Are You Overtraining?

OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 1 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________

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Overtraining

The True Meaning Of “Overtraining”

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Dear Friend, Welcome to the Adonis Lifestyle Podcast! Podcast! Inside this transcript, you’ll find a lot of actionable information that you’ll be able to put to use for maximum visual impact. With that said, here are are a few TODAY to help develop your body for things to remember as you’re reading through this document. 1. Our trainings and opinions are based solely on the end goal of creating a body based on proportions and social influence. Just as baseball players, players, powerlifters, and MMA fighters train for a specific purpose, the techniques, tactics, and strategies we talk about revolve around “looks based” training and not “performance based” training. training. (although your average performance across most all regimes will, in fact, increase as a whole with our advice) 2. “Health” based training takes a backseat as the recommendations we give create bodies that fall within all of the generally accepted “parameters” for good health (blood pressure, heart health, etc) by default. And, although we do talk about health and aging from time to time, realize that “health” comes with the p ackage, without having to FOCUS on it. 3. Our opinions are strictly our own and sometimes are about as un-PC as you can get, but b ut we’ll never hide from the truth or try to sugar coat reality. Our job is to help you get in the exact shape you want, with all the BS aside. So, if you think we’re we’re a little harsh sometimes… just know we’ve got your best interest at heart. So, with all of that said, said, dive in and enjoy. If you’d like like more information on our workout workout in the process. systems, just click this link . We guarantee you’ll save a bunch of time and energy in Your friend, Brad Howard


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 4 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: All right guys, welcome one again to your Adonis Lifestyle podcast. I am Brad Howard, and today John and I are going to talk about overtraining because we’re getting a lot of comments and questions about this, both on the blog and in the forums. It’s about what overtraining actually is? What overtraining is not with things like soreness, lactic acid buildup? buildup? Is it exercise specific? Are there stressors involved? What is this whole thing about? So let’s just jump into it. What is this whole thing about them? And it seems like there are just so many different questions about what this phenomenon actually is that nobody really has it nailed down.

John Barban: Overtraining as far as I can tell is something that only really happens in high-level athletes, so I think - the average gym-goer who maybe goes to the gym 3-4 times a week, and just gets sore from the workout - They might think that they’re overtraining, but that’s probably not what’s going on. They’re just a little bit sore because they’ve done a new workout, something novel, something they haven’t done in a while, so they misinterpret extra soreness as overtraining.

So overtraining has got a general list of symptoms you could kind of piece together, but it’s not specifically defined, and probably manifest in each person slightly differently, but in general, it’s a lack of performance, a general overall feeling of fatigue. You may actually be at increased risk for infections, so you might catch a cold or get the flu or something like that, or just get sick. It’s a systemic sort of overwhelming of too much stress, so in this case, it is just that feeling of being run down when you’re just really busy at work or school, and you have a bunch of things going on, and you’re not getting enough sleep, like all of that kind of feeling when things catch up with you, so to speak, and you just don’t have any energy and you’re you’re sort of spent. That’s more or less what of overtraining feels like if you’ve never actually over-trained, but you’ve felt like how I just described it, that’s kind of what overtraining is.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 5 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ So the idea is you aren’t actually compromised, you don’t actually have an infection, you haven’t caught a cold or the flu or any of those things but you feel like it, and that’s from over stressing your system from too much exercise more than you can handle. So that’s kind of what it actually is, and then there are things you you can measure. You can measure different markers of the immune system changing. You can measure things like; not being able to contract muscles as strongly, measurements of depression and feeling just lousy, so it’s there, it’s something. It’s tangible. I don’t think too many people have ever actually experienced it because I don’t think too many people have ever trained enough to get to it, and so I guess what we’ll talk about is all of the misinterpretations of what people think overtraining is and other things that they’ve experienced.

Brad Howard: Interesting, so I guess in your perspective, what’s it more like then? I mean, for the novice to intermediate guy who is reading different things and he’s talking about overtraining and the reason he’s not getting results is because you’re overtraining and things like that. What are the other phenomenon that people are are feeling?

John Barban: Like the delayed onset of muscle soreness, it’s just being really sore from a novel workout. They might misinterpret that as overtraining, but all that is, is an acute effect from muscle damage, it is local inflammation, and it might have something to do with swelling. It might have something to do with the trauma to the muscle cell causing various chemicals to be released and stimulating pain receptors at the muscle, and even then, that muscle soreness can be bad enough that you can feel like you don’t have full strength for a certain number of days after lifting. The range where it should feel the worst is somewhere around 48 hours afterwards, and also at that time, you may actually have a decrease in nerve conductance, so you actually can’t push as hard that day. So you might misinterpret that as overtraining, but that’s actually just the normal trauma from a hard n novel ovel workout. So that’s not overtraining, that’s just the kind of the


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 6 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ normal breakdown and rebuilding process of doing a new task. New, meaning doing an exercise for more reps than you ever done it before, or doing it heavier than you’ve done it, or an exercise you haven’t touched in a while, so the muscle hasn’t contracted in that pattern for a while. So that’s one popular one where people might think just being extra sore might be overtraining.

People can misinterpret being sick with overtraining because it’s kind of similar, but it may not be the training that got got you there. So those are a couple of of the things. Just having low energy from not sleeping well, like maybe you just stayed up a couple of nights too late, and then you went to the gym, and you just didn’t have a lot of push in you, that could be misinterpreted as it as well. I think it needs to persist for more than a day or two for it to really be overtraining and not just a day of lousy sleeping and just being tired.

Brad Howard: Got you. Yeah, I know you’ve you’ve mentioned the fact of that being maybe doing a new specific exercise. I noticed a lot of times where, let’s say, if I have have a lay off off of maybe a month or something like that and I get back, usually the first day, I’ll be really sore, but it doesn’t mean it has to be that. Even if I’ve been working out for a couple of months, and then I just do a totally different exercise and go at it pretty hard, like any type of high row like a barbell row that I haven’t done in a while, usually my upper back will be sore, no matter what my, I guess, inherent overall conditioning is as far as lifting is concerned.

John Barban: Yeah, well, that’s because I said it’s novel. If you just haven’t done it in a while, if you have never done it, it doesn’t even need to be heavy or done for very many reps to make you sore, like a brand new exercise you’ve never actually tried is going to make you sore because you’ve never worked in that pattern before. But once


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 7 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ you’ve done it for a few weeks, you need to do a lot of it to get sore again because your body has done some serious adaptation if you repeatedly do it.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: So that’s one of the new exercises or trying a new rep or set scheme or trying a new volume or intensity could all lead to extra soreness. It could be mistaken as overtraining.

Brad Howard: And there is the distinction that you liked to make between overtraining and under-conditioning. What is the real distinction there that I think people need to get a handle on?

John Barban: Well, overtraining I think is a characteristic of an overall systemic insult or challenge to your whole body that eventually becomes overwhelmed, so that’s more of a human physiology systemic thing. So overtraining is kind of like just saying overstress, so physical exercise is just a kind of stress your body can can withstand. And if you give it at a right dose, it deals with it and you actually get stronger, like your muscles get stronger and even your immune system, your body just rebounds and becomes slightly more robust and stronger.

But the system can only handle so much stress, including mental stress, emotional and physical, so it all counts as one one lump of stress, there is only so much. If you’re really busy, and you have obligations at work, you have a family, or you have social obligations as well as your exercise, all of that contributes to the same amount of stress being placed against your body, so you can only handle so much of each, you can’t be an Olympic-level athlete and do Olympic-level training as well as be the CEO of the a company as well as raise four kids. It’s way too much stress. The human system could


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 8 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ never handle all of that, so one of those areas, or probably two of those areas have to be greatly diminished to be really good at one of them.

So that’s what I mean by “you can only handle so much stress”, so given however much stress you have away from exercise, that kind of leaves how much you can use up, how much of your stress handling reserve you can use up in the gym, and for most people who have some kind of job like 9 to 5 or whatever your job is or if you go to school full time or something like that, most of us can handle somewhere between 3 and 5 days a week in the gym, and anything past that, you’re starting to push it and almost nobody can do 7 days in the gym, and then start adding in doubles, like multiple times per day. Now, you’re talking Olympic athlete or pro athlete who has that job, that’s all they do. They don’t have another job, so they have no other kind of stress. They maybe have support helping and raising a family or whatever where they can really focus that much attention. So it’s like you only have a finite amount of stress you can handle, so that’s the overall how much stress the system can take, and if you go past what the system can handle, (and exercise is what you’re using to go past that), then you probably are actually hitting real overtraining, but it’s a long way up.

Now, “under-conditioning” is just an issue where you just haven’t trained up enough to handle the amount of work that you’re trying. So for someone who has never worked out before, ten minutes of weights will leave you super sore, like for a week. If you’ve never worked out before and you went in, and you just lie down the bench press and you knocked out a 100 reps in 10 sets of 10, and not even that heavy. Your chest would be more sore than it’s ever been in your life, and it will probably take you like 8 days to recover from that pain, and you just feel it like, “Wow, my God. That hurts so much.” And you might think you’re overtraining but you’re not, you’re just underconditioned for that exercise. You wouldn’t get all the other symptoms of overtraining. You wouldn’t get the mental fatigue, the feeling sick and run down. You’ll just be really,


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 9 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ really sore, so that’s like under-conditioning and not overtraining. And then a week later, once you recovered and you did another bench press workout, you wouldn’t get anywhere near as sore, and then a week after that, you probably wouldn’t get sore at all, so then you would be in condition for those 100 reps, and you could probably push it all the way to 150 or 200 reps. So that’s the concept of under-conditionin under-conditioning g and that as the more work you do, you start conditioning up to being able to handle more work.

But there is some finite upper limit that the human system would just break down at. You couldn’t work your way up to doing 2,000 bench press reps every day for 7 days a week. There is a limit. There is some some limit that the human system just couldn’t do it anymore, and when you push that limit, that’s true overtraining, but most of us never even approach that limit. Most of us are just under-conditioned.

Brad Howard: Right, okay, that brings up an interesting kind of phenomenon that I remember back when I used to swim a long time ago, and you hear about track coaches and staff do this. The aspect of tapering, does that actually come into play with this whole kind of overtraining stress? Is that why you see these in these elite protocols where they’ll have a week or so of taper before a big meet or something like that?

John Barban: Well, yeah, like for instance, power lifters and Olympic lifters don’t really train at their one rep max at all during the year. They just work up to it towards the competition, and they may touch it once or twice before they get to the competition, but not routinely, so doing things at their complete max. So there is a couple of variables. There is intensity and volume, so as your intensity goes up, your volume has to go down. So it’s kind of like in running, you can jog a long way, you you can walk even further, but you can only sprint a short distance. So the higher the intensity, the shorter shorter you can last. It’s the same with power lifting. The heavier the weight, the less reps you can


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 10 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ push it for until you’re at your one rep max, meaning there is no second rep, only one is all you can do.

But you can’t train that way for extended periods of time, so pushing right up against your max isn’t something most lifters I’ve seen do. They have a structured program that the volume and the intensity sort of change towards the competition to the point where the volume seems to taper down and the intensity up a bit to the point where you’re approaching, but don’t really touch your max until the competition itself. So your maxes go up, like the actual max lift goes up, but you won’t actually be training at your max all the time for it to go up, so the adaptations that you need come without actually touching the max lifts.

Brad Howard: What about when you hear people talk about getting some exercise to help their stress levels, is there a way for you to kind of augment and increase your reserve, or is it just one of these things that those people just aren’t going to touch it, it’s just helping them as far as stress management is concerned?

John Barban: Okay, yeah, so for exercise as far as stress management, that’s usually for people who do no exercise. There is a thing called the reticular activating system in your brain, and it kind of links your mind to your body, and it coordinates feedback, sensory feedback, going to and coming from your body to your brain. So it’s the reason why you can use your brain to relax your body, like through meditation or just thinking, like you can stop and control your breathing and actually calm your body down to the point where you can measure your heart rate rate dropping. You can measure temperature changing. You can actually consciously calm yourself yourself down by going going through mental exercises.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 11 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ But you can also do the reverse, if you’re caught trapped in your head and you’re getting overstressed and worrying about things, you can use your body to calm your mind down, and that’s kind of the concept of going for a walk or exercising, or just exercising it off, like just getting kind of caught up in the exercise and then letting the feedback from your body calm your mind down. And there are chemical changes that happen and it goes both directions, so you can do either. That’s the concept when you hear about exercises or recommendations that calm the mind, and it works, and it works both ways. So this doesn’t really have anything to do with it. That’s on the other end of the spectrum. People who are doing that, you wouldn’t be pushing up against the sort of overtraining barrier when you’re just using exercise for that kind of purpose, and even people who train pretty intensely, they probably still experience some calming of their mind when they work out, so that kind of thing happens sort of every time somebody works out.

Brad Howard: Right, interesting. So what about lactic acid? Does it have anything anything to do with any of this? I mean, is there some type of threshold

John Barban: Oh, no. People don’t really know much about physiology. Lactic acid is just a byproduct of anaerobic metabolism, and it just ends up getting burned too. I think people think when they hear the word ‘acid’ they think it must mean ‘burn’, and so that’s why their muscles ‘burn’, but it’s not. That has nothing with it, I don’t know where that comes from, but lactate is just a byproduct of the metabolism when you’re training intensely and then it just turns into another substrate that gets burned in the muscles. I guess, what I’m trying to say is lactic acid has nothing to do with it.

Brad Howard: Okay, so it doesn’t touch into basically trying to raise or lower any type of thresholds that kind of really contribute to overtraining.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 12 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ John Barban: No, no, the actual burn you feel in your muscle is, from what I understand, a lowering of blood pH. The thing that actually stops you from training, it’s kind of a complex coordination of signals. When you sprint or when you’re pushing reps to failure, that burn and that temporary shutdown of your muscle where you literally can’t move them for a second is due to a lowering of your blood pH, so the acidic level of your blood goes down, and it has nothing to do with lactic acid. I think just the way the word sounds like acid and burn, those two things just sound like they fit.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: But it’s not. Biochemically they have nothing to do with it.

Brad Howard: Interesting, Is there an absolute value or an absolute kind of top out for stress levels as far as people in general? Or is it kind of person specific, or is there any way to measure it, I guess, guess, you could say? I mean, how would anybody actually know if they were even approaching this level?

John Barban: That’s a good question. question. I mean, assuming everything else in your life is constant. So assuming your your work obligations and how busy your days are has basically stayed the same, and that you’re not going through any serious mental or emotional stress, and that you’re just sort of doing your thing, and you just decide, “I’m going to ramp up my training. I’m going to start going twice as often as I do, or 50% or whatever it is.” And then your training just gets more and more intense, and then then you start noticing general fatigue and you don’t feel like you’re recovering as well, and then your sleep pattern starts to deteriorate, and then you’re starting to feel run down, like that would kind of be the only way to tell if it was the training that did it. So it seems a bit nebulous. It would be really hard because you need to control the rest of your life, like you have to literally go through a stretch where no other out of the ordinary stressors


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 13 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ showed up. And then you just literally trained yourself yourself in to sickness or trained yourself into overall fatigue.

And so for that reason is why it’s seems to only be measurable (or at least easily measurable) in high-level athletes because that’s what they are doing, they’re just training all the time. So their lives are pretty controlled, so it’s, at least least easier, to pick it out when they do it versus a weekend warrior in the gym or your average 3-4 times a week type of person. Likely for those people when they do sort of feel like they’re overtraining it’s probably because something else in their life became more stressful, and you’re sort of using up more of your stress reserve, and then when they also tried to push through their regular workouts, their reserves were kind of all used up, so even though it was time to work out, they’re actually not physically capable anymore, or at least capable of recovering at the rate they have been.

I mean, I’m sure we’ve all been through it. I’m sure for anyone, if you’re listening, you probably have days where you were just thinking, “Yeah, you know, I have a scheduled workout today, but it just didn’t happen. There is just no way I could have gone.” And people know that. People kind of know when they’re sort of at their limit. Now, that’s not the same as a day where you’re just being lazy, and you’re like, “Yeah, I don’t feel like lifting weights.” It’s when you you really are run down. I think we all can tell when we’re like, “Man, if I really push myself tonight, I’ll probably have a cold by tomorrow morning.” And I don’t mean push on the workout, but just push on anything, like if you’re staying up cramming for an exam, or you’re trying to get something done at work, and you know you’ve been sort of run down and empty for a few days and you know like in the next 24 hours the way you deal with yourself could push you into a sickness or not. And I’m sure we’ve all done that cramming for an exam or you’re trying to meet a deadline at work, well, that’s still just stress, and if you just do it with your exercising, we call it overtraining. When you deal with the rest of your life, it’s overstressed, I guess.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 14 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: Right, got you. People are talking about hormone burnout or like adrenal fatigue and stuff like that. I mean, what’s that?

John Barban: I don’t know about that one. I’d have to do some more research, but from what I can tell it’s an excuse for people more than anything. I mean, adrenal fatigue, I don’t think there is even a clinically diagnosable medical defined condition of that or not.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: I’m kind of skeptical of things like that like chronic fatigue syndrome. To me that’s more of an excuse, or at least people are making that true more than it is, or it’s nothing at all. It’s more of a mental thing. I think it’s similar to people who say they’re hypoglycemic, but when you measure their blood levels of glucose, they’re actually normal, so it’s psychosomatic. It’s all in their brain because there is nothing measurable. So to me that is what that is. There is nothing actually measurable, but they just don’t want to admit it.

Brad Howard: Right, really the only people I’ve heard it from are people that are trying to cut down and they’re using some auxiliary substances as well, and I’ve heard of a couple of people talk about how they just weren’t going to compete in a show because they’ve had ‘adrenal fatigue’ or something like that, and they just couldn’t cut anymore fat or something.

John Barban: Oh yeah.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 15 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: Yeah, I had no idea, but I was just like, “Okay, well, I would think that that one means you’re taking a bunch of auxiliary crap that was just shutting down everything else you have.” And then maybe that’s it.

John Barban: Yeah, and then think of of that source. I mean, you’ll find it with someone like that who is speculating at the internal functioning of their body after they took a bunch of black market drugs.

Brad Howard: Right, but then the common guy reads about it or hears about it, and he thinks it’s happening in him.

John Barban: Yeah, exactly.

Brad Howard: That’s kind of where I was going with that because I really have never heard about it from anyone else.

John Barban: Yet, this industry is full of excuses with things like that, and then, of course, there are adrenal support products right.

Brad Howard: Yeah, what is that?

John Barban: That gets into the whole ‘you’re broken, and we will fix you, just take this supplement’.

Brad Howard: Well, everybody is broken now, don’t you know that?

John Barban: Well, then we should produce an adrenal fatigue supplement.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 16 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: All right, for sale now.

John Barban: Yeah, you see that just never ends in this industry, the whole ‘you’re broken, and we will fix you, just take this supplement’, with the different systems that are broken, like your insulin sensitivity is broken and the adrenal thing that could break, and you’re ability to build muscle will break, your ability to lose fat, everything can break. The human system is actually really robust. If you’ve made it to your 20s or your 30s, and you haven’t been currently clinically diagnosed yet with any measurable and observable problem, so you don’t have diabetes, you don’t have faulty or defective things that you would have manifested some other sort of major problem. If you’re just kind of “healthy and normal”, you’re not broken. You can’t really break the system. The proof is that you’re there, and there is nothing really wrong with you, so you just kind of move along. And I don’t know why people want it. I guess it’s the easy way out to avoid doing work. It’s easier to just assume that, “Oh, well, well, I’m the one with the broken something or other.”

Brad Howard: Yeah, it’s kind of funny to me, and like I said I’m not trying to make light of this by any means, but I know everyone thinks that we assume we’re a very delicate creature. You know, my girlfriend, she’s got a friend, he was in an accident, and he got thrown out of his car and he got run over by like two cars while he was laying on the side of the road, and he basically is almost fine now. This guy got ran over by a couple of cars, and he’s halfway back. I mean, he’s not a 100%, but I mean, he’s probably 85%.

John Barban: He’s good. Yeah, we’re pretty robust, and in the medical system, we have it pretty good. If you get busted, they can put you back together pretty good, so I don’t know, I think people get way too caught up in their heads about this sort of thing at the start. They worry too much about this sort of thing.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 17 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: Yeah, I always have to catch myself and ask, “what’s the real problem here? You know, what am I really going through?” And this is all throughout life, whether it’s weight loss or it’s money or anything or muscle building, I just kind of have to look at it and ask, “You know, what’s the real problem?” And most of the time, it’s something that I’m doing to myself. I see it almost every single time. It’s something that I’m doing to myself. That all I have to do is instead of trying to decide I have to tweak something to be able to live with what I’m doing to myself, I just need to stop doing whatever I’m doing to myself.

John Barban: Yeah, because with exercise and weight loss, it’s like trying to build muscle or trying to lose weight or trying to actually force a change in the shape or look or the feel of your body, it typically involves work now for a pay off later, but we’re not really built that way. We’re built to seek pleasure and reward immediately. immediately. Things like working out, they’re not immediately pleasurable, but they provide feedback in the long term, like you reap the rewards over time in the long term. I went for a late work out last night. I didn’t sleep well the night before, so I wasn’t really feeling it. It’s like about 10 PM, and it was hard to drag myself to the gym at that hour because it seemed so much more tempting to just go to bed.

And 20 minutes in the workout, I woke right up and I felt fine, but there is that serious barrier to overcome just getting to the gym and just lifting the weights for the first time. And then in the middle of the workout, I’m thinking like, “Was that me? Was that me 20 minutes ago that couldn’t come here, or was I really struggling?” And you’re also a little embarrassed. You’re thinking, “My God, I can’t believe I actually was contemplating not doing this because this isn’t that hard.” It’s kind of when the alarm goes off in the morning, unless you’re the type who will pop out of bed, most of us could really just stay there, like it’s really comfortable to stay in bed versus getting up. It’s the same thing


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 18 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ with trying to go in the gym or trying to cut caloriesthe next time you’re going to eat, you’re like, “Well, I know I shouldn’t.” And then it’s just you against the urge to eat or not, or you against knowing you should go to the gym but you kind of don’t feel like it, and you’d rather relax.

Brad Howard: Yeah, it’s almost like we need to somehow accelerate the positive feedback of it all. All right, a perfect example, you’re not going to catch me going going into the gym at 5 AM very often, but I remember maybe 5 or 6 years ago, I was in the gym like all the time at 5 AM, and I’m talking about popping up and getting into the gym and rushing off, the reason was because there was a hot girl that worked out at that time.

John Barban: You’re so shallow.

Brad Howard: But I’m just saying it. I mean, that was it.

John Barban: That’s awesome. I knew that. I knew that was going going to be the answer.

Brad Howard: But that’s kind of the same thing. It’s like how fast does it take you to get out of bed at 6 AM when you’re getting ready to go on vacation?

John Barban: Oh, yeah. You’re up at 4.

Brad Howard: Exactly. I mean, you might not even sleep. I know that was kind of like an extreme funny example, and I think most of people can relate to that, but it’s kind of the same thing.

John Barban: Yeah, it’s an expectation. It’s like being excited about whatever it is that you’re doing because of the pay off or the expectation of the pleasure or whatever you


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 19 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ want to call it. Workouts don’t feel that bad, like you have to kind of be used to it and into it, I wouldn’t call it comfortable, but it might be be rewarding I guess the word is. But it’s not the same as biting into your favorite food or watching a movie or doing things that are just flat out straight up with the reward, and the actual reward center of your brain is being stimulated repeatedly. You don’t really get that from a workout, but you do afterwards when on the long term when you get feedback from other people on how you look and then you like the way you look and you you like the way you feel. So I guess you kind of need to not do it for a while for all of that long-term feedback to go away to realize, “Oh, man. I’ve got to get back into the gym.”

Brad Howard: Yeah, that’s one of the interesting things about it. It’s trying to build up that momentum to finally get some sort of result, that feedback that keeps you going.

John Barban: Yeah, it’s a battle between your logic and your appetite, or your logic and your passion, so that the appetites are much more immediate. They’re like your emotional state, and the appetite for food or the appetite for some kind of immediate pleasure or feedback or attention versus the logic of knowing, “Well, I’m trying to cut down. I can’t eat that food right now.” now.” So you have to kind of deny your appetite for the food, but then you also have to go to the gym and deny your appetite for some attention at that moment. Instead of doing something social, you have to kill an hour in the gym for some benefit in the future. So those are forcing you to live in the logical logical side of your brain and actually do things out of the logical side of your brain and put your emotions and desires and “appetites” on hold for a bit, which is really toughbut that’s what distinguishes us from animals really.

Brad Howard: Sure, everybody makes a decision based on self-interest, but that selfinterest is based on whatever emotional state that person is in at that moment in time which can be changed relatively quickly. That’s why I can sit in front of someone who


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 20 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ had no idea that they were going to come in and buy something, and the next thing you know they walk out with a brand new TV, because all of a sudden their emotional state changed almost instantaneously and now you get them to think, ‘it’s now in my best interest somehow someway, at least, at this very moment it’s in my best interest to buy this TV’. And that’s kind of what I’m just kind of wrapping my hands around as far as just not only when you’re dealing with other people and you’ve realized that, like even people that are giving you a hard time about trying to lose weight or trying to build muscle or trying to go and do it in a certain direction. I mean, the reason those people do it is it’s in their self-interest to do so.

So I think we talked about it before, but on that same token, I mean, if you can kind of realize that, then you can use that against yourself as well because you’ll just look back and you just have to really spell it out, and almost ask yourself legitimately and just say, “All right, well, what’s really in my best interest right now?” Like almost really ask that question to yourself and say, “Okay, well, my best interest is doing this.” And then you kind of go, “All right, well, that’s it.” But if you’re not actively on top of it in the very beginning and asking yourself those types of questions and being honest, that’s why people can’t really get that momentum going, and focusing on a lot of other stuff. I’m glad we’re getting to talk about things like overtraining and under-conditioning and things like that because a lot of people are still trying to dig in to get more information and the whole freeze factors are keeping them from getting started, which is keeping them from getting that momentum.

John Barban: Yeah, people jump to conclusion that they don’t want to try something because it’s overtraining.

Brad Howard: Sure. One more thing I want to touch on about overtraining, and that is the reason we pulled the interval training out of the Adonis system is because people


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 21 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ were basically holding stuff in reserves during their weight training just to be able to get through the intervals. So do you think that a lot of people in the beginning, when they’ve got a program that they’ve set up themselves or they’ve read somewhere, they look at this monstrous program, and go through it, and they’re holding something in reserve to try to get through the whole thing?

John Barban: They may not be in condition for it, or it may just not fit how their life is built. Like by the end of a couple of weeks, they might look back and say, “Oh, man. The four workouts I can do, but those extra ones are just too much” Those are things that always seem to get lost or push them over the edge. So I guess they can’t give all of it 100% attention, so they give it all 80%.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: Now, so then you just sort of take away from one side to try to not make the other side terrible. So instead of going 100% on one side and 50% 50% on the other, you sort of go 75% on all of it.

Brad Howard: Yeah, I guess the question really comes about when people are reading about overtraining and shortening up their workouts and stuff like that, is it really because the person is overtraining, or is it because they’re holding so much in reserve just to get through the workout that they really haven’t used any intensity to get any results, and that’s really what they’re running into? It’s not really an overtraining aspect or maybe not even under-conditioning, but just mentally holding something in reserve and not pushing the way they’re supposed to push through their workout is the reason they’re stagnating. I mean, is that possible?


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 22 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ John Barban: It could be. Well, I mean, you have two variables. You have your intensity and your volume, so how much you do and then how heavier or intense it is, so you can pull back on one of them or both of them.

Brad Howard: Right.

John Barban: But I mean you can only pull back so far until you’re not really doing much. Like you can’t just go in and do one set of one exercise once a week and be like, “Okay, that’s enough.” That’s probably not going to do it. So between doing like literally one rep and then a bunch somewhere else in the hundreds or thousands, somewhere in the middle is the amount you can handle and you just have to find that balance for your lifestyle. So people like students in first and second university, they can probably handle a lot more of the stress, especially at their age, too, where as you get older and you have more responsibilities, you probably have to be a little bit more targeted with how much time you spend.

Brad Howard: Got you, I guess it just kind of goes back to something’s just aren’t what they seem, and you’ve kind of got to step back and pick it apart and try to figure out exactly what is going on, is this really relevant to you, or is this something that you should probably just ignore?

John Barban: Yeah, I guess to wrap it up, most people probably haven’t experienced overtraining unless they’ve played some kind of sport or been in some sort of athletic endeavor at a pretty high level and have been literally pushed to their limits by their life plus their coach. I don’t think it’s something too many people need to worry about. Most people just won’t get to it.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 23 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: Right. The way I look at it now is I don’t know why anyone would try to create their own program when there are great people out there that can actually create a program for you, and you don’t have to think about it anymore. You don’t have to think about it if I’m going to be overtraining. I mean, if the person knows what their doing, all that stuff has been accounted for. All of the things that you could possibly think of have already been accounted for within that protocol.

John Barban: Yeah, and then no matter what the protocol you’re following, if it feels like too much, at least you can look at it and make little adjustments. You can just say, “Well, if that’s 100% of the program, and I couldn’t handle it. I’ll do 60% of the program and then I’ll work up from there.” Either way, whatever you’re doing, at least you can can look at it and decide and you have a template to work off of.

Brad Howard: Yeah, because it’s all about the progression. I mean, even if you can’t get through it the first time, which is very common, especially with people that are just getting started out, you might have to kind of work up into it.

John Barban: And some programs have beginner level stuff that purposely has less volume, probably less of everything.

Brad Howard: Sure.

John Barban: The first workout I built for girls was like that. It had a ‘beginner’ level, and there was less of everything because I was assuming it would be new to them, so I wasn’t going to hit them with the highest level, so they actually had to go through about ten weeks to get to the higher level.


OVERTRAINING Podcast hosts: hosts: Brad Howard Howard and John Barban Barban http://blog.adonislifestyle.com Page 24 of 24 ______________________________________________________________________________ Brad Howard: Right, and with guys?

John Barban: Guys are just guys, they’re stubborn. But for the girls, girls, they appreciate it, and then some of the girls who are more advanced, they will just email me, and they’re like, “Hey, can I actually add in an extra set?” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah. Knock yourself out.” The beginner levels are actually meant for a beginner. If you’re advanced, just skip right up to the advanced. And then from there if it’s not enough volume for them, they can actually add to that. Everyone has got their own level, right? No matter what program you’re following, you probably are going to make one or two adjustments once you’ve really got used to it and you’re realizing, “Oh, I can handle a little bit more, or man, that’s killing me. It’s too much right now.” But in most most cases, most of us are never going to actually experience overtraining.

Brad Howard: Right, well, it’s kind of a good thing to finish off on. Have you got anything else you want to add to this?

John Barban: No, that’s about it.

Brad Howard: Okay, it sounds good, man. All right, well, for John Barban, I am Brad Howard, and this was your Adonis Lifestyle podcast.

Here are a few links for you to check out: 1. Adonis Lifestyle Podcast (iTunes subscription link) 2. Listen to the audio version of “What If Vs What Is” 3. Get the body you deserve and invest in the Adonis Index Systems S ystems today!


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