Overreaching, a term that you might have heard if you have delved into the depths of exercise
programming.
The name itself might seem to imply something bad.
And it doesn’t help when you consider the overreaching symptoms: decreased performance,
increased fatigue, upper respiratory tract infections, and even sleep disturbances, to
name a few.
But then why is it actually sought after by competitive athletes?
Let’s first understand what overreaching is.
A planned overreaching program typically implements a 2 to 4-week overloading block, where the
individual is exposed to a much higher training load that cannot be sustained over time.
Hence the term overreach, since you’re “reaching” too far with training where recovery is forcibly
inadequate.
For instance, if I want to implement a 30% overload on 10 sets of 85% 1RM squats per
week, I would do 13 sets of squats per week with the same intensity for 4 weeks straight.
Same idea applied to all my other exercises.
If it was enough, I should start experiencing some of symptoms of overreaching, especially
greater perceived exertion and decreased performance.
Now circling back to why we want this.
Upon recovering from an overreached state, the symptoms disappear and performance will
start to return to initial baseline.
But your performance doesn’t just stop at baseline.
With adequate recovery, you will ultimately adapt and improve to levels greater than before.
This event is known as supercompensation.
A 2013 study on triathletes had a pretty good outcome of this effect.
After applying a 40% training overload over the course of 3 weeks followed by a 1-week
recovery taper, the triathlete’s running performance significantly improved more than
a control group that ran a standard program.
It’s this supercompensation effect that athletes desire.
If an athlete timed their overreaching and recovery right before a competition, they
will compete in a super-compensatory state allowing for greater peak performance.
But now let’s talk about real-world implementation.
Unfortunately, there’s no consensus on a generalized overreaching strategy nor how
to effectively detect overreaching.
And worse yet, if you fail to detect and recover in a timely manner, you might end up non-functionally
overreaching.
This leads to longer recovery times and no supercompensation.
This can be seen in a 2006 study on Division 1 athletes, where after a 4-week overloading
phase, instead of focusing on recovery, the athletes continued with 15 more spring training
sessions executed over a 30-day period.
Almost all training parameters, such as squat strength, sprint speed, and vertical jump
failed to improve at the end of the intervention.
If you continue to ignore the signs even past non-functional overreaching, you ultimately
end up overtraining.
A very rare phenomenon, but most certainly does exist.
As far as how to detect based on the research, you can monitor changes in things like heart
rate recovery, heart rate variability, blood lactate levels, and creatine kinase levels.
But of course, not everyone will have the tools to do so.
A more practical but subjective approach is to simply listen to your body.
Constantly monitor your mood, sleep quality, energy, and/or performance.
But first make sure you rule out other possible contributing stressors, like sudden increase
in work-related or personal relationship stress.
It’s only true overreaching if nothing else other than the training itself is responsible
for the symptoms.
One of the largest factors in identifying overreaching is a perceived change of difficulty
to complete your sessions.
From a 1 to 10 scale of difficulty, if your workout starts to feel like a 9.5 when the
week before it was only a 6, then you might be overreaching.
Keep in mind though, that these symptoms have to be consistent for roughly a week.
Sometimes you might have just one bad day where things feel tough, but you’re not
necessarily overreaching.
Also, usually when you start feeling sick and develop upper respiratory tract infections,
then you might have gone too far and approaching non-functional overreaching.
As for programming your overload block, the adjusted modalities will be specific to your
goals.
For strength, train at near-maximal loads at higher volumes or frequency.
You can add more sets to your lifts or add an extra training day each week.
Just make sure to keep your lifts heavy, around 85% 1RM or higher.
Do note though that more isn’t always better.
One study found that, in a 10-week period of training squats, snatch, and clean and
jerk, subjects that did a total of 93 reps at 90% 1RM intensity saw greater strength
gains than subjects doing 184 reps within the same time frame.
So be smart about how much you’re overloading and continue to pay attention to your body.
A muscle building goal will generally require more work volume, which can be achieved by
increasing your sets, your reps, and/or your training frequency.
The intensity of your lifting load doesn’t necessarily have to be high since the focus
isn’t strength.
Choose an intensity that is effective in accumulating the most volume as possible.
Again, just don’t overdo it.
Same concept applies for endurance, where adding more time and reps to your exercises
are ideal strategies.
In terms of recovery, rest, adequate nutrition, and adequate sleep are the biggest factors.
You can choose to deload or taper your workouts if you want to continue training, but it’s
not exactly necessary.
If after one or two weeks of recovery you see a noticeable improvement in your gains,
then congrats, you successfully supercompensated!
Now one final question: is overreaching necessary for everyone?
When it comes to the typical beginner looking for a good starter program, periodized overreaching
is not at all necessary.
Beginners should see results from following a simple linear program that implements progressive
overload.
Simply going from no exercise to some, beginners will see an improvement on a day to day basis.
Just make sure to consistently do more work than each previous session and rest enough
between them.
Same goes for intermediate gym goers but instead improvement is expected on a week to week
basis.
Only when you start tapping into advanced fitness levels where there are dramatic diminishing
returns on your gains for the amount of work you do, is where you might want to implement
a planned overreaching block for supercompensation.
In essence, if you’re just the average joe, then training regularly is usually good enough.
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