Over Training

[Nid]

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What is stress?

Any condition that harms the body or damages, breaks down, or causes the death of few or many cells is defined as stress. If the diet is adequate, repair quickly occurs, but when rebuilding fails to keep pace with destruction, illness is produced. Disease usually results from a multiple stresses such as anxiety, over-work, bacterial or viral attack, exercise, inadequate diet and sleep. Unfortunately, it usually brings on numerous other stresses: poor appetite, nausea, vomiting, faulty absorbtion, fever, pain, diarrhea, dehydration, high urinary losses of many nutrients, exposure to x-rays, and the use of drugs.

In the same way it requires more material for the repair of a damaged house than for the upkeep of one in good condition, every nutrient is needed in larger amounts to repair a body damaged by the multiple stresses that cause disease and result from it. For example, the stress (or damage) caused by x-raying an animal or giving it any one of many commonly used drugs increases the need for protein, lineolic acid, several minerals, and vitamins A, C, and all the B vitamins. Presumably the same is true of humans.

Regardless of the forms of stress, the body immediately tries to repair damage done, but it cannot unless all nutrients are generously supplied. The nutritional needs increase tremendously at the very time eating is most difficult; and a diet adequate for a healthy individual becomes markedly inadequate for an ill one.

The great medical genius, Dr. Hans Seyle, of the University of Montreal, revolutionized medical thinking with his theory, now confirmed by thousands of studies, that the body reacts to every variety of stress in the same way. At the onset of stress the pituatary gland starts protective action by secreting hormones, ACTH and STH. These hormones, carried in the blood to two small glands above the kidneys, the adrenals, cause the outside border, or cortex, to produce cortisone and other hormones. Although the center of these glands produce adrenaline, the adrenal hormones referred to throughout this book are those made by the cortex.

These adrenal cortex hormones quickly prepare the body to meet the emergency; proteins, at first drawn from the thymus and lymph glands, are broken down to form sugar neccesary for immediate energy; the blood sugar soars and remaining sugar is stored in the liver in the form of glycogen which can be instantly converted to sugar if needed; the blood pressure increases, minerals are drawn from the bones, fat is mobilized from storage depots, an abnormal amount of salt is retained, and many other changes take place which prepare the body for fight-or-flight. These changes also make it possible to repair vital tissues by a process of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

If the stress continues, the body sets up for a “stage of resistance” in which it repairs itself by rebuilding with all the materials at hand. When the diet is adequate a person may go for years withstanding tremendous stress with little apparent harm. Should the raw materials be insufficient to meet the needs, however, there comes a stage of exhaustion. Disease develops, if it has not already done so, and eventually death threatens or results.

The first two stages of stress are characterized by constant damage and repair; most illnesses fall in stage three, which is reached when repair fails. Intense stress, such as drastic surgery, a serious car accident, or severe burn may cause a person to pass through all three stages—alarm, resistance, and exhaustion—all in a single day. More often we experience repeated “alarm reactions” and live through hundreds of “stages of resistance”.

If stress is prolonged after the thymus and lymph glands, whose proteins are purposely destroyed, have shriveled, proteins from the blood plasma, liver, kidneys, and other parts of the body are used. When stress is prolonged, muscle cells are destroyed as well. In ulcerative colitis, the destruction of protein brought on by prolonged stress literally eats away the lining of the intestine. During a single day of severe stress, the urinary loss of nitrogen has shown that the amount of body protein destroyed equals that supplied by 4 quarts of milk.

Moral of the story. Exercise is stress. More is not better.

In my relative youth, the first sign of over training was a plateau in gains. Now it's illness. I can train a cold into myself in 2 week...gauranteed. And that's just by doing what I did back in high school.

So if anyone is a victim of regular colds or no gains in size or strength (after an exciting first year of training or so), you know the culprit. You're unwittingly cannabilizing yourself.

[Ronin]

The more intense the workout, the more rest time needed to recover. The more advanced the athlete, the more intense the workout, more rest time.
Our bodies get stronger in the recovery phase, cut it short, and your gains will be cut short.
ALL exercise is stress, if you do 3 MA workouts and 2 ST workouts, you are working out 5 times a week, if you do MA on Monday and ST on tuesday, you are working out 2 days in a roll, that is how your nervouse system "sees' it, alternating body parts does NOT change the OVERALL stress on the WHOLE body.
Keinhaar is correct. :)

[Nid]

Regarding splitting the routine; furthermore we aren't made of detachable lego pieces. Pulling movements do incorporate a head of the triceps whether ya think so or not. Adduction of the upper arm (a la bench press) also recruits, albeit secondarily, one of the biceps bellys. Yaren't even giving the muscle groups adequate rest if you split it up so much...much less the systems which suppor them.

On a "shoulders day" people do an over head press. Well, what do you think is being used during the bench press on "chest day"? Most of your shoulder and triceps. And then on to "arms" day were you get the triceps a THIRD time. And then compounding that with multiple sets per body part. C'mon now. :rolleyes: