Book Club: Bringing the Pendulum Back to Center, Part II by Cosgrove

The Article

Cosgrove:

Overtraining

Over-reaction

We can directly blame Mike Mentzer and Stuart McRobert for this one. The birth of the hardgainer. The idea that the genetically inferior amongst us could only recover from 2-3 sets of an exercise done every ten to fourteen days is bullshit.

I was getting emails for a while saying “I lift three days per week for about 40 mins. I’d like to ride my bike on Saturday with my kids – is this overtraining?”

Come on.

Everyone stopped training hard.

Under-reaction

Now someone quotes the Bulgarians who trained six times per day. I’m not arguing this data, but I just want to suggest that this was a “survival of the fittest” situation. The athletes (and remember – these were full time world class athletes) who could not recover or even survive this type of training were just dropped from the team. To model your training after the top 0.5% of World Class elite athletes is just freaking stupid.

Recently I’ve seen suggestions of up to ten weight training sessions per week for the recreational lifter. This is unlikely to work for the average drug free trainee with a job or school and any semblance of a life. If you increase training, in order to increase results – you need to increase recovery. And with that kind of volume, regardless of what you think you are doing, your intensity is suboptimal.

Back to Center

You do not get better by training – you get better by recovering from training.

Read that sentence again and let it sink in.

Once you truly understand that idea, you understand that when we increase training, we have to increase recovery. If you can’t increase recovery then the increased training won’t have any effect. Training is not about how much or how hard or how long you can endure – it should be about the amount of training, when combined with the recovery available in your unique situation that will give you the best results.

I think in general most individuals will have the most success training with weights three to four times over a week. If you add a full time job, or other sports training to this equation then the only logical solution is to cut back on your strength training.

“Go heavy or go home” is an over-used phrase, but in general if you can’t improve then you need more recovery – not more training. More is not better. Better is better. If in doubt – train harder with less volume.