Mark Ottobre argues most lifters don't overtrain, they just don't train hard enough. True overtraining causes pervasive fatigue and nervous-system burnout, not muscle soreness. Unless you can lift 2.5 times your body weight, training 2-4 days weekly won't break you. Deloads should be earned, not automatic.
I guarantee right now there's a portion of people watching this that have put way too much emphasis on recovery and rest. There's been a huge wellness movement of people wanting to do ice baths, infrared, getting the perfect routine, but the truth is most people have never experienced pure and true overtraining and the joys that come with overtraining. So overtraining is getting into the gym and having to stare at the wall for 20 minutes because you're so depressed and tired and getting up hurts. Hurts, everything hurts, lifting the 20-kilo bar hurts. That is overtraining. That is where you're depressed, your nervous system is fatigued. Having sore muscles is not overtraining, it's just having sore muscles. People need to understand between training a muscle and muscles being sore to completely frying your central nervous system. And it's not to say that we want to fry our nervous system, but there are periods of our training where we certainly want to push and go for broke. And in that, to find our limit, we are 100% going to overtrain. So if watching this and you're training 2 days a week, 3 days a week, or even 4 days a week, you're probably not even getting close to overtraining unless you're strong. And what do I mean by strong? Well, you're lifting at least 2.5 times your body weight on a particular lift like a squat, a deadlift, or a bench press. If you're not hitting those numbers, then you're probably not there yet, and that's okay. Keep training, keep the volume. This is where the volume conversation comes in. Volume can be very helpful to people getting strong, but once you are actually strong, you just simply don't require as much volume because you're able to accomplish the same thing with low And again, it's not to say that guys who are strong should never do volume. Of course they should, because volume helps us improve our pattern and can build our joints stronger and help us build muscle and give us nice hypertrophy as well. So who wants pretty muscles? Everyone. So the point is that don't overstate your rest and recovery. Yes, it is absolutely important session to session, but you need to earn it just like everything else. You need to earn your deload. Most people who are training 3 days a week do not need to deload because they just simply do not work hard enough and put the effort and have the training volume behind them. If you like my real authentic take on this, make sure you follow my page, Mark Ottobre, for more.
