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EricT · 12-16-2006, 10:30 AM

There are several articles explaining this in the DFT 5x5 sticky. I think they are pretty clear. I like this explanation by Kelly Bagget. It was originally posted by 0311 in that sticky and the full aricle, "How to Benefit from Planned Overreaching" can be found there. As Kane went over it, in these 5x5 programs you have a period of high volume where you "load" for a period of time and never fully recover. Intentionally building up fatigue and "overreaching". The "deload" is a period of active recovery from that fatigue and thus a fitness rebound. The intensity phase is a period of displaying that fitness and "peaking". These are just the tools, or ways that make sense.

The one factor theory- Is the basic stress adaptation model that is usually taught in high school, bodybuilding, and is the grand de jour model used to explain high intensity training. With this theory you look at physical ability as one short term factor. You load, recover, load, recover - always recovering fully before loading again.

The problem with this approach is you are left with the problem of timing workouts to correspond to the supercompensation wave. Anything sooner or later will lead to a bad workout. Another problem is there is only so much systemic stress that can be thrown on the body in one workout. If you prolong the length of the stress (loading and fatigue) period in the above chart by days or weeks, instead of a single workout, you increase the overall stress. Therefore, providing you do allow recovery to take place after prolonged loading, you increase the height of the supercompensation curve as well.

More on the 2-Factor Theory

You will often here training according to the 2 factor theory called many different things. You'll hear it called concentrated loading, load/unload, step-type loading or any number of other things. It's nothing fancy and most of you are probably already using it to an extent.

Comparing the One-Factor Approach to the 2-Factor Approach

Let's start off by comparing a "one-factor" training approach to a "2-factor" approach. We have 2 four week training schemes. One we'll call "A" and will be the one factor approach. The other we'll call "B" and is the 2-factor approach. Here's what they look like.

A: Here we train according to the traditional supercompensation curve. We train then fully recover, train then fully recover etc. Let's say we train once every 4-5 days and recover completely between workouts for 4-weeks.

B: Here we train hard for the first 3 weeks three times per week so that we never ever are completely recovered from any workouts. Then, on the 4th week we train only once or twice the entire week at a low intensity and low volume. During the 4th week we're allowing fatigue to dissipate so that we can display the fitness we've gained from the previous 3 week's of training. During this low intensity/low frequency week, the physiological indicators we've stimulate the previous 3 weeks "rebound" back up and above where they were before.

Ok. Now if you were to compare those 2 schemes we would find that version B will actually bring about greater gains particularly for intermediate and advanced athletes - That is providing the athletes are in a well rested state prior to initiating the 4 week block of training. Homeostasis is disrupted and prolonged during the 3 week loading period. Although we won't see a whole lot of progress during this 3 week phase itself, when we pull back on the volume during the reduced loading period the functional indicators will then rebound back above baseline. The ultimate "rebound", or performance increase, in scheme B will be greater then the summation of smaller rebounds from scheme A.

So what we're doing is building up fatigue and fitness by over-reaching slightly and then pulling back on the fatigue by under-reaching. Nothing really complicated about it.