Overtraining SPECIFIC muscle groups

[nacius]

Is overtraining specific to a muscle group or is it a whole body thing?
What I mean is that if I work chest (hard) 3 days a week and am not getting any stronger, I might be overtraining my chest. But at the same time I only work legs once a week? Will I not see gains in my legs because my chest is being overtrained? Or only the chest will lack the gains since it is the only body part being overtrained?
I was just curious...

 

[gymtime]

It's specific to a muscle group.

 

[GenetiKing]

Overtraining has it's own set of symptoms which are easily identifiable. These include trouble sleeping, decreased immunity (presumably due to the decreased levels of glutamine in the body which also play a big role in supporting the immune system), irritability, loss of training motivation, lingering soreness, increased incidence of injury, etc. However, just experiencing ONE of these does not necessarily indicate that someone is technically overtraining. It cracks me up to see all these posts asking if people are overtraining or not. Overtraining is not always the culprit.

Usually, people get over-reaching and overtraining mixed up. Over-reaching is more or less training beyond your optimal training zone (in terms of training volume) in one or just a few workouts. You can over-reach but not overtrain. If you continue to over-reach, you will eventually overtrain and experience the aforementioned symptoms. To keep it simple...overtraining is more chronic in nature while overreaching can be acute. They are closely realted but not the same thing.

Now, to answer your question...you can flog a muscle to death but not necessarily overtrain your entire body. More than likley, that muscle group WILL NOT grow but you may not be overtraining that group to the point of causing your entire body to suffer the consequences. For example, it would be very possible for you to overtrain your legs, back, or chest to the point of sending cortisol levels sky high, thus affecting gains throughout your entire body. However, it would be harder to achieve this just by overtraing a smaller group like calves or forearms, simply because the strain it causes the nervous system to effectively train these muscles is much less and their catabolic influences on hormone levels is also much less.

I hope that answers you question without being too confusing, LOL!

 

[Cackerot69]

Could be either.

 

[nacius]

If overtraining is not that common... then would you say it is safe to train each muscle group twice a week? Or is this a mentality that I must get rid of.

 

[Cackerot69]

For short periods of time, with necessary adjustments, sure.

 

[GenetiKing]

If overtraining is not that common... then would you say it is safe to train each muscle group twice a week? Or is this a mentality that I must get rid of.

Don't get me wrong, it's easy to over-reach and send your progress to a screeching halt without even entering the overtraining zone. That's why I explained all of that in the first post...to illustrate that you don't necessarily have to be overtraining to be training too much. In fact, it's easier to over-reach and it's even harder to identify that that's in fact what you're doing because the symptoms of over-reaching are less pronounced and less noticable than those of overtraining.

No, I'm not a big fan of training large musclgroups twice a week. I've met very few people who can effectively train like that for any amount of time and still see gains...it takes an amazing recovery ability that most of us aren't genetically gifted with. Not everyone can train like Arnold did.

The only way I would consider twice a week training for larger groups would be if it was involved in some sort of periodized training routine..."controlled overtraining" or something similar. Even then I would only do it for a very short period regardless of AAS usage and diet.