In my early days, when I was just starting out at the age of 16 and weighing around 20 pounds, I trained 5-6 days a week with incredible intensity. In fact, he literally forced me to fail every set he did. The reason is that I didn’t feel like I had worked the muscle if I knew I had more in the tank. Of course, at that age you don’t stop to think about the physiological effects of pushing yourself to the limit day in and day out and what that might do to your recovery.

I always compare it to driving a car; if you buy a car and red-mark it everywhere you go, then you’ll be pretty much screwed after a couple of weeks. The same is true for your body. However, many people continue to confuse the difference between overtraining and overload. This article will attempt to address this confusion so you can better understand how your training should evolve over time.

Remember that one of the keys to growing and getting stronger is the progressive increase in microtrauma to the muscle. That means that as time goes on you need to add more weight to the bar, otherwise the stimulus isn’t great enough to cause the anabolic effect you’re looking for. The time it takes to make a weight gain depends largely on the level of the athlete.

Beginners can add weight every week, or even multiple times a week, however Olympians have 4-year cycles to hit new personal bests to link to the Olympics. The thing to remember is that if you, in 6 months, lift 20kg more on each of your lifts than you do now, then you will be bigger (assuming you’re eating enough!).

The above paragraph serves as an introduction to the key point of this article. Overtraining and overloading are completely different things. One can be beneficial to your training regimen, while the other can be very detrimental. One is a short-term state, while the other is long-term and requires significant time to recover.

So what is the difference?

Overload is a short period of time during which you push your body very hard. So, for example, in a periodization routine (double factor), it is common for the athlete to overload during the first four or five weeks of the eight or nine week cycle. The overload phase consists of medium to high volume and high intensity that puts your body under stress that it couldn’t handle for long periods of time but can handle for short periods of four or five weeks.

Overloading can be extremely helpful because in an overloaded state, your body’s fatigue dissipates much faster than the strength gains gained in the overload phase. Therefore, the athlete can have a week off before moving up with low volume and high intensity for new highs at the end of the cycle. Then the athlete can rest, rinse and repeat; each time it reaches a maximum at the end of the phase.

Overtraining, on the other hand, is much more serious and when your body has been under excessive stress for too long. Overtraining would be the result of being overloaded for too long; for a period of 10 weeks or so. When you are in an overtrained state, you may need to rest for 2-3 weeks for your body to fully recover, your elevators will be inactive, and it will be difficult for you to sleep at night. Those are the most common symptoms.

Long story short, there is absolutely no harm in going hard and heavy and wearing your body down as long as you pay attention to the time scales. Overloading for 4 weeks can have an incredible effect on your strength and subsequent size gains. If you overload for too long and go into a state of overtraining, you’ll find yourself with chronic fatigue, injuries, and a couple of weeks off training. I hope this post has cleared up some misconceptions about “overtraining”. The term is used far too often in bodybuilding circles and in the completely wrong context. See you at the squat rack.