Maybe if you're overtraining you have severe metabolic deficiencies, digestive problems, some tumors and a brain disease. Let me know if you need a consultation and i'll tell you what sups to take
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Stuart McRobert is a smart guy but he is not the only source of good training info. Sounds like someone needs to branch out. This article would have you believe that if you plateau on an exercies you're "overtrainiing". Or that you need to "fully recover" to grow. Well that would really mean that everybody who ever had success on a 3 day full body or a 4 day upper/lower must have been imagining it. Because you don't "fully recover" from workouts in those time spans. There is alway some accumulation of fatigue on a program. His definition of "overtraining" is completely inaccurate. There is not much knowledge of training theory manifested here that I can see.
How do you know if you're ovetraining? Chronic soreness in joints and muscles. Not like DOMS but more like a deep ache. Loss of coordination. Loss of strength. Insomnia. Loss of Appetite. Depression. Anxiety. There are more I can't think of right now. Kind of makes it sound like overtraining is a more serious matter than "overdoing" it on one program in the gym.
You can overdo it on a program, accumulate a lot of fatigue, stop progressing, maybe even come close to injuring yourself and as long as you listen to your body and take it down a notch, deload or even take time off, you will not have overtrained. Simply over-reached. You will still have gotten gains if you ate and slept enough and will come back probably with more gains.
Recovery is not necessary for growth to occur.
What is don't understand is if IA thinks that either everybody is trying to emulate the routines of highly advanced, genetically gifted, steroid laden builders and not growing or doing super wimpy, ultra conservative abbreviated routines with low frequency and succeeding. There are all sorts of people having great success in the realms between that.
I'm honestly kind of sick of these articles. He would have you believe a program is a failure if you plateau on it. It's bullshit. That would mean every 5x5 i've done was an overtraining failure. Certainly not the case.
OVERTRAINING is a LONGTERM SYNDROME. What he describes is overreaching at worst. You push yourself for months and months without results and continue adding and adding while your body breaks down and you ingnore it, you need an intervention not an article.