, but still not close to my usual standard. 

By the end of the third week, finally, I’d recovered within 1-2 reps of expected performance. My motivation to train - which had all but vanished also returned. Now in the 4th week, I’m fine. Ready to share my experience - and what I learned from it. 

Q&A #5: Summary

1. AMRAPs involving rest-pause should be used with caution at the advanced level and beyond. 

Action: Going forward, I'll implement timed sets for the deadlift and seal row. Setting a timer to 45-60 seconds limits damage and allows for objective measures of progress. 

That way, you can’t fool yourself and register a personal best by taking longer breaks. 

Keep in mind this (timed sets) is only useful for certain movements - in my case, seal row, squat and deadlift - for reasons explained earlier. 

Related: 3-minute set of seal rows. Example of a rest-pause AMRAP.

2. On a physiological level, what happened here? Hard to say for sure, because the scientific literature surrounding overreaching/overtraining is limited and speculative. 

Why? Can’t justify harm for experimental purposes and a proper study will never get approved. Overreaching is harmful and counterproductive. And no competitive athlete would willingly put himself through such an ordeal. So you can’t do the studies due to ethical concerns, let alone find willing subjects of the right caliber. 

Best explanation I’ve found thus far is from an infographic by a Dutch coach named Stijn van Willingen. I’ve taken the liberty of using the picture along with the accompanying text for those who don’t have an Instagram account. 

Caption below.

So you decided to perform five 20-rep deadlift sets to failure. Today your deadlifting sucks ass. 

Is your CNS burnt out?
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🏵Your central nervous system (CNS) ‘decides’ that a muscle should contract. Peripheral nerves then forward this message to the muscle. Between these nerves and the muscle there’s a so-called “neuromuscular junction”. There, the nerve message gets converted into an actual muscle contraction.


__🚗To use a car analogy: The driver is your CNS, the pedal foot is the neuromuscular junction, and the engine is the muscle itself.


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⛽Training balls to the wall (like failure training in a big exercise) greatly increases the time to recover to old strength levels [Morán-Navarro 2017].


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🏋However, it’s probably not CNS fatigue that causes this. Multiple studies show CNS fatigue simply doesn’t occur [Latella 2017, Marshall 2015, Howatson 2016].


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🔬Behrens et al. 2012 offer a better explanation. They needed a 40% bigger electric stimulus to get the same muscle contraction strength after a hard workout.


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⛔They think stressful exercise impairs the functioning of the neuromuscular junction. Additionally, the muscle damage decreases overall strength of the muscle fibers.


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😴So while the driver (CNS) stays rather unaffected, a gruesome workout tires out the pedal foot (neuromuscular junction) and damages the engine (muscle), which reduces muscle strength.


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🕞So just realize that your puke-inducing session of deadlifts probably won’t affect your bench press strength the day after. The fatigue is not in your CNS, but mostly local, meaning close to or in the deadlifting muscles themselves.

End of caption.

Note the bolded part above. In Q&A #5, I wrote:

After the 295-kg set and a 20-minute rest, I reduced the load to 265 kg, did one repetition and decided to call it quits. Noticed before pulling something was off. 

Imagine your body not following orders and you get the idea. I couldn't initiate the pull. 

What happened? 

Couldn’t initiate the pull - sent the command to pull but signal wouldn't make it across the neuromuscular junction. Attempted half a dozen times--to no avail.

When my body finally decided to follow orders, managed one measly rep with 265 kg and felt like shit. My muscles were trashed due to the extreme trauma induced by that single set. 

This failure to initiate the lift is a protective mechanism;  Impairing output to the affected muscle via the neuromuscular junction.  So there you have it, my pet theory. The same happened with my squats and seal row, i.e. body refused to follow orders. 

3. Took me three weeks to recover from this overreached state.  Interestingly, 3 weeks is also the time it takes to recover a pulled muscle. This makes me wonder if the body is using a similar mechanism, e.g. impairment of the neuromuscular junction, to protect the affected muscle.

4. Overreaching is bad and should be avoided. It has no place outside controlled and competitive settings. For example, programming for high-level Olympic weightlifting sometimes entails planned overreaching followed by Supercompensation, strategically placed around time of competition.

But in the context of muscle hypertrophy and all-around performance, overreaching is 3 weeks (or longer) you can’t get back. If you find yourself in that position, take consolation in knowing strength loss is temporary and will return. 

5. How should you train when overreached? Go to the gym and do whatever you should be doing at -15% loads. No AMRAPS, but strive for progressive overload. Seeing weights increasing on a weekly basis will give you peace of mind and better idea of how recovery is going. 

6. If you’re feeling hopeless following overreaching, with flu-like symptoms and lethargy, Ibuprofen may help you function again. Use only if necessary, because abolishing inflammation may also prolong recovery. (NSAIDs interfere with training adaptation)

7. I didn’t experience overreaching to any noticeable extent until I reached 270 kg for reps in the deadlift,  and 125 kg for reps in the seal row. Even then, wasn’t nearly as bad as the events in the last quarter.  

Previously, if I’d overreached the week prior, I’d simply perform poorly the coming week (but still 2 reps within the prior).  Calling that “overreaching” is questionable, but there’s no better term for it. 

Overreaching is highly dependent on strength. Never had a client succumb to it. Then again, it’s easier to coach someone else-- than yourself. 

That said, protein synthesis occurs at vastly different rates in muscle, tendons, neurons and bone. This suggests muscle mass - a proxy for strength - and rate of recovery,    don’t increase proportionally.   

In other words, you can only harm yourself by overreaching once you expose muscle to loads your supporting machinery can’t keep up with. In my case, that’s one grueling  set of deadlifts or 5 sets of seal rows trained "beyond failure", using movements I truly excel at. 

By excel, I'm saying there's 2-3 people in my country who can top or match my deadlift. No one close to my seal row. In the world. It's like saying you took silver in the Special Olympics, but still.   

I state this as fact and frame of reference. Rest-Pause technique combined with RPT-AMRAPs -- or used via breathing squats, are very effective. Anyone who isn’t Advanced or Highly Advanced can use the technique liberally. 

If a client asks how long they should pause between reps, I tell them not to think about it.  Worry about the number you’re going to put in your training log instead. This simple advice works well --until it doesn't. But when that time comes, you'll know what to do. 

Beginner-intermediate: Don't be afraid of rest-pausing your AMRAPs to add more reps. Doubt you’ll overreach by deadlifting 140 kg. But if that happens, now you know the reason, what to expect, why and how to change your training going forward. 

Advanced and beyond: Those of you strong enough to run into these problems should also know how to tackle them. Unless you haven't paid attention. 

BONUS:

On breathing squats:

Starting out, I went from squatting with 80 kg for less than 10 reps to 135 kg x 17 in under a year with 5-kg jumps. First gaining then maintaining reps all the way to the 120-kg mark.  No change in body weight. If anything, I lost weight. Did breathing squats every 10th day. 

No teenager I knew could squat 135 kg x 17, ass to grass. In fact, no one at my gym could. My progress was so fast the owner took me aside one day to have the “Are you taking steroids”- talk. Told him no, heart beating with exhilaration, so proud of my progress I was beaming.  

And to this day, get a kick out of people saying or speculating if I’m on the juice. For a natural, the best compliment anyone can pay you.

On rest-pause:

Borge Fagerli, Norwegian coach and friend, directed my attention to a study named Acute neuromuscular and fatigue responses to the rest-pause method. (2012)  

In summary, they compared 5 x 4 squats to 5 x 4 squats done in a manner resembling breathing squats. Found greater motor unit recruitment in the latter group, concluding rest-pause possibly more efficacious. Interestingly, no differences in fatigue were seen.