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Originally Posted by IA
So how do you know if your overtraining? Well the real barometer should be your training weights. You should be seeing increases in about every movement from week to week.
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You put a beginner on a simple abbreviated 3 day a week full body program concentrating on the big 3 (4 really) and he fails to make weekly progress in the SHORT TERM I guarantee the problem is one of adherance.
Number one most beginners overshoot the beginning of the program. Start too close to your maximal ability and your fucked. You're better off every time looking like a sissy and being conservative than letting your ego guide you. I help someone over the internet I assume they're lying to me over their weights anyway.
You can't correctly interelate volume and intensity and then take intensity out of the picture when you talk about people using too much volume. There are other ways to manipulate volume than just frequency, reps and sets. After all we define volume as TOTAL work load. Weight times reps times sets. That's why you should begin a full body beginner program backing off your maxes and building to them over time. Otherwise the overall workload is too much too fast. But a beginner with little experience and recovery ability if he starts nice and easy and builds up over time, even if it's 6 weeks as opposed to 4, will be subtly increasing the workload over that time and therefore increasing recovery ability in the process.
Two they load the bar too aggresively going by the way the "feel" rather than what is going to keep them progressing in the long term...in other words they refuse to pace themselves. Faster is always better mentality.
Three they basically do a totally different workout at one time to another without even adding more excercises cuz they fuck with the volume by going from ramping the weights to same weight sets or vice versa. This is the trap of putting too much emphasis on the training effect of one workout rather than the cumulative effect. "I feel good and strong today so I'll add volume and grow more". Then next week they wonder why they stopped progressing.
And four of course they add excercises to the program and increase the volume. They monkey fuck the program in any way possible. Throwing in this movement one workout and some other shit the next.
Training someone in the gym seeing what they're doing is one thing. Training them over the internet is another. You have to take their word for a lot of things you shouldn't take their word for.
Given all this I don't think there is a need to jump to bad recovery and overtraining and therefore these complicated prescriptions of what one beginner should do as opposed to another.