{"id":1103,"date":"2015-04-18T17:47:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-18T16:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/?p=1103"},"modified":"2015-04-18T17:47:13","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T16:47:13","slug":"overload-not-overkill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/?p=1103","title":{"rendered":"Overload, not overkill"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my recent presentations I got the same question a couple of times: \u201cWhy wait until the athlete supercompensates? When the athletes are ready (all systems recharged or back to at least baseline level, you don\u2019t get an overload on the system.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now I have heard a misunderstanding about the word \u201coverload\u201d many times before. By coaches who think that if the athlete did not throw up after the workout or if the athlete still can et out of bed without muscle soreness, the training has not been good enough because there was no \u201doverload\u201d. The expression \u201cno pain, no gain\u201d still got stuck in their brains somehow. For me when an athlete throws up, apart from having eaten to close to training, means the training hasn\u2019t been good at all. It was more than the athlete could handle at that moment, but worse is that the athlete has to train tomorrow or even later that day again. Chances are the athlete indeed will not recover or recover completely by that time.<\/p>\n

Have you ever eaten something bad, some seafood, or eaten or drinking too much of something that didn\u2019t land well in your digestive system? And indeed the best way to get rid of it was to throw up? How long did it take you to be able to see, to smell leave alone to eat that food again without feeling that queasy sensation in your stomach? Sometimes it might takes years, it seems your stomach an our brain did not forget what this kind of food did to you (of course you did it to yourself, since you put it into your mouth).<\/p>\n

The same thing happens in training, the body-mind starts to subconsciously resist training and that particular kind of training. I have done it as an athlete, running 500 meters in 62.3 feeling nauseated, headache, pounding in my ears, the light too bright for my eyes, etc. It feels like having run a 400 meter competition fast enough. I even found an old picture of myself after becoming national champion in the 400 meter. My friends look a lot happier than I do, for a reason.<\/p>\n

\"after<\/a>
after final race National Championships 400 meter indoor<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And then two days later: running 300 meters in 33-34.
\nI had to overcome a huge barrier since every cell in my body resisted the upcoming workout. If I had to do that for a couple of weeks I would have quit. And of course, sometimes I caused that to my athletes as well. If there is enough time in between doing lighter workouts the body-mind \u201cforgets\u201d or \u201cforgives\u201d you and you can do another one of these killer sessions.
\nSo this is not \u201coverload\u201d, this is \u201coverkill\u201d!<\/p>\n

It might be cool to be tough, or believe in a Spartan concept, but it is much cooler to win than to lose or not to appear in competition at all. Or maybe you have an inexhaustible pool of talent and resources, where only the strongest will survive and they will indeed be very strong. But in most cases we are not able to destroy many potential champions, burn them out before their time and to continue with the \u201cnext batch of cannon fodder\u201d. We have to be more careful with the material we have.<\/p>\n

Overload just means that my training stimulus has to cross the threshold of adaptation, it will lead to an adaptive response. You won\u2019t become an Arnold Schwarzenegger by carrying your heavy shopping bags, no matter how heavy it feels. You won\u2019t be winning an international marathon, no matter how often you walk the dog or stand up and walk to the coffee machine. Since in all of these cases the exercise is not raining and certainly not crossing the threshold for an adaptive response of the body. The range of overload is pretty large, dependent of your where the lower threshold is the training stimulus that creates an adaptive response, even if it is a small one, in other words: a positive training response. The higher threshold is where you start to create inhibition, overstrain, overtraining or structural damage to the body-mind, in other words: a negative training response. Like in many cases the optimum training response is somewhere in the middle of the range, even though I personally always look for the highest response with the minimum effort and\/or risk of injury.<\/p>\n

In the short term, going over the optimum level will certainly bring results, in the long term, let\u2019s say 6-12 years, being more careful will lead to much better results, because your athlete don not waste for rehab, loss of trainings because of limitations or injury, they will always be \u201csharp\u201d in training and so get more out of their workouts. They will also not suffer from being \u201cflat\u201d or having \u201cheavy legs\u201d in competition.<\/p>\n

Important: I believe in \u201coverload\u201d, but not in \u201coverkill\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During my recent presentations I got the same question a couple of times: \u201cWhy wait until the athlete supercompensates? When the athletes are ready (all systems recharged or back to at least baseline level, you …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1105,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1103\/revisions\/1105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helpingthebesttogetbetter.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}