Overreaching is not Overtraining
When it comes to seeing results as far as your physical goals are concerned, a fine line exists between overreaching and overtraining. It’s important that you push yourself on a continual basis in your gym sessions so that you see ongoing results. When you don’t provide your body with enough of a stimulus to shock it, it’s not going to feel the need to grow stronger. Most professional conditioning programs address this to some degree, ensuring continued results.
When you choose to overreach, you push your body that extra step in order to see significant results over a shorter period of time. When you overreach, you’re allowing your body to take on a much larger amount of stress over the course of a week or two, bringing yourself almost to the point of being overtrained. Just before you reach that point, pull back and stop training. This causes your body to go into supercompensation mode — your body grows back much stronger in supercompensation than it would if you were following your typical workout and rest routine.
Typically, overreaching is used for strength and size gains and should be used only once to twice per training year. Only overreach if you’ve been weight training for at least nine months.
You can design your workout in one of two ways. If you’re looking to increase your muscle size, you will want to boost your reps up, while keeping the weight slightly lighter. As time progresses, you should notice that you’re starting to become fatigued sooner during the workout; this is an indication that you’re at the state of overreaching. You’re reaching the borderline of overtraining, and you’ll want to stop immediately.
(Source) Fox News
Tags: Fitness, overreaching, overtraining