[BendtheBar]

Overtraining

Overtraining occurs when your body is stressed beyond its ability to recover. If this occurs on a continual basis you will find muscle growth halted. You can even lose some of the growth you previously experienced. At its most severe, overtraining can set you up for injury and illness.
Needless to say, for the bodybuilder with the proper devotion to training, overtraining can be a serious concern. Unfortunately, back in the 1980s overtraining was overdone. It became a rallying cry for a lot of misled bodybuilders. Some bodybuilding gurus began claiming that everyone was overtraining and urged them to cut back on volume. Sure enough, when they cut back they experienced big gains for a short while, but the growth did not last. More on this later.
The fact is that chronic overtraining can be destructive to your progress and health while acute overtraining, or short term overtraining, can be used to your benefit. We will show you how to use these temporary periods of overtraining to your advantage later in this manual.