Overtraining - should you, or should you not? (and my new training routine)

I used to think that the same training program can be used for almost as long as forever, but I was dead wrong. The only thing that is constant is change.

But that is not to say that one should change his or her workout program as often as changing between clothes. Now this is important, so listen carefully: although no one training program should be regarded as the 'holy grail', if it works for you, stick to it for as long as it works. If you've started to show signs of plateau, change and switch things up. If the new changes work for you, stick to it until it no longer does and then switch back to the previous training program. It is that simple.

In regards to switching programs back and forth, I'd personally look into the aspect of overtraining. Now, there're different school of thoughts here when it comes to whether should one overtrain, or not. I'd personally suggest that you try both ways.

Here's what I'd personally suggest:

Forced overtraining - progressively overload with weights in a linear fashion using the 5x5 routine. An example would be to progressively add a set amount of weights every week. When it feels like you've hit the wall, just train and push yourself even harder than. It will eventually come the point where you'll start to feel like utter crap, that you no longer look forward to working out (overtraining symptoms to look out for), and that's when you should back off from training. Lay off for about a week and then come back to lift again. After the rest period, you will have super-compensated - you will become stronger than before.

Periodization/cycling - the simplest explanation to cycling lifts comes from this post, which I've shared in one of my previous posts. It's a long read, but you only need read it once and you'll get the whole picture. Lift cycling works well for competitive powerlifters, but how about those who aren't competing? It's actually a good idea to perform max effort attempt to see where your max strength lies, so you should, too, cycle your lifts (there are many ways to cycle your lifts). Periodization is different from forced overtraining as such that lifters back off at the end of a 8-12 week cycle after a week of max effort attempts. Performing max effort attempts does not necessarily lead to overtraining, but the lifter backs off from training for a week to avoid overtraining and also to super-compensate.

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With that said, here's my new training routine that revolves around linear progressive overloading (5kg/week for heavy lifts):

Saturday - Heavy squats, 120%RM overload work (static holds)

Sunday - Light deadlifts, heavy bench press, 120%RM overload work (static holds)

Tuesday - Heavy deadlifts, light bench press

Wednesday/Thursday (depending on my recovery rate) - 100-rep push ups, sprints

As you can see, heavy emphasis is placed on the Big 3 - squats, deadlifts and bench press. Since I only workout 3 days a week in the gym, I decided to spend more time deadlifting than squatting because I also want to improve my grip strength. Scrapped front squat from the previous training routine until I can have better access to the gym; I love front squats though.

As for pull ups, Pavel mentioned a statistic by Belskiy (2000) which stated that middleweight and light heavyweight powerlifters were good for 22.5 pullups, without including the pull up as a part of their training. What attributed to such numbers were the heavy bench presses that they do, which also helped to develop their lats. Curious, I decide to scrap the pull up from the routine, record my current maximum pull up count (I'll do that tomorrow) and then record the numbers again 6 months later. I'm not taking the statistic as it is - I'm simply experimenting things on my own based on the statistic.

This new training program will last for 6 months and is also a part of an experiment - to see if bench pressing alone would help in adding the number of reps in the pull up, to see just how much high reps push ups will help my bench work (will probably need to make changes on this one along the way) and also to see how much overloading work can help when it comes to CNS conditioning. Speaking of overloading, I might add rack deadlifts in the future if I can find a power cage with a strong (or at least it will have to look the part) safety catch.

At the end of the 6th month, I might consider cycling my lifts just for the sake of switching things up. It'll be another experiment. I think it's going to be fun.

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Experiment period: 21st April - 20th October