My Strength Training History and Experience
I’ve been squatting, deadlifting, cleaning, and pressing for over half of my life. I started when I was thirteen of fourteen, and now I’m forty. There were a few years in my twenties where my resistance training mostly came from bodyweight exercises and bouldering, but otherwise I’ve been training in weight rooms for the better part of twenty five years. Most of it primarily focused on strength and performance.
In high school I squatted 500 lbs. at about 210 lbs. body weight, and in college my bench press got up to just shy of 400 lbs. That doesn’t make me the biggest freak out there by any stretch , but I was pretty strong.
Admittedly, in my late twenties and early thirties, I had more or less resigned myself to the basic 4 sets of 10, one body part per workout, bodybuilding approach to lifting. I wasn’t going as heavy, and I also wasn’t making any progress in my strength.
At one point I reconnected with a high school friend who had gotten into crossfit and built a garage gym. He told me he had a platform and bumper plates, and had been olympic lifting. When he asked if I wanted to come over and lift I was ecstatic at the prospect of being able to drop weights from overhead again and lift a bit more aggressively. The whole point of olympic lifting is to get powerful and explosive, not necessarily to get jacked.
Fast forward a couple of years and I’d built my own home gym. Just the basics – platform, nice bar, bumper plates, squat rack, bench, a chin up bar, and some kettlebells and other assorted pieces of gear. And I didn’t require anything more because I’d always known that the basic compound lifts got a man bigger and stronger than anything else.
Over the past six or seven years I’ve done stints focused on olympic lifting, conjugate style training, Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1, and Mark Rippetoe’s Texas Method. And I’ve been going heavy and continually adding weight to my lifts. My squat is back up to where it was when I was twenty years younger.
Stress From Heavy Training Adds Up
I’ve made progress with all of these approaches, but I’ve really been on a tear lately with the Texas Method. Of all of the approaches it has benefited my strength gains the most. That said, it’s hard not to feel a bit beat up adding weight to the bar every week for weeks on end, and heavy 5×5 squat workouts take their toll. Generally speaking, heavy lifting keeps my body and mind feeling really good and really young. But I’ve realized that the accumulated stress manifests itself in strange ways sometimes.
Nagging Aches and Pains – The Obvious Signs a Break Would Help
Most obviously as of late, my right leg has had some nagging aches. Not any sort of sharp pain or joint issues. Mostly an aching down the front of my shin. It sounds a bit odd, but lately when I’m more worn down and lifting really heavy that tends to pop up for some reason. If I take a break to do lots of stretching and light exercise it goes away in a few days.
I also had about a year where my lower back was constantly sore. I took some light weeks and did lots of lower back exercises to build up that part of my body. High volume back raises and light good mornings did a lot of good. And I was able to buy a second hand Rogue reverse hyperextension for a steal which hugely beneficial. But a big part of healing my back was taking some light weeks to let it heal.
But there are much more subtle signs that it’s time to back off for a week.
Mental Signs of Accumulated Training Stress
For one, I get moodier and more easily depressed. It would be really easy to pass that off as something else. Or even miss that sign altogether. But I now know that it’s often caused by pushing myself to the edge of overtraining. If I take a nice easy week and chill out, my mental state and well being snaps back to normal very quickly.
I can also experience a drop in mental performance. My mind gets foggier, and my memory doesn’t work as well. I have a harder time concentrating and paying attention. And I don’t absorb information as fluidly when listening to a lecture or talk. Words might get stuck on the tip of my tongue, and the thoughts in my head might not manifest easily into words. This would be easy to overlook as an “off day”, but when it occurs in conjunction with some of the other signs and symptoms I’m listing here I know it has to do with accumulated stress from aggressive and heavy training.
Losing Interest in Hobbies and Other Passions
When I’m worn down I tend to lose interest in my usual passions. One example is music. I love playing the guitar and saxophone, and listening to my vacuum tube hifi and vinyl collection. But when I completely lose interest in those things I know what might be going on. Generally speaking, the first hints of overtraining tend to make me more reclusive and less outgoing in general, and my desire to be creative takes a back seat.
Speaking of desire, I know it’s time to take a break when my libido isn’t at 100%. All things biological take energy, and the body can only produce a finite amount. Hard training and the recovery from it takes a lot of energy. It’s also well known that chronic stress can throw the body’s endocrine system off balance, and raises cortisol levels which can lower testosterone levels. This is the opposite of the aim of strength training. So when energy has been depleted and cortisol is high, it can have the effect of lowering desire of many kinds. And when I’m beat up from week after week of progressively harder training, I find that my libido is resurrected by taking a little break and either taking it easy or doing some sort of different physical activity for a change.
Chronic Fatigue and Poor Sleep
When I wake up in the morning after eight hours of sleep and I still feel tired, I know the accumulated stress of hard training is taking a toll. When normal means of recovery and good sleep aren’t quite getting the job done, it’s time for me to take a step back and relax a bit more. Furthermore, if I’m exhausted from training yet I wake up in the night and can’t sleep, I’m even closer to the edge of overtraining. A short break helps alleviate this issue for me.
So when I’ve been pushing myself hard, these are a few of the signs that help me regulate my training for the sake of long term health and training progress. People who train hard enough to accumulate serious levels of stress are generally Type A, and have a hard time slowing down. There’s an allure to pushing through all barriers. But there’s nothing valiant about causing injuries, health problems, or low levels of well being and mood. It just shows a lack of sense and paying attention to oneself.
The whole point of training is to feel better and perform better. It’s about health and well being. And taking a few weeks off as necessary every year is very minor in the grand scheme of things if it contributes to better health. Making progress with strength training is a marathon, not a sprint. And by taking necessary breaks progress will come faster and more consistently anyway.
Breaks don’t always have to be completely inactive either. Sometimes they can be centered around lighter, and different types, of activity.
My Approach to an Active Week Off
For those of you who just can’t sit still for a few days, here are a few of the things I do when I want to take an active week off as opposed to a week of complete inactivity.
For one, I’ll do some light hiking or biking. I like breaking a sweat without taxing myself. The focus is just to get the blood flowing for purposes of recovery. It doesn’t have to feel like a workout, just movement. And this sort of thing allows me to stretch deeply afterwards. I’ll ride my bike casually on a set of rollers for fifteen minutes if the weather is bad, or ride outside to get some sunshine and fresh air.
And speaking of stretching, it gets demonized in the world of strength training sometimes but I don’t care. I do it anyway. Both when I’m training hard and when I’m taking a break. Both static and dynamic. It hasn’t ever impacted my ability to progress in gaining strength. And on the flip side I’ve stayed limber while getting bigger and stronger. Tell Dmitry Klokov stretching is a bad idea. You can give Joe DiFranco’s Agile Eight a try for dynamic stretching if you’re not sure where to start.
I learned about the Agile Eight through Jim Wendler, and his 5/3/1 programming book also introduced me to prowler sprints. I have a Rogue Dog Sled, and I put two 45’s on it and push it for 6-8 40 yard sprints in the alley behind my house. The first time I tried this workout I was sore from squatting the day before. And it took the wind out of me. But it was strangely restorative. The next day the soreness in my legs was completely gone. It’s completely concentric in nature and moves a lot of blood through the legs. This is what I do during a light week when I want some activity that isn’t so light. It’s shocking how effective this workout can be in a very short amount of time.
I’ll also do a high intensity interval workout or two. 30 seconds on full bore, 30 seconds off for twelve minutes. Again, incredibly effective in a really short amount of time. I’ll pick three or four exercises and cycle through them for the twelve minutes. Burpees, double unders, kettlebell swings, light hang cleans/snatches, ab roller, box jumps, etc.
When considering these various options, listen to your body. There’s no point in destroying oneself when trying to back off. And there’s also nothing wrong with doing nothing for a few days after weeks and weeks of crushing it. Also, a week of light cardio to loosen up and recover won’t turn a big strong dude into a marathon runner. Just do what feels good and restorative.
How I Know I’ve Done a Back Off Week Properly
When I’ve done a back off week properly, I start to feel like a caged animal ready to go berserk. My mind is clear, I’m full of desire, I feel great, and I know I’m ready to attack the barbell again. And then I get back to my heavy training program. Simple.
