You are overtraining...

[BendtheBar]

I did manual labor every day - very heavy lifting. 75 to 100 pound cast iron blocks hundreds of times per day. While my body did adapt to the stress, my joints were beat to crap. My point is that there are many different levels of adaptation within the body, as there are different aspects to overtraining. Personally I believe the joints get hit the hardest, and they can be overtrained. Sure, you can try and work through it, but something will break down.

[dmaipa]

^^ feel the same way btb..the joints get banged up pretty bad..ran into some elbow problems and had to lay off of it for awhile which sucked. like Phil Heath said, "You get hurt you can't train, you can't train, you can't stay swole baby!"

[BendtheBar]

I can't speak for others, but my joints are the first to go. I feel 10 years younger now that I'm not doing physical labor. I use to wake up unable to feel my hands.

[IronManlet]

Originally Posted by BendtheBar

I can't speak for others, but my joints are the first to go. I feel 10 years younger now that I'm not doing physical labor. I use to wake up unable to feel my hands.

Joints are usually the most problematic, from what I hear.

That said, I think there is a distinct difference between overtraining (which I don't believe exists) and burning out. If you don't listen to your body and slowly adapt your volume to how your body cycles itself, you can get injured. That's why if you're squatting 3x a week and one day you feel weak and doing lots of volume seems impossible, you ease up for that day and do something else. If you train like a robot, you break down like one.

Theoretically, it is impossible to overtrain even if your intensity of training exceeds your recovery capacity. In that case, your body will not be capable of using maximal weights because of how fatigued it is (although they might FEEL like a max). As it tries to adapt, you'll get weaker, but only for a certain time.

In the end, listening your body and easing into volume is the way to go, IMO.